An authorization ramp, and a proposed cut.
The National Science Foundation's budget authority, FY1976– FY2031, from OMB's Historical Tables. The arc shows the post-CHIPS authorization ramp — the CHIPS & Science Act of 2022 authorized a steep multi-year increase that appropriations only partly followed — and then the sharp downward inflection of the FY2027 request, a proposed reduction represented exactly as the source states. This is agency-wide budget authority, not the annual discretionary base.
FY2027 budget authority
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nominal · OMB estimate · proposed cut
Series peak
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Series span
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0 fiscal years
Years parsed
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contiguous, numeric — self-checked
NSF budget authority — the arc
nominal (current $) · OMB Historical Table 5.2Reading the arc
Three inflections explain most of this line. The first is the one-time FY2009 ARRA (Recovery Act) appropriation, a spike that added money for a single year and then fell away. The second is the CHIPS & Science Act of 2022, which authorized a steep multi-year increase — the ramp that carries NSF toward its peak crest around FY2023 — though appropriations lagged what CHIPS authorized. The third is the sharp downward inflection of the FY2027 request to a lower level, a proposed cut shown neutrally, as the source states. A department monitor has to read all three correctly and keep this agency-wide budget authority separate from the annually appropriated discretionary base the appropriations view tracks. This series is nominal: OMB's Historical Table 5.2 publishes no constant-dollar basis, and we do not synthesize one.