It is budget time, and with it comes the annual ritual of members of the science and technology community complaining about their fortunes in the budget process. The relative fortunes of different research communities does wax and wane. For instance, biomedical research saw an unprecedented doubling in its budget in the late-1990s/early 2000s, and a ever-so-slight downturn since then (see PDF). NASA, NSF, and DOE’s Office of Science are up dramatically this year, after years of small increases, declines, or static budgets.

But when viewed as a whole the R&D community has a track record of perhaps unprecedented success in arguing its case for federal funding. While it is true that aggregate R&D expenditures have tended to track overall trends in federal discretionary spending (see this essay), R&D has achieved a long-term growth in the portion of discretionary spending that it receives. This means that R&D is necessarily fairing better than some other parts of the federal budget.

Consider the following data (sources: here):

By President, the percentage of federal discretionary spending deveoted to R&D:

Reagan 12.5%
Bush I 13.3%
Clinton 13.6%
Bush II 13.7%

By Control of the House, the percentage of federal discretionary spending deveoted to R&D since 1982:

Democrats: 12.8%
Republicans: 13.7%

This data suggests to me first that the S&T lobby has been incredibly successful in increasing the portion of the federal deveoted to R&D. Second, there has been strong bipartisan support for R&D across presidents and congresses. the difference between Ds and Rs in the House I attrbute more to the long-term trend of increasing successes by the S&T lobby arguing for more funding, rather than any partisan signal. It just so happens that Rs have been in control more recently. Finally, for those wanting to discuss not simply the aggregate R&D budget, but what the R&D budget is meant for … well, that would require asking “So what?” rather than “How much?” (on this point see Sarewitz PDF). And this is a question that the field of science and technology policy is uniquely suited to address.