Senate Appropriations Recommendations on NSF
Senate passage of H.R. 2158, the VA, HUD, Independent Agencies Appropriations Bill, on Tuesday, sets the stage for members of the House and Senate appropriations committees to write a final bill. There are important budgetary and program issues to be resolved concerning the National Science Foundation. (See FYIs #90 and 91 for House Appropriations Committee report language regarding NSF, and FYI #92 for further budget details.) The following are selections from the Senate Appropriations Committee report on NSF:
RESEARCH AND RELATED ACTIVITIES: The Senate figure is $13 million less than the House at $2.524 billion. The Senate report language differs significantly from that of the House, and will have to be reconciled. For instance, while the House report “strongly supports” NSF’s Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence initiative, the Senate report states: “the Committee also believes that the agency must have a plan for the investment of nearly $500,000,000 for the two new initiatives [KDI and life in extreme environments.] Therefore, the Committee will not make the new funding for these two initiatives available until the agency submits appropriate milestones and guideposts, to be accomplished in fiscal year 1998, and against which the agency can be measured in determining funding for fiscal year 1999.”
The Senate report strongly supports a program that the House was silent on: “The Committee, therefore, directs the National Science Foundation to accelerate the mapping of Arabidopsis and to move beyond the work it currently supports [through an interagency working group] toward more economically important plant genome projects such as corn, wheat, rice and soybeans.” The Senate directs NSF to provide $40 million “to support a competitive, merit-based initiative, which may include one or more university-based research centers” for plant genome research.
The Senate report also wants a study of how pending changes (due 10/1/97) in the proposal review criteria will affect the type of research that NSF supports, one year after their implementation. The committee wants NSF to go back to providing, in its future budget requests “valuable information on interdisciplinary research and education initiatives of broad national interest.” Regarding the phase out of two supercomputer centers, the senators stated, “The transition should take into account the needs of the users and also the appropriate transition period and costs. Absent an agreement between NSF and the centers, the Committee may be compelled to provide guidance to the agency concerning what constitutes an appropriate transition.”
“The Committee strongly supports the next generation Internet initiative, and stresses the importance of equal access to the Internet for students, teachers, and researchers in the rural areas of this country,” states the Senate report. NSF is to prepare a report by the end of this year on how EPSCoR states participate in current computing and communications programs. Also having the support of the Senate committee is the Directorate for Social,Behavioral, and Economic Sciences, which was once under fire from former House Science Committee Chairman Bob Walker. The committee also wants NSF to work with “NASA and other agencies to develop complementary programs” to “understand the origin and evolution of galaxies and planetary systems, and the origin and distribution of life in the galaxies.”
MAJOR RESEARCH EQUIPMENT: The committee provided the full LIGO request. It disagrees with House appropriators, who want to forward-fund the South Pole Station work. Instead, the senators would provide $25 million this year, and $90 million over the next four years (which is the same amount of up-front money the House allocated.) The two committees agree to give $4 million to the Gemini project, although from different NSF budget components -- the Senate taking it from the millimeter array project. The Senate also recommends providing NSF with $25 million to procure an incoherent scatter radar for polar and ionospheric research if the radar is collocated with an existing Defense Department facility. Finally, the Senate report instructs NSF to provide the appropriations committee with regular status reports on “each ongoing large-scale construction or acquisition effort with an estimated cost of $10,000,000 or more.”
EDUCATION AND HUMAN RESOURCES: The Senate budget is $7 million below that of the House at $625 million. The Senate report touches on three programs. While providing the request of $20 million for the new Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training Program, the senators expressed concern about “the lack of evaluation of previous traineeship programs,” and wants NSF to prepare a report on problems, correction actions, and funding criteria. The Senate committee gave the full request for EPSCoR, but also expressed concern about changes in how funding is to be distributed. A report is to be prepared. Finally, “the Committee expects NSF funding of $6,000,000 for an underrepresented populations undergraduate reform initiative to increase the numbers of underrepresented populations in mathematics, engineering, and the biological, computer, and physical sciences through grants to historically black colleges and universities.” NSF’s other program directorates are to match this money.
A date has not been set for the conference committee to resolve these differences. Congress goes on a month-long vacation at the end of July. This bill is supposed to be passed and signed by the President by October 1, the start of the new fiscal year.
