The science policy of the United States is the responsibility of many organizations throughout the federal government. Much of the large-scale policy is made through the legislative budget process of enacting the yearly federal budget, although there are other legislative issues that directly involve science, such as energy policy, climate change, and stem cell research. Further decisions are made by the various federal agencies which spend the funds allocated by the United States Congress, either on in-house research or by granting funds to outside organizations and researchers.
At the beginning of Donald Trump's second term in 2025, head of DOGE, Elon Musk, initiated a rapid reorganization of the federal scientific infrastructure, dismissing thousands of employees—particularly those involved in public health and climate research, including NOAA weather forecasters.
The US is losing leadership of most critical technology to China, according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
The United States devoted 2.8% of GDP to research and development (R&D) in 2012. The private sector contributed two-thirds of the total. The Obama administration had fixed a target of a 3% ratio by the end of his presidency in 2016.
Legislating science policy
In the Executive Office of the President, the main body advising the president on science policy is the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Other advisory bodies exist within the Executive Office of the President, including the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and the National Science and Technology Council.
In the United States Congress, a number of congressional committees have jurisdiction over legislation on science policy, most notably the House Committee on Science and Technology and the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, and their subcommittees. These committees oversee the various federal research agencies that are involved in receiving funding for scientific research. Oversight of some agencies may fall under multiple committees, for example the Environmental Protection Agency.
The number of Congressional members and other politicians with backgrounds in science, engineering, and technology has grown in recent years, with the 116th Congress setting a record with 47 of 535 members with STEM backgrounds. Therefore, most U.S. politicians refer to various Congressional support agencies for analysis on science related issues, which do not solely focus on science, but provide insight for Congress to make decisions dealing with scientific issues. These agencies are nonpartisan and provide objective reports on topics requested by members of congress. They are the Congressional Research Service, Government Accountability Office, and Congressional Budget Office. In the past, the Office of Technology Assessment provided Congressional members and committees with objective analysis of scientific and technical issues, but this office was abolished in 1994.Public Law 104–53, Title I, Sections 113–114, 19 November 1995
https://uscode.house.gov/statviewer.htm?volume=109&page=526
Further advice is provided by extragovernmental organizations such as The National Academies, which was created and mostly funded by the federal government, and the RAND Corporation, as well as other non-profit organizations such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Chemical Society among others.
Research and development in the federal budget
The research and development budget by department in the Obama administration's federal budget proposal for fiscal year 2015:
Only a small percentage of the overall federal budget is allocated to R&D. The FY2015 budget request includes $135.110B in R&D spending out of a total budget of $3969.069B, representing 3.4% of the budget. Research and development funding in the federal budget is not centrally enacted, but is spread across many appropriations bills which are enacted in the annual United States budget process. Of the twelve annual appropriations bills, the most important for R&D are those for Defense; Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education (which includes NIH); Commerce, Justice, and Science (which includes NSF, NASA, NIST, and NOAA); and Energy and Water Development. Other appropriations bills include smaller amounts of R&D funding.
There are a number of federal agencies across the government which carry out science policy. Some of these primarily perform their own research "in-house", while others grant funds to external organizations or individual researchers. In addition, the federally funded research and development centers (FFRDC), which include most of the U.S. National Laboratories, are funded by the government but operated by universities, non-profit organizations, or for-profit consortia.
The FY2015 presidential budget request defines R&D as "the collection of efforts directed toward gaining greater knowledge or understanding and applying knowledge toward the production of useful materials, devices, and methods." R&D is divided into five subcategories. Basic research is directed toward understanding of the fundamental aspects of observable phenomena. It may be directed towards broad but not specific applications. Applied research is directed towards gaining knowledge to meet a recognized and specific need. Development is the application of knowledge or understanding for the production of useful materials, devices, and methods, including production of prototypes. R&D equipment includes acquisition or production of movable equipment, such as spectrometers, research satellites, or detectors. R&D facilities include the construction or major repairs to physical facilities including land, buildings, and fixed capital equipment such fixed facilities as reactors, wind tunnels, and particle accelerators.
