President Biden Releases FY2024 Budget Proposal

By: LSN Partners on March 10, 2023

On Thursday, President Joe Biden released his FY 2024 budget proposal. The White House asks for $1.73 trillion in FY2024 discretionary funds in the document, nearly a $91 billion or 5.5 percent increase over the current year. By contrast, House Republicans seek roughly 9 percent cuts from FY2023.

Within the $1.7 trillion number, the budget includes $886.4 billion in defense and security-related spending. That’s a $28 billion or 3.3 percent increase from totals enacted in the December omnibus. While DOD has the largest proposed increase in the budget of any federal agency, it is less than congressional Republicans are seeking, and there will be strong opposition to this funding level. 

Additionally, the White House is seeking $841.3 billion in nondefense spending, more than 8 percent over FY2023, or nearly $63 billion.

“As we face growing threats at our border and around the globe, the president’s proposal spends far too much on unnecessary programs at the expense of our national security. America simply cannot afford this misguided plan,” House Appropriations Chairwoman Kay Granger, R-Texas, said in a statement. She said her committee would receive testimony from administration officials on their agencies’ proposals before marking up spending bills in May and June.

New Landscape

The new House Republican majority — and the looming debt ceiling battle — paint a very different appropriations landscape than last year when Biden proposed a 14 percent nondefense spending increase and a 4 percent defense spending increase from the previous year. Instead, negotiators landed on an 8 percent nondefense spending increase and a 10 percent defense spending increase in the omnibus. 

Speaker Kevin McCarthy promised holdouts of his speaker bid to write the FY2024 appropriations bills at the FY2022 level. Republican appropriators have said defense spending will be spared, which means cuts elsewhere in the House will be severe. 

President Biden highlighted his budget’s investments in health care, childcare, affordable housing, and education in his budget proposal. The proposal is “a blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America in a fiscally responsible way that leaves no one behind,” he wrote in the preamble to the main summary document. 

Biden proposes the most significant percentage increases for the EPA and the Treasury, Agriculture, Education, and Energy Departments. EPA would get a 19 percent increase to $12 billion, Treasury would get a 15 percent boost to $16.3 billion, and Agriculture would see a 14 percent increase to $30.1 billion this year.

Lastly, the FY2024 budget request continues the Administration’s priority of seeking funding increases for the federal research agencies. The budget aims to fund several new initiatives characterized by Arati Prabhakar, the President’s Science Advisor, as “the largest investment in federal research and development ever proposed in our nation’s history–making clear just how serious the President is about leveraging the power of American science, technology, and innovation to achieve our greatest aspirations.”

Early next week, the White House and the heads of the federal research agencies will release additional information to support its overall $210 billion research and development (R&D) request. Below are some initial highlights based on preliminary figures already released.

• Department of Commerce: The Administration is seeking $277 million for the Manufacturing Extension Partnership program, an increase of more than $100 million over the FY2023 appropriated amount (additional funds were appropriated under CHIPS and Science to the MEP program last year). The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) would see a $371 million increase next year for its weather satellite program and a $163 million hike to the National Institutes of Standards and Technology for industrial technology services, and another $132 million increase for its research facilities.
• Department of Energy (DOE): The Biden Administration’s budget request would provide DOE’s Office of Science a $680 million increase to roughly $8.8 billion. The 8 percent increase marks a step toward realizing the nearly 50 percent increase over five years authorized by the CHIPS act. The budget request would also include “a historic $1 billion investment in the acceleration of efforts to achieve fusion, a promising clean energy power source.”
• National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA): NASA would receive an increase of 7 percent to $27.2 billion, which includes $2.5 billion for NASA’s earth science division, an increase of nearly 14 percent.
• National Institute of Health (NIH): The Biden administration is seeking a $500 million increase for the “Cancer Moonshot” which would be directed to the National Cancer Institute. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) would receive a $200 million increase for a new precision medicine psychiatric initiative. NIH’s environmental health institute would get $25 million in new funding to study the health effects of climate change, a 2.7 percent boost to its overall budget. The rest of NIH’s 27 institutes and centers would see level funding.
• National Science Foundation (NSF): The Biden Administration has consistently supported higher funding levels for NSF and is seeking a 19 percent increase to $11.3 billion next year. It is unclear at this point how Congress will address this request, as the increase looks to be based on NSF’s regular appropriation for FY2023. At the same time, Congress also gave NSF nearly $1 billion in emergency funding that didn’t count against a self-imposed cap on domestic spending. The $1.4 billion request for NSF’s Education Directorate reflects the Administration’s emphasis on expanding the country’s scientific workforce. The requested increase for NSF’s new Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP) directorate intends to help more researchers turn discoveries into marketable products and new industries. In particular, a flagship TIP program to support regional innovation centers would grow from $200 million to $300 million under this request. We will provide details of this request next week.
• U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA): Within USDA, the Biden Administration is seeking 10 percent more for the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), for a total budget of $1.9 billion. NIFA would also see its competitive extramural grants rise by 20 percent to $550 million.