US President Donald Trump has floated a budget plan that would increase military spending by $54 billion, while cutting other government programs — science funding likely included — by that amount, the New York Times reports.
This means that the discretionary non-military budget, which includes civilian science budgets, could decrease by 10.5 percent, ScienceInsider adds. The Environmental Protection Agency, which currently has an annual budget of $8.1 billion, has been targeted for a 24 percent cut, according to the Times.
ScienceInsider notes that it's not certain that all science agencies will see their budgets tighten, but says that this budget plan underscores "the financial pressures that civilian research agencies will face as Trump and the Republican majority in both houses of Congress attempt to carry out campaign promises to raise defense spending while reining in the rest of federal spending."
However, both ScienceInsider and the Times point out that the budget plan, as currently described, might be difficult to pass through Congress as some lawmakers opine that the boost to military spending is too small or not balanced by cuts to entitlement programs, while others criticize the proposed cuts to non-defense spending.
Fiscal year 2018 begins in October.