The Senate Appropriations Committee voted on July 25 to approve its version of the Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS) appropriations bill for fiscal year (FY) 2025, with some sizable year-over-year increases for science and technology spending.
The Senate committee approved the bill on a 26-3 vote.
The bill provides $73.735 billion in discretionary funding, a $5.2 billion increase from the FY2024 level.
“This bipartisan bill makes essential new investments to keep our country at the forefront of innovation and keep our communities safe and economy thriving,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash, who chairs the committee.
According to Sen. Murray, the bill will deliver essential funding to maintain U.S. global leadership in science and innovation and propel essential research and development in advanced manufacturing, artificial intelligence, among other areas.
“The bill invests in ensuring we not only maintain our current generation of weather satellites but build the next – so that Americans in every corner of the country can count on reliable forecasts and can prepare for extreme weather. It invests in our competitiveness, strengthens our supply chains, and will help create more good-paying jobs,” she said.
Overall, the funding bill allocates $11.2 billion for science and technology programs, representing a $635 million increase from FY2024.
Included in the FY2025 funding is continued effort to implement the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act and to improve U.S. economic competitiveness. For example, The National Science Foundation (NSF) will receive $9.55 billion to enhance “American competitiveness through scientific discovery and continue implementing the CHIPS and Science Act,” the bill summary reads.
The bill also makes investments aimed at supporting scientific research in critical areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, microelectronics, advanced communications, and space exploration and tech.
For AI, the bill allocates $1.535 billion to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) – with $1.064 billion of that funding designated for research to drive advancements in cutting-edge areas such as AI. This funding will also support ongoing quantum information science and cybersecurity efforts by NIST.
Notably, the bill fully funds the Biden administration’s initial budget request for the U.S. Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute, which would provide NIST with the necessary funds to implement its responsibilities under President Biden’s AI Executive Order. This includes developing standards, tools, and tests to ensure the safe operation of AI systems.
The bill also includes $1.9 billion – a $102 million increase from FY 2024 – for construction of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s weather satellites, which are critical to accurate weather predictions. The funding would maintain the current generation of weather and climate satellites and also invest in next-generation satellites.
The CJS appropriations bill also give a slight bump to NASA’s FY2025 budget request. The bill allocates $25.434 billion to the space agency – $50 million more than requested by the Biden administration.
The bill boosts exploration funding by $30 million and science and space operations by $10 million each, while all other accounts are funded at the requested levels.
The Senate appropriators supported NASA’s initial FY2025 request, however they did question some of NASA’s decisions to cancel or reduce missions.
For instance, NASA sought $11 million to wrap up its On-Orbit Servicing, Assembly and Manufacturing (OSAM) 1 mission, which aims to demonstrate satellite servicing technologies.
However, the Senate report instructs NASA to allocate up to $174.5 million for OSAM-1 in 2025, contingent upon a report requested in the 2024 appropriations bill detailing how the mission can achieve a 2026 launch. Additionally, the bill mandates a new report within 30 days of the final bill’s enactment outlining these plans and exploring potential cost-sharing with the Defense Department, as well as the spacecraft’s use for extended national security or commercial applications.
The committee also questioned the agency’s proposed cuts in other science mission efforts like heliophysics, the Geospace Dynamics Constellation mission, and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope.
The House Appropriations Committee approved its version of the CJS spending bill on July 9, providing a top-line FY2025 non-defense discretionary spending total of $71.9 billion and a defense discretionary total of $6.3 billion. Differences in the eventual House and Senate CJS spending bills will have to be reconciled before the bill can become law.
