Senate Action on SSC, NSF, NASA

The Senate acted on a number of important science funding bills this week. They include:

DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY:

The Superconducting Super Collider received some good news this week. Yesterday, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted 29-0 to approve H.R. 2445, the Energy and Water Development Appropriations bill for fiscal year 1994. The bill contains the full administration request for the SSC -- $640 million. No attempt was made to delete funding for the collider during the committee’s consideration of the bill.

The Senate will take up this bill next week; according to a committee aide the date has not been set. Looking towards this vote, Senator J. Bennett Johnston (D-Louisiana), remarked, “I’ve gone from hopeful to optimistic. Optimistic is much better.”

On June 24, the House voted to kill the SSC by slashing the project’s funding from $620 million to $220 million.

Reversing previous House action, the committee restored funding for the advanced liquid-metal reactor, in all probability setting the stage for a compromise in the upcoming House-Senate conference committee.

NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION:

The full Senate completed action on H.R. 2491, the VA, HUD, Independent Agencies Appropriations bill. Although the Senate deliberated many hours over three days, there was no discussion of the committee report, accompanying the bill, on the future role of NSF.

Next step for this bill is a conference committee which will determine final funding levels and conference committee report language. Major funding differences for the NSF portion of H.R. 2491 include Research and Related Activities, facilities and instrumentation funding, and NSF salaries and expenses. For further information on funding and report language issues, see FYIs #117 and 119. For the names of the conferees, see below.

NASA:

The space station will be funded in fiscal year 1994. This outcome was assured by the refusal of the Senate to terminate funding for what is now being called Space Station Alpha. On Tuesday, the Senate rejected by a vote of 59-40 an amendment offered by Senator Dale Bumpers (D-Arkansas) to cancel the project, a much wider margin than the “photo finish” predicted last June by station opponent Senator Jim Sasser (D-Tennessee.). Bumpers picked-up an additional 8 votes over a similar amendment last year. This was the fifth year the Senate has considered a termination amendment.

Debate over the space station consumed a considerable amount of time, and although emotional on occasion, it raised few new issues. There was heated discussion of the proposal to use components of the Russian space program. Throughout the debate the position of the American Physical Society was raised; the American Crystallographic Association was also cited.

The bill now goes to conference. Earlier this year, the House voted to provide the space station program with $2.1 billion, the administration’s target. The Senate bill provides $1,946,000,000. The conference committee is not supposed to fund a program at a higher or lower level than that provided in the two versions of a bill. Expect the conference committee to roughly split the $154 million difference between the two bills.

The Senate rejected by a vote of 53-47 another Bumpers amendment to cancel the Advanced Solid Rocket Motor program. It terminated funding for the SETI program, now known as the Towards Other Planetary Systems/High Resolution Microwave Survey. Senators Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland), Phil Gramm (R-Texas) and Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) made rather impassioned speeches against cutting the $12.3 million for this program from the $87 billion bill. The vote to terminate the program was 23-77 on the amendment offered by Senator Richard Bryan (D-Nevada).

H.R. 2491, the VA, HUD, Independent Agencies Appropriations Bill, now goes to conference with the House. The Senate has named the following senators to the conference committee: Mikulski (Maryland), Leahy (Vermont), Johnston (Louisiana), Lautenberg (New Jersey), Kerrey (Nebraska), Feinstein (California), Byrd (West Virginia), Gramm (Texas), D’Amato (New York), Nickles (Oklahoma), Bond (Missouri), Burns (Montana), and Hatfield (Oregon).

The House has not named its conferees, but in all probability they will be representatives: Stokes (Ohio), Mollohan (West Virginia), Chapman (Texas), Kaptur (Ohio), Torres (California), Thornton (Arkansas), Lewis (California), DeLay (Texas), and Gallo (New Jersey.)

Fiscal year 1994 starts on October 1.