Trump’s 2018 budget will squeeze civilian science agencies

The chunk of the federal budget that includes most of the U.S. government’s spending on basic science would shrink by 10.5% in 2018 under a plan outlined today by President Donald Trump and administration officials.

It is unlikely that all civilian science budgets would see cuts under the proposal—and some could even get increases. But the spending blueprint, which would have to be approved by Congress, highlights the financial pressures that civilian research agencies will face as Trump and the Republican majority in both houses of Congress attempt to carry out campaign promises to raise defense spending while reining in the rest of federal spending.

White House officials said today that they will ask Congress to increase discretionary defense spending by $54 billion, to $603 billion, in the 2018 fiscal year which begins 1 October. They expect to pay for that increase by cutting an equivalent amount from nondefense discretionary spending—the part of the budget that includes major basic research funders.  That means a potential squeeze on the $31 billion National Institutes of Health, the $7 billion...