McCain won’t freeze science funding, adviser says

Republican presidential nominee John McCain would exempt funding for scientific research from the across-the-board federal spending freeze he's promised on the campaign trail, a campaign adviser said Tuesday.

The McCain budget plan includes “a specific carve-out for spending on science,” said Ike Brannon, a senior policy adviser to the McCain campaign.

{mosads}“You’ll definitely see, under John McCain, more spending on research,” Brannon said.

Sen. McCain (Ariz.) has emphasized his intention to hold flat federal spending on programs not connected to defense, veterans’ programs or homeland security as a key part of his fiscal platform.

“I recommend a spending freeze that — except for defense, Veterans Affairs, and some other vital programs, we'll just have to have [an] across-the-board freeze,” McCain said during his second presidential debate against Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), the Democratic candidate, on Oct. 7.

The McCain campaign, however, has committed to upping funding for federal research agencies, Brannon said at a briefing sponsored by Research!America, an advocacy group made up of hundreds of organizations including universities, pharmaceutical companies, physician societies and patient groups.

McCain will pay for the increases in science funding by cutting other programs, Brannon explained.

According to the candidate’s website, he would conduct a “comprehensive review of all programs” when drawing up his budget.

Last month, Brannon was less definitive about McCain's commitment to science funding, according to a report published on the website of Science magazine.

Addressing a room full of lobbyists advocating more money for research, Brannon indicated that science programs would be subject to the same critical evaluation as other items not related to defense, veterans and security.

"[T]he freeze applies to the entire budget, most of which doesn't relate to science," Brannon said, according to the report. Consistent with his remarks on Tuesday, though, Brannon added that McCain "hopes to be able to find savings from earmarks, from unnecessary subsidies, and from other programs that could then be applied to research."

Brannon, a former adviser to Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and former Treasury Department official, highlighted McCain’s support for the “America Competes Act,” a law enacted in August 2007 with bipartisan support that, among other things, will double federal spending on physical science research by 2016.

Funding under this law will go to agencies such as the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Obama and his running mate, Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), unlike McCain, were among the 69 co-sponsors of the Senate version of this legislation, which passed the upper chamber by unanimous consent and the House by voice vote.

Under McCain, funding also would increase for NASA and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Brannon said. After noting the several years of essentially flat funding that have passed since the Clinton and Bush administrations, along with Congress, completed a project to double the NIH budget to $27 billion in fiscal 2003, Brannon said it was time to increase funding.

“Now is the time to kind of begin again,” he said. “That’s certainly what Sen. McCain is committed to do.”

The Obama campaign says it would double science funding over 10 years.

This story was updated at 4:11 p.m. 

[Editor's note: At the event, Obama policy adviser Tim Westmoreland said the Democrat would double research funding over four years. He later told The Hill he misspoke, and that Obama would double the funding over 10 years.]