House VA/HUD Report Language: NSF

House appropriators on June 25 passed H.R. 4194, the FY 1999 VA/HUD appropriations bill, which funds NASA and NSF. Their funding recommendations for NSF are given in FYI #97 ; the Senate VA/HUD subcommittee recommendations are cited in FYI #90 . In the House, report language has just become available which provides details of the Appropriations Committee’s intentions. Below are selected passages from the NSF portion of the report (H. Report 105-610). Included is committee language on competitions to be held for new Science and Technology Centers, an issue which generated controversy in the Senate Appropriations Committee report (see FYI #95 .)

RESEARCH AND RELATED ACTIVITIES: “The Committee recommends $2,745,000,000 for Research and Related Activities in fiscal year 1999, an increase of $199,300,000 above last year’s funding level and $101,800,000 below the budget request. An additional appropriation of $70,000,000 is included in Title IV -- General Provisions of this bill. [This would result in a total R&RA budget of $2,815,000,000.] The funding increase over the 1998 level is intended to be spread proportionally throughout NSF’s Research and Related Activities as outlined in the budget request and accompanying justification, except as specifically noted below.

“It is the Committee’s intention that within the increased funding level provided for fiscal year 1999, Atmospheric Sciences will receive the budget request of no less than $170,000,000, Earth Sciences the budget request of no less than $106,000,000, and Ocean Sciences the budget request of no less than $230,000,000. No funds have been provided for the GLOBE program.”

MAJOR RESEARCH EQUIPMENT: The recommendation of $90,000,000 for MRE “reflects $9,000,000 for the Millimeter Array, $22,000,000 for the Large Hadron Collider, $20,000,000 [for] Polar support aircraft upgrades, [all equal to the request] and $39,000,000 for continued maintenance and construction of new facilities in Antarctica.... The South Pole Station/Antarctica construction project has been increased from the budget request of $22,000,000 to $39,000,000, reflecting the Committee’s desire to provide as much up-front’ funding as possible...

“For fiscal year 1999, the Committee has recommended no funding for the Polar Cap Observatory.... Despite the value of the project, however, difficulties in resolving concerns voiced by various parties have effectively brought the project to a standstill...” Additionally, the report notes that “the Committee has not advance funded MRE projects as was proposed in the budget submission.”

EDUCATION AND HUMAN RESOURCES: “The Committee recommends $642,500,000, an increase of $10,000,000 above lastyear’s appropriated level.... Within this total funding level, the Committee expects that up to $7,500,000 above the budget request be used for graduate needs of under-represented minority doctorates in science and engineering.”

LANGUAGE ON COMPETITION FOR NEW CENTERS: Concern has been expressed within the science community about Senate report language on NSF, which, among other things, called for specific new NSF centers to be selected by a competition “targeted to universities and colleges that do not normally fall within the top 100 of NSF’s survey of universities and colleges receiving Federal research support to overcome bias toward more established institutions.” Language in the House report seems directed at countering this recommendation by the Senate. The House report states:

“The National Science Board (NSB) approved the Science and Technology Centers Program in August 1987. Ten years later, the NSB reviewed the program and approved its continuation based upon its documented success. Among the reasons for the success of the program has been that Centers have been selected because of the strength of the individual research performers that have applied. With participation open to all research performers, and with independent evaluation every three years, the Centers have been selected and continued strictly on the basis of the following criteria: Research merit and educational excellence; Exploitation of opportunities in science, engineering, and technology where the complexity of the research problems or the resources needed to solve these problems require the advantages of scope, scale, change, duration, equipment, facilities, and students that can only be provided by a campus-based Center; Investigations at the frontiers of knowledge, at interfaces of disciplines and/or fresh approaches at the core of disciplines; The engagement of the Nation’s intellectual talents, drawn from its full human diversity (especially women and underrepresented minorities), in the conduct of human research and education activities; Organizational connections and linkages within and between campuses, schools and/or the world beyond (state, local, federal agencies, national labs, industry, international); Focus on integrative learning and discovery and the preparation of students for a diverse set of career paths; and Science and engineering in service to society especially with respect to new research areas, promising new instrumentation, and potential new technologies. “The Committee has provided continued funding for the Centers program, with the understanding that the Foundation will continue to apply these criteria for the selection of Centers. The Committee is concerned that the effectiveness of the program could suffer if its limited resources were diverted from a strict evaluation of merit to other allocation mechanisms.”

The full House intends to take up the FY 1999 VA/HUD funding bill later this week; the Senate has begun, but not completed, debate on its version of the bill.