President Trump's FY 2018 Blueprint

On 16 March 2017, the White House released President Trump's Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again (PDF available through the White House website). This Blueprint provides a framework for the overall FY 2018 budget, with some detail about several agencies. We will summarize the information available for NASA, the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Department of Energy (DOE), the three agencies that fund most of the research grants and programs for AAS members. You will note that there is not a lot of detail for these, or any, agencies. The more detailed budget request is expected in May 2017. For those of you familiar with the "regular order" budget process, you may have noticed that this is later than the usual timeline; refer to our blog post for more information about the regular process. This delay is normal at the beginning of a new administration. It is also normal for the new administration to first present a framework budget that does not include a lot of detail.

If you have questions about the details for the other agencies not included in this post, then please get in touch with AAS Policy.

NASA

The Blueprint includes $19.1 billion for NASA's top-line. Within that, the Planetary Science Division of the Science Mission Directorate (SMD) is funded at $1.9 billion and includes funding "for a mission to repeatedly fly by Jupiter’s icy ocean moon Europa and a Mars rover that would launch in 2020." This Blueprint specifically says that the request "provides no funding for a multi-billion-dollar mission to land on Europa." The Earth Science Division is the only other division of SMD to be specifically mentioned. This Blueprint would cut $102 million from Earth Science and cancel four Earth Science missions.

The Blueprint would also eliminate the Office of Education. Quoting from the Blueprint, this will result "in a more focused education effort through NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. The Office of Education has experienced significant challenges in implementing a NASA-wide education strategy and is performing functions that are duplicative of other parts of the agency."

NSF

The Blueprint does not include NSF, which is not unexpected. That said, the Blueprint does indicate that "Other Agencies" will be cut by a total of $2.9 billion (9.8%). It is not clear from the Blueprint if NSF will share in this cut or to what extent.

DOE

The Blueprint includes $28 billion for DOE and $4.4 billion for the Office of Science. Quoting from the Blueprint, this request "ensures the Office of Science continues to invest in the highest priority basic science and energy research and development as well as operation and maintenance of existing scientific facilities for the community. This includes a savings of approximately $900 million compared to the 2017 annualized CR level."