House Appropriations to Consider FY 1995 Rescissions

Republicans in the House are moving rapidly to curtail fiscal year 1995 spending. Last week, action was taken on two measures that rescind, or take back, funds already appropriated for the current fiscal year.

On February 22, the House passed H.R. 889, a defense supplemental bill providing additional money for peacekeeping missions and enhancing military readiness. Offsets for this supplemental spending include a cut of $500 million from DOD’s Technology Reinvestment Program and $107 million from NIST’s Advanced Technology Program.

Also last week, the House Appropriations subcommittees worked on a rescissions bill cutting additional amounts from the current budget to offset federal spending on natural disasters, to fund proposed tax cuts, and to make progress toward balancing the budget. This package of cuts, or rescissions, (no bill number is yet available) will go to the full House Appropriations Committee this Thursday, where sources say approval is likely. The bill will then go on to the House floor for a vote.

The proposed rescissions bill cuts nearly $17.1 billion from current FY 1995 appropriations. The largest reduction, of $9.4 billion, comes from the VA/HUD/Independent Agencies subcommittee. Much of this is targeted toward President Clinton’s National Service initiative, housing, nutrition, job-training, and education programs. NASA’s current-year budget would be cut by $66 million, with $25 million coming from the Earth Observing System and $10 million from the Hubble Space Telescope program. NSF would receive a $132 million rescission, to be taken out of the Academic Research Infrastructure program. However, this year’s NSF appropriation was accompanied by conference report language specifying that NSF could use the full $250 million for research infrastructure only if it requested an equivalent amount in FY 1996. By not requesting this amount, NSF has already chosen to forfeit the $132 million.

Within the Commerce, Justice and State subcommittee, the Commerce Department would take the heaviest hit, of $166 million. A total of $46.6 million would come from the National Institute of Standards and Technology: the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) would feel a $26.5 million cut, and technology research at NIST’s intramural laboratories would be cut by $19.5 million. While NIST’s cooperative programs with industry have been a favorite target of many Republicans, a portion of this cut is aimed at NIST laboratory programs, which develop standards, testing methods and measurement techniques for industry.

The Energy and Water Development subcommittee proposes to rescind $211 million. Within DOE, reductions would be taken from environmental research and restoration projects, solar and renewable energy research, and technology transfer from the national labs. Within DOE’s general science programs, the only rescission would be $7.5 million from the Advanced Neutron Source (ANS), a program which has been proposed for termination in the Administration’s FY 1996 budget request.