The entire NIST budget is pretty large. This is one of the most visible things they do. By threatening to cut this if their budget shrinks, perhaps they're hoping to preserve their original budget request.
That's a realistic story in light of how Sesame Street, one of PBS's most profitable (and absolutely self-sustaining) franchises, was used to campaign against budget cuts back in the day. If the NIST head was a completely unscrupulous government agent (not making any accusations of course) then it would clearly be in their interest to only offer to cut valuable high-profile programs, burying their cut-able pet projects as deeply as possible. That would be the strategy that minimized the political will to cut the budget.
This will not fly in Turkey, as Turkish constitution applies the previous term's budget inflation adjusted if legistlature fails to approve the budget in time.
[0]https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/decision2012/big-bir...