Guest Post from Peter Brass, Former NSF Theory Director, on the NSF budget.

 Guest post from Peter Brass, Former NSF Theory director (though not affiliated with the NSF now) on the White House NSF budget for FY 2027.

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Dear Colleagues

A week ago the White House released the NSF budget request for FY 2027( here) so I want to provide you an update. As always, this is just my interpretation, I am not connected to the NSF any more

The general news is bad, we get a replay of FY 2026 (FY 2026 is October 2025 to September 2026)

For context: the NSF enacted budget in FY 2023 was $9.5B. The CISE budget was $0.9B. Budgets start with a request by the White House, and then get negotiated with Congress.

A year ago, the  White House made a FY 2026 budget request of $3.9B, which was a ~60% cut from the previous level. After negotiation with Congress, the enacted budget became $8.7B

However, a long period of FY 2025 were funded by continuing resolutions, and continuing  resolutions are based on the White House budget request, so for the first half of FY 2025 the  60% cut was in effect, and awards only now pick up. In addition, there was the government shutdown, and the removal of NSF from the Eisenhower Ave building in Alexandria, so processing will be delayed.

The cancellation of awards, although it caused a huge media echo, had a very small impact outside the EDU and SBE directorates, about 2% of awards were affected, and perhaps 1/3 of them were restored.

The FY 2027 budget request asks for $4.8B, but subtracting $0.9B reserved for a new antarctic research vessel, the request is the same $3.9B.  We hope that Congress will again restore much, but clearly the White House continues not supportive of basic research. The proposed cuts for NSF are a larger percentage than for NASA, NIH, NIST, or the DoE Research.  The request reduces the CISE budget from $0.9B to $0.3B.

The NSF projects a slight decrease in the number of proposals, and a huge decrease in the funding rate, across all research proposals a decline from 18% to 7%. The average award size and award duration are projected to increase slightly, giving much fewer people a bit more resources.

So far NSF has not done any hiring since the start of the current administration, and although Congress restored much of the research funding, it did not restore the cuts in the staffing level.  Rotators continue to end their rotation, and are not replaced, the current plan seems to discontinue the concept of a rotator entirely.

With the reduction is program staff, the remaining program directors are overworked, and are put in charge of programs where they have no previous connection to the research community, without time to establish the connection.  The programs themselves remain unchanged, as they are governed by the solicitations, but the people managing the programs can give less time to the individual program. And the money available depends on the outcome of the budget process.

That is the current situation, or at least the plan of the White House; we will see what Congress makes of it.

TO DO: tell your congress member that you thank for their previous support of basic research at the NSF, and hope they continue it.