House Passes FY97 VA/HUD Approps. Bill: Funding Levels for NSF, NASA

On June 26, the House passed H.R. 3666, the VA/HUD/Independent Agencies Appropriations bill for FY 1997, which funds NSF and NASA. Funding levels for many programs were altered by amendments on the House floor, including one that dictated an across-the-board reduction of 0.4 percent to all programs except veterans’. This FYI contains detail on funding levels for selected programs within NSF and NASA. FYI #103 will include highlights from the debate. NOTE: The Senate plans to take up H.R. 3666 shortly after returning from its 4th of July recess on July 8, not July 15 as reported in FYI #102.

*In the Administration’s FY97 request and in the House-passed bill, $50 million is intended for instrumentation within the Research and Related Activities account. Such instrumentation funding was previously provided under the Academic Research Infrastructure account, which was zeroed out in the FY97 request. If the funding for instrumentation is subtracted out, the effective R&RA in H.R. 3666 as passed by the House would be $2,363 million.

+In its FY97 request, the Administration also asked for outyears funding (beyond FY97) for TDRS (Tracking and Data Relay Satellite) replacement. The amount shown here includes only funding requested for FY97. The House did not provide the TDRS advance funding when passing H.R. 3666.