"One can say that I am beginning to feel like Charlie Brown
trying to kick the football that Lucy is holding," Chairman
Christopher Bond (R-MO) told Administration witnesses at yesterday's
hearing on the FY 2004 National Science Foundation request. Bond and
Ranking Minority Member Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) have had highly visible
roles in advocating a doubling of the foundation's budget. Both were
displeased that the Bush Administration had requested an increase of
only 3.2% in the NSF budget for next year. Bond predicted that he would
find more money.
Congress is a very busy place these days, and as a
consequence, only Bond and Mikulski attended this one-hour
hearing. The two senators will be writing the FY 2004 VA,
HUD, and Independent Agencies appropriation bill, now expected
to be out in May. Several themes arose at yesterday's
hearing.
One, Bond and Mikulski are on the same page in their support
of higher budgets for NSF. Both used exactly the same words -
paltry and disappointing- in describing the request. Both
said that it was not an NSF budget, but an Office of
Management and Budget budget. Mikulski: We were "disappointed
last year in the NSF budget and we still are." There is no
discernable difference in the positions of these two powerful
senators on greater NSF funding.
Two, Bond and Mikulski continue to be frustrated at the
funding disparity between NSF and the National Institutes of
Health. Chairman Bond cited the recommendation of a panel of
the President 's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology
(PCAST) that funding for physical sciences and engineering
reach a parity with that for life sciences. Bond: "...while
federal support in life sciences has increased significantly,
the combined share of the funding for the physical sciences
and engineering has not kept pace." "I am alarmed by this
disparity because the decline in funding for the physical
sciences has put our Nation's capabilities for scientific
innovation at risk."
Three, within the NSF request, the senators identified
specific programs that should be augmented. Chairman Bond
cited the request for smaller and underrepresented research
institutions, nanotechnology, and the plant genome program.
Mikulski spoke of the total amount of money requested for
research. Both cited under funding of the Tech Talent
program.
Four, Bond still is troubled by certain aspects of NSF's
management, especially its "management and oversight of its
large research facilities." He said he was "disappointed"
about some of the findings in the NSF's Inspector General's
written testimony.
Five, the foundation's prioritization process for large
facility projects is "also a concern" to Bond. He spoke of
"some large gaps" in the description of this process in the
budget justification sent to Congress. In concluding his
written remarks, Bond told NSF Director Rita Colwell "all
these accomplishments [over the last five years] will be
overshadowed by the management problems if they remain
unresolved." It should be noted that at last year's NSF
hearing Bond was visibly frustrated in his remarks about
management issues, and seemed much less so at yesterday's
hearing.
Six, Bond is interested in the independence of the National
Science Board's operations, and was not happy that the
Administration had requested no money for the board in FY
2004. He expects the Administration to request supplemental
funding for the board.
Seven, it is not unusual for appropriators to be somewhat
leery of authorization bills. That was not the case at
yesterday's hearing. Bond cited the NSF Authorization Act
that puts the foundation on a track to double its budget,
telling OSTP Director John Marburger that President Bush had
signed this legislation. Bond also said that a panel of PCAST
members, which Marburger co-chairs, had recommended much
higher funding for the physical sciences. "What happened?,"
asked Bond, adding that the request was inconsistent with both
this law and the PCAST panel's recommendation. Marburger
replied that when the foundation's request was written the FY
2003 NSF budget had not been passed. Bond was not persuaded,
saying that the two appropriations committee reports both
contained significant increases for NSF. Marburger responded
that the foundation's requested increase was significantly
higher than that for other R&D agencies, and that this boded
well for the future.
Enlarge text
Shrink text
Print
E-mail
Digg this
Del.icio.us
Furl