President Clinton's federal budget request for Fiscal Year 1999-2000 is a mixture of good news and bad for many university-based programs.
Federal funding in 1997-98 amounted to approximately 20 percent of Cornell's annual $1.6 billion operating budget, with the university receiving $321 million in federal support, including $262 million in competitive grants and contracts, $19 million in budgeted (formula) funding and $41 million in federal student aid.
While the president proposes to increase education spending by 3.7 percent as a priority of his administration, his budget reserves most of that increase for elementary and secondary school programs. Most higher education programs, including federal student financial aid, would receive only slightly higher spending levels. The $1.2 billion increase for all education programs is in pale contrast to those of the last three budget years, in which increases have averaged more than $3 billion annually.
The maximum award under the Pell Grant program would rise by $125 to $3,125, constituting a 4 percent program increase, but funding for the Perkins Loan Program would receive no increase. Federal Work-Study would be given an increase of $64 million (a 7.3 percent boost).
The president strongly supports spending on numerous new initiatives, including programs to help colleges and universities reduce the drop-out rate for at-risk students; efforts to convince students and parents of the advantages of going on to higher education and the availability of student aid to do so; and initiatives to support teachers and teaching capacity at middle schools, Native American schools and high schools in areas with concentrations of poverty.
The Clinton administration proposes funding an array of established student assistance programs, including some for which either it or Congress withheld or cut support in recent years. These programs include GAANN (Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need), Javits Fellowship, State Student Incentive Grant (SSIG, now known as the Leveraging Education Assistance Program, or LEAP) and Supplemental Education Opportunity Grant (SEOG) programs. No significant increases to these programs were offered.
The president's budget also would extend and expand Section 127 of the tax code relating to employer-provided educational assistance. Under current law, the benefit is available for undergraduate courses only, beginning after June 30, 1996, and expires June 1, 2000. The president's proposal would extend the availability of the tax-free benefit through 2002, and it would reinstate the benefit for graduate education, beginning in 1999. At Cornell, 43 undergraduate and 74 graduate students are affected by Section 127.
The budget also would eliminate the 60-month limit on the student loan interest deduction and would eliminate any tax that would be imposed as a result of loan forgiveness for students who elect income contingent repayment under the federal Direct Loan program and who have been in income contingent repayment status for 25 years (that is, any loan balance remaining after 25 years of direct loan income-contingent repayment will be forgiven and the value of that forgiven balance will not be taxed).
Clinton's budget requests in research and development categories also came in "good news, bad news" form. While increasing the civilian (nondefense) R&D budget overall by 3 percent, the administration cut the defense R&D category by 5 percent. In the civilian category, the National Science Foundation (NSF) is slated for an 8 percent increase, but most of that increase would not be allocated to core NSF research program areas. Rather, a major share ($146 million) would go to the administration's computing initiative known as "Information Technology2," or "IT2," a program that promises better software development and faster network linkages and supercomputers. Cornell receives more NSF funding than any other university ($71.5 million in 1997-98).
In a surprising move, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) would receive only a slight 2 percent increase. The NIH has averaged increases of more than 10 percent in the last three fiscal years, prompted by the support of the university and research communities and the media and public at large. The NIH is the single largest sponsor of faculty research at Cornell ($98 million in 1997-98), particularly in the Weill Medical College ($63 million) and the College of Veterinary Medicine ($11.7 million). This budget request was disappointing to many, including congressional advocates of accelerated medical research funding.
The budget request for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service (CSREES), the agency that administers land grant university programs, also contained welcome and unwelcome items. While the competitive National Research Initiative (NRI) would grow from $119 million to $200 million (a 68 percent increase) if the president has his way, traditional base support available to land grant universities like Cornell via the Hatch (research) and Smith-Lever (extension) acts would be slashed by 13 and 7 percent, respectively.
Moreover several programs, such as the Extension Service's Agricultural Telecommunications, Farm Safety and Rural Health and Safety programs, would go unfunded. The Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP), which helps extension educators train volunteers and others to teach sound nutrition practices to low-income households, received a 5 percent increase, however. Lastly, some merging of research and extension funding categories, such as for food safety and water quality activities, has made it difficult to determine how well or poorly the administration supports those programs.
In all, Cornell receives well over $20 million annually in funding from the USDA. Given Cornell's success and competitiveness in gaining USDA grant awards, it was heartening, university officials said, that the president's budget request acknowledged mandatory funding of the department's Initiative for Future Agricultural and Food Systems ($120 million) and Fund for Rural America ($30 million).
These two pools of dollars, established by the 1998 reauthorization of the Farm Bill's research, extension and education provisions, would help to support new, competitive research and extension proposals. These initiatives were denied funding by Congress for the current fiscal year.
Some other mission agency science budgets are slated to receive modest increases, including the departments of Energy (about 3 percent), NASA (about 3 percent) and Interior (14 percent). Department of Defense research programs, a significant sponsor of Cornell faculty research, would be cut by about 5 percent. In the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) budget, research efforts would be increased slightly, but the National Sea Grant College Program would be cut by 15 percent, while the Regional Climate Center program, which funds Cornell's Northeast Regional Climate Center, would not be funded. Cornell and SUNY jointly administer one of the largest Sea Grant programs in the nation.
The proposed budget calls for $150 million funding levels for both the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), representing increases of 36.4 and 53 percent respectively. The NEH is the only federal program explicitly supporting research in such areas as history, anthropology, the classics, political science and cultural preservation. In recent years, Cornell faculty and staff have succeeded in gaining more than $2 million in total NEH support.
"The president's proposed budget will now face scrutiny by the Congress, with a goal of having final appropriations work completed by the start of the next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1," said Henrik N. Dullea, Cornell vice president for university relations. "Our faculty, administrators and government affairs staff will be working with our Washington-based higher education associations and members of the New York congressional delegation to press for program funding important to Cornell."
Voiland is senior legislative associate in Cornell's Office of Government Affairs.
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