George W. Bush, the new president of the United States, is clearly determined to present himself as a man who means what he says. It should come as no surprise, then, that the hurriedly prepared 2002 budget that he is obliged by law to propose to Congress before the end of February will be shaped almost entirely by the direct pledges made during his election campaign. These included a promise to continue with plans to double the budget of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) over a five-year period, to boost investment in education, to balance the budget and to have enough left over to give Americans a significant cut in income tax.

Bush is likely to announce a $3 billion increase in funding for the NIH up front, instead of leaving it to Congress, as his predecessors have done, to come up with extra money for its favourite research agency. This honest and straightforward move might be expected to thrill the scientific community, but it raises problems. The White House, unlike Congress, tends to consider the research budget as a whole in drawing up spending plans: NIH's hefty increase will leave almost nothing for other research agencies. The result will be a grotesque imbalance between spending in biomedical research and that in other disciplines of science. Rectifying this will now fall to Congress, where support for non-health research has traditionally been weakest.

Meanwhile, Bush, in order to assure the credibility of his tax-cut plan, will have to propose budget cuts in other government programmes — including social welfare programmes — to permit NIH's expansion. The danger is that the closure of nursery schools and homeless shelters to pay for more grandiose academic medical centres might fracture the bipartisan consensus that has driven the NIH expansion in Congress.

Even so, the $3 billion increase at NIH is expected to stick, at least this year, leaving the rest of American science behind in the dust. The National Science Foundation, for example, may find its budget frozen, despite all the fine words about its role in underpinning scientific progress for every application, including health and defence.

The situation at the Department of Energy, which supports most US physics and runs many of the nation's large scientific facilities, is even bleaker. In the land of opportunity for all, physics budgets that have been flat for several years spell a dangerous stagnation for US physics. Since the last Bush left office, practically no major new facilities have been planned, built or even seriously contemplated.

Physical scientists' response to their predicament thus far has been to consider a new lobby shop in Washington that might emulate the recent successes of their biomedical brethren through groups such as Research!America. If the precedent of the Reagan administration is any guide, Washington will soon enjoy an influx of such lobbyists, representing every interest in the land that feels threatened by Bush's effort to control public spending.

But science needs to send a more sophisticated message than the railroad operator, the sugar-cane grower, the banana importer or the small restaurateur. A more intelligent response by the community would be to start facing facts, and to offer to help the administration set scientific priorities. That will require strengthening the science office in the White House to coordinate research policy and, in effect, prevent the sort of imbalance that will crop up in next week's budget proposals.

Bush will appoint his science team later this spring. They will soon learn whether the community is united behind such an approach — or bitterly divided between the haves and the have-nots.