Sponsors (6)
The bill secures predictable, substantial long‑term increases in federal R&D funding to boost research, jobs, and innovation, but does so by locking in mandatory spending that raises fiscal costs and reduces congressional flexibility to reallocate funds to other domestic priorities.
Researchers, universities, students, and small R&D firms receive multi-year, sizable increases in federal R&D funding (NSF, DOE Office of Science, NIST, DoD S&T, NASA) through FY2035 that support jobs, research projects, and technology commercialization, boosting long‑term economic growth and the innovation ecosystem.
Grant recipients and federally funded labs will have more predictable purchasing power because funding increases are protected from inflation beginning in FY2036 by tying future adjustments to the CPI‑U, helping preserve the real value of awards and staffing plans.
Taxpayers and domestic programs face higher mandatory federal spending that could increase the deficit and/or crowd out funding for other priorities like education, healthcare, and infrastructure.
Exempting these appropriations from sequestration and PAYGO and automatically indexing future increases to CPI‑U reduces congressional fiscal oversight and flexibility, making it harder to adjust funding in downturns or if priorities change.
Concentrating large, mandatory increases on federal R&D may allocate resources away from immediate social needs and non‑research domestic programs, worsening tradeoffs for families and communities that need direct services.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Sets specified annual appropriations for NSF, DOE Office of Science, DoD S&T, and NIST for FY2026–FY2035 and creates CPI‑U indexing for certain accounts beginning FY2036.
Provides multi-year, specified annual funding levels for major federal science and technology agencies — including the National Science Foundation (NSF), Department of Energy Office of Science (DOE Office of Science), Department of Defense science & technology programs (DoD S&T), and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) — for fiscal years 2026–2035. For DOE Office of Science and DoD S&T, the bill also creates an automatic inflation adjustment beginning in fiscal year 2036 tied to the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI‑U). Allocations are written as explicit dollar amounts for each year through 2035 and as mandatory appropriations/immediate Treasury transfers. The measure sets multi-year predictability for federal R&D budgets and establishes a CPI‑U escalation formula for certain accounts from FY2036 onward.
Official title: To prioritize funding for an expanded and sustained national investment in basic science research.
Introduced April 3, 2025 by Bill Foster · Last progress April 3, 2025