Important Hearing for National Science Foundation
There is both good news and bad news to report from yesterday’s hearing on next year’s National Science Foundation budget. This hearing was held before the money people -- the House VA, HUD, and Independent Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee. The good news is that everyone loves the NSF. The bad news is that no one is confident that the funding mechanism the Clinton Administration proposes to use to pay for increases in NSF’s budget will materialize.
Congressional Republicans are all singing from the same sheet in expressing grave misgivings about the likelihood of using tobacco settlement money to finance the administration’s Research Fund for America. “That money is probably not going to be forthcoming,” subcommittee chairman Jerry Lewis (R-CA) told NSF Director Neal Lane. The chairman said few people in Washington are confident that the settlement will occur, including, Lewis stated, the people at the Office of Management and Budget. He called for some “honest budgeting” dialogue at the hearing, asking Lane what NSF programs Congress should cut in response to pressures to fund VA health care or environmental programs. Lane answered by citing the improvement in NSF’s grants that would occur under the requested 10% increase (600-800 additional awards, grant duration increasing from 2.4 years to 2.7 years, and a 7% increase in award size). Lewis countered by asking what NSF’s priorities would be if the increase was less (“I’m asking you to be specific”) to which Lane replied that under such circumstances “relative allocations remain pretty much the same.” Both agreed to work together in determining where to make any cuts.
This exchange lasted only a few minutes out of this two-hour hearing. There were specific questions about other matters, including disappointing math student test scores, interconnecting foundation programs with the private sector, an unchanged budget request for systemic rural educational reform, phase-out of two supercomputer centers, hurricane research, distribution of grants to the nation’s leading research universities, community colleges, affirmative action, the proposed National Institute of the Environment, and investigations by NSF’s Inspector General. Members generally seemed pleased by NSF’s responses.
Early in the hearing, Lewis said NSF enjoys great support among Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle. What is beyond his control, that of NSF Director Lane, and the research community, is whether that tobacco money is going to materialize - in time - for the foundation.
