Congress will reconvene in mid-November in a post-election session to finish work on a slate of appropriations bills—including bills that would fully fund the basic research elements of President Bush’s “American Competitiveness Initiative”—that they failed to finish by the traditional end of the legislative session in early October. Less clear is whether any of the authorization bills drafted to boost U.S. competitiveness will receive floor time before the 109th Congress adjourns for good. Congress did complete work on the mammoth FY 2007 Defense Appropriations bill before recessing in late September. Included in the bill were healthy increases to defense research and development, and some reductions to requested budgets for defense IT research.

Some high-profile legislative efforts to bolster U.S. competitiveness by fostering greater U.S.-based innovation have begun to move in Congress, putting the spotlight on the importance of increasing federal support of fundamental research, improving education efforts, and addressing needs in federal tax policy and workforce and immigration issues. But despite the positive action, there are a number of obstacles to enactment of these innovation plans including, most seriously, a perceived lack of support from the House Republican leadership.

After a year’s worth of warning that the final funding levels for American science agencies would likely be austere, congressional appropriators surprised many in the science community by passing a slate of funding bills that would have increased funding slightly for federal research at several agencies, including a 3 percent increase at the National Science Foundation. However, the increases proved to be symbolic as Congress, under pressure to reduce federal discretionary spending in the wake of unanticipated payouts to areas hard-hit by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, passed an across-the-board 1.0 percent reduction in all FY 2006 appropriations, including those already enacted, eliminating much—and in some cases all—of the approved spending increases for science.

The concerns of computing researchers about the overall underinvestment in the federal IT research portfolio—and specific concerns about DARPA’s steady withdrawal from long-term IT research, especially in universities—have gained new prominence in Congress thanks to a series of recent news reports, studies and congressional actions. That attention has so far culminated in a hearing of the full House Science Committee on the future of computer science research in the United States and questions about the implications of the shift in the overall landscape for federal support of computing research.