The following chart shows a breakdown for the five agencies with the largest R&D budgets in the Obama administration's FY2015 proposal:
Defense research and development
Defense R&D has the goal of "maintaining strategic technological advantages over potential foreign adversaries." As of 2009, just over half of the R&D budget was allocated to defense spending. Most Defense R&D falls under the Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation (RTD&E) budget, although some R&D funding is outside this budget, such as the Defense Health Program and the chemical weapons destruction program. The Department of Defense divides development further, based on the character of the work performed, giving each category a funding code in its budget justification which is used by Congressional appropriation reports: 6.1 is Basic Research, 6.2 is Applied Research, 6.3 is Advanced Technology Development, 6.4 is Advanced Component Development and Prototypes, 6.5 is System Development and Demonstration, 6.6 is Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RDT&E) Management and Support, and 6.7 is Operational Systems Development.
Most of the Defense R&D budget is for weapon systems development, with nearly all activity in categories 6.4 and higher carried out by private defense contractors. About one sixth of it is allocated to the Science and Technology (S&T) program, which includes all of 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, and medical research. As of 2013, research funding (6.1 and 6.2) was disbursed 40% to industry, 33% to DoD laboratories, and 21% to academia. The Department of Defense was the third-largest supporter of R&D in academia in FY2012, with only NIH and NSF having larger investments, with DoD the largest federal funder for engineering research and a close second for computer science.
The Defense Research Enterprise (DRE) consists of S&T programs within each of the three military departments within DoD. The budget is prepared by each department's acquisition secretary, namely the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force (Acquisition), Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Research, Development and Acquisition), and Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology. Air Force and Space Force S&T is executed by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). Navy and Marine Corps S&T is executed by the Office of Naval Research (ONR), with medical research performed by the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery. For the Army, 72% of the S&T budget is in Army Materiel Command's Research, Development and Engineering Command (RDECOM), with the remainder in Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (USAMRMC), Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Army Space and Missile Defense Command (USASMDC) and the Deputy Chief of Staff (G1-Personnel) to the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Manpower and Reserve Affairs). Each agency supports both in-house intramural research as well as grants to outside academic or industrial organizations.
The following chart shows a breakdown for the agencies with the most R&D funding within the Department of Defense in the Obama administration's FY2015 proposal. The "Other" category includes $3.7B for classified programs such as NSA, DIA, and NGA, whose top-level budget numbers are not released, as well as the uncategorized R&D funds not included in the RDT&E budget.
The following information is based on a 2022 Congressional Research Service report. Approximately 97% ($119.3 billion) of DoD’s RDT&E funding for FY 2022 ($122.9 billion) is appropriated in Title IV (Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation), which includes appropriations for the Army, Navy, Air Force, Space Force (under the Air Force account), a Defense-wide RDT&E account, and the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation. The Defense-wide account includes the MDA, DARPA, OSD and 17 other DOD organizations. Below is a breakdown for FY 2022 DoD RDT&E by funding code:
6.1 Basic Research 2.3%; 6.2 Applied Research 5.8%; 6.3 Advanced Technology Development 7.7%; 6.4 Advanced Component Development and Prototypes 27.5%; 6.5 System Development and Demonstration 12.6%; 6.6 RDT&E Management Support 7.0%; 6.7 Operational System Development 36.4%; and 6.8 Software and Digital Technology Pilot Project 0.6%.
Prize competitions In 2010, Congress passed the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 (P.L. 111-358; 15 U.S.C. §3719). The law provides the federal agencies with the broad authority to carry out prize competitions “to stimulate innovation that has the potential to advance the mission of the respective agency.” 15 U.S.C. §3718(c)(4). The term “federal agency” does "not include any agency of the legislative branch of the Federal Government." 15 U.S.C. §3719(a)(3).
In 2017, Congress passed the American Innovation and Competitiveness Act of 2017 (P.L. 114-329). Among the amendments to the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010, it authorized federal agencies to use "Federal appropriated funds and funds provided by private sector for-profit and nonprofit entities" as well as from state and local governments." 15 U.S.C. §3719(m)(1). P.L. 114-329 also provided federal agencies with the “explicit authority to use crowdsourcing and citizen science … to advance federal science agency missions and stimulate and facilitate broader public participation in the innovation process”
Challenge.gov contains a listing of active federal challenge and prize competitions. The website was launched in 2010 and is managed by the U.S. General Services Administration.
Intellectual property policy