“Borrowing from Peter to Pay Paul": House Acts on NSF, NASA Bill

House VA, HUD Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman James Walsh (R-NY) was explicit: “We have reduced funding for the National Science Foundation by over $200 million. That is the last thing that I wanted to do in this bill but, again, the balance that we had to strike was very, very fragile, very, very difficult. We literally are borrowing from Peter to pay Paul here.”The “here” that Walsh was referring to was H.R. 2684, the VA, HUD Appropriations Bill for FY 2000.

Walsh’s comments came during last week’s consideration of this funding bill which contains the budgets for the National Science Foundation and NASA, as well as the VA and HUD. When all the discussion was over, and the votes were taken, the House did not change the proposed NASA budget, which would be down $1 billion from this year. Proposed NSF funding was not increased -- in fact, it was cut by $10 million to provide for additional housing money to assist needy people suffering from AIDS.

Now that the House has finished its consideration of this bill, attention is focused on the Senate. Today, the Senate VA, HUD Appropriations Subcommittee is marking up its bill. This subcommittee has even less money than its House counterpart. Some reports indicate that Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-AK) plans to give the VA, HUD bill more than $7 billion from the yet unwritten Labor, Health and Human Services bill. This additional money could be very helpful.

In today’s issue of The New York Times, Stevens is quoted that a “tremendous surge” in defense spending, and requirements for various health, science, education, and agriculture programs will necessitate tapping into the projected surplus for the following fiscal year -- FY 2001. It is quite promising that Stevens cited science, as did White House Chief of Staff John Podesta in remarks made earlier this month. Both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue seem prepared, if a way can be found, to change next year’s R&D funding shortfall.

What the full Senate will do is anyone’s guess. During last week’s House consideration of the bill, amendments were offered to increase NASA funding by reducing other programs, and to increase other programs by cutting NASA. All failed, as did an attempt by Rep. Tim Roemer (D-IN) to eliminate $2.08 billion for the space station (on a vote of 121-298). An indication of how tight money was in this $90+ billion bill was the House’s refusal to shift $24.2 million to keep the Selective Service System alive.

Repeated expressions were made on the House floor about the value of NSF and NASA. Walsh made it clear that he was not happy about the major cuts made to NASA, and the essential freezing of the NSF budget. His writing of the bill was constrained by federal law, namely the caps imposed on total discretionary spending.

Walsh also made it clear that this is not a final bill. At the conclusion of the House debate, Rep. Vern Ehlers (R-MI) offered an amendment to increase NSF funding to that recommended in the Science Committee’s authorization bill. Ehlers later withdrew the amendment; his move was made to call his colleagues attention to foundation’s budget. Listen to what Chairman Walsh said in replying to Ehlers’ amendment, as it gives guidance on what to look for in the all-important conference committee (this applies to NASA as well, as indicated in previous remarks by Walsh): “This subcommittee understands the plight that we placed NSF in, and I assure the gentleman that this is a priority, that if there is any way as we go through the process that we can provide some additional funds for NSF we will, and we will call upon him to help us to make that happen and to provide us some direction as to where those funds should go. I cannot make any ironclad assurances other than that he will have our cooperation in the event that that occurs.”