The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released it’s long-awaited guidance to all federal research agencies on how to implement the requirements in National Security Presidential Memorandum 33 (NSPM-33).
On Friday, the House of Representatives passed the Build Back Better Act, also known as the budget reconciliation bill.
Dueling updates this week about legislation reorganizing and reauthorizing the National Science Foundation provided only contradictory views of the bills’ future.
Over the weekend, the House of Representatives broke the legislative logjam over the long-delayed Infrastructure package, passing it on a bipartisan basis. This allowed the bill to be sent to the President’s desk for signing into law. While having only a few pieces for researchers, the infrastructure bill does contain some notable parts for the computing community.
The Biden Administration is already planning ahead for Fiscal Year 2023, which begins on Oct 1st, 2022, and released their first R&D priorities memo late last month. The memo provides guidance to federal research agencies on how to prepare their budget request submissions for the Office of Management & Budget (OMB), who is the lead office in the White House tasked with assembling the yearly Presidential Budget Request (PBR).
The House of Representatives is making quick work of their Budget Reconciliation bills and for good reason. Speaker Pelosi (D-CA) has set September 15th as the deadline for all the House committees to complete work on their assorted draft legislation. With a very short window open to handle such a complex package of bills, the committees are moving at a breakneck pace.
After a particularly eventful August, with the chaotic end of the Afghanistan War, a particularly destructive hurricane hitting the Gulf Coast, and, of course, the ongoing COVID pandemic, it’s understandable if our readers are saying to themselves “What’s happening in Washington?” With both the House and the Senate scheduled back in session this week, we thought a refresher was in order.
Last week, the Senate made headlines with the passage of the $1+ trillion infrastructure deal. This was a major step towards getting a final infrastructure deal done, which has been a major priority for the Biden Administration and Congressional leadership. However, now events in Congress are shifting to the budget reconciliation process. What’s the difference? And where, and how, do the research agencies and their budgets fit into all this?
Last week, the full House of Representatives passed the National Science Foundation for the Future Act (H.R. 2225) and the DOE Science for the Future Act (H.R. 3593). Both bills passed by wide, bipartisan margins; the NSF bill passed on a 345-67 vote, while the DOE SC bill passed by 351-68. The bills now head into a conference process with the Senate’s United States Innovation and Competition Act of 2021.
Last week, the full House Science, Space, and Technology Committee considered their NSF for the Future Act (H.R. 2225) and the recently introduced DOE Science for the Future Act (H.R. 3593). In another departure from their counterparts in the Senate, the committee marked-up both bills in a bipartisan environment with each amendment being approved on unanimous voice-votes. Both pieces of legislation were likewise approved on a bipartisan basis, with no votes in opposition.
