Congress Acts on Final NSF FY 1995 Funding Bill:

Yesterday, the House passed the final bill, or conference report (House Report 103-715), for H.R. 4624, the FY 1995 VA, HUD, Independent Agencies Appropriations Bill. The Senate will act shortly. The final provisions are:

NSF’s total FY 1995 budget increases by 13.8% to $3,395.6 million. The administration requested $3,200.0 million.

Within this budget, the allocation for Research and Related Activities is $2,280.0 million, which is a 5.4% increase. The administration’s request was $2,348.7 million. The conference report made the following increases and decreases in the Research and Related Activities request:

INCREASES:

$10 million for civil infrastructure systems;
$10 million for advanced manufacturing technology;
$5 million for research within the human capital initiative. The conference report states, “The conferees affirm their strong support for this worthwhile program;"
$6 million “for a global climate change initiative for a center or consortium for the human dimensions of global climate change;"
$2 million “for an interdisciplinary center to support research on violence;"
$1 million “to establish a national center for environmental research.”

DECREASES:

$54.3 million “as a general reduction to be taken at the discretion of the Director;"
$33 million from the global climate change initiative;
$15 million from the high performance computing initiative.

In other areas of the FY 1995 NSF budget:

The budget for Major Research Equipment, providing funding for the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory and the GEMINI telescopes is $126 million, a compromise between the original House and Senate figures. $35 million is a reappropriation of previous LIGO funds. The GEMINI telescopes received an additional $21 million to complete the total construction funding requirement.

The Critical Technologies Institute received the budget request of $2 million.

The conference report has extensive language on academic research infrastructure activities and education, which are covered in subsequent FYIs.

Previous committee language pertaining to the above areas (see FYIs #110, 111, 112) that was not changed by the conference report stands.