What is the share of the federal budget devoted to R&D?
Federal R&D expenditures represent 5.2 percent of the overall proposed $2.1 trillion federal budget for FY 2003 and 14.2 percent of the discretionary portion of that budget. (See Tables I-2 and I-3.) On the whole, trends in R&D funding have closely followed trends in federal discretionary spending. Growth in overall discretionary spending over the past four decades has allowed federal investment to grow in many areas, including R&D. Efforts to balance the federal budget by cutting discretionary spending during the mid-1990s resulted in reductions in most of these areas, including R&D. Subsequent increases have erased these losses in several agencies and produced significant gains for a few.
