Today the chairman of the House Science Committee introduced H.R. 5031, the “STEM Education Act of 2014’”, to promote STEM education at NSF. The computer science community is a direct beneficiary: the first item in the bill would require federal agencies to include computer science in their definition of STEM.
You’ll recall Science Committee Chair Lamar Smith (R-TX) has been trying to move a reauthorization of the COMPETES Act, called the FIRST Act, but had met with much resistance from both the science advocacy community and the Democrats in the committee minority. That bill’s route to passage promised to be challenging, and ever since a rather contentious markup of the bill its progress has stalled.
However, in the interests of still wanting to do something legislatively, Smith decided to work with the Democratic minority on his committee to break out parts of FIRST to use as stand alone bills. These would be the least contentious and most bipartisan parts of the FIRST Act. This STEM bill is the first of possibly three total bills (the other possible bills are NIST reauthorization and international science cooperation).
As for specifics of the bill, it has three parts (it is actually a very short bill). The first part, which is of most importance to the CS community, is the explicit inclusion of Computer Science in the definition of “STEM education.” The inclusion of CS in STEM is aimed at ensuring that CS won’t get left out of future STEM Ed initiatives at the Federal level (at least at NSF, NASA, NOAA, Energy, and NIST…the agencies under the jurisdiction of the Science Committee). The bill also authorizes STEM agencies to fund research that advances the field of informal STEM education and expands the NSF Noyce Scholarship Program to include awardees with bachelor’s degrees (currently only people with master degrees qualify) and provide funding authorization to support NSF Master Teacher Fellows for a year. All three of these provisions are largely bipartisan and funding neutral.
This bill is very good news for the CS community and the science community as a whole, and hopefully indicates a new embrace of bipartisanship on the committee, after a fairly discordant period.
[Editor’s Note: This post marks the debut of CRA’s new Tisdale Policy Fellow for Summer 2014, Yiyang Shen. Yiyang is a sophomore at NYU, with an interest in Mathematics and Computer Science, and will spend this summer with CRA working on science policy issues, including tracking the progress of efforts to reauthorize the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. Expect to see more of him on the blog!]
On June 11th the Energy Subcommittee, of the House Science, Technology, & Space Committee, held a markup of the Department of Energy Research and Development Act of 2014. Surprisingly, this hearing was very contentious and Democratic members used procedural tactics to obstruct consideration of this bill to reauthorize research and development (R&D) programs at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The hearing was finally adjourned by the Republicans on a party line vote after Democrats refused to waive the reading of the bill.
The markup was originally scheduled at noon, but the subcommittee chairwoman, Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), did not convene the hearing until ~12:10pm. Representative Alan Grayson (D-FL) surprisingly started the “parliamentary game” then, interrupting the chairwoman’s opening remarks by requesting a recorded vote to change the official start time in the subcommittee records. His point of order was ultimately tabled by vote but it signaled Democrats’ strong opposition to the bill.
In her opening statement, Lummis stated that, “the draft bill provides a $250 million increase in funding for basic research. The bill provides deficit reduction by making cuts to outdated, wasteful and duplicative programs within DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.” The main point, as Republicans hold for the previous FIRST Act of 2014, is to use money wisely, provided the limited resources.
In response, the Ranking Member Eric Swalwell (D-CA) conveyed two central problems with this “premature” markup in his opening statement. The first relates to process: the bill was not shared with Democratic members of the Subcommittee until the last Friday before the markup. Given that this 103-page bill proposes to reauthorize all of DOE’s research and development programs, Mr. Swalwell said, “that means we’re being asked to make tough decisions about how to allocate billions of taxpayers’ dollars after having less than three business days to consider the bill.”
Mr. Swalwell then pointed out the second problem the minority has with the bill. The budget for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) is substantially cut; ARPA-E funding is largely reduced; and the bill includes burdensome limitations on what research DOE can fund. In addition, it includes particularly objectionable language that bars the results of DOE-funded R&D activity from being, “used for regulatory assessments or determinations by Federal regulatory authorities.” Specifically, this language is meant to keep the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from using research data to support their operations and any environmental regulations. Of interest to computing researchers, the bill does include increased authorizations for the Advanced Scientific Computing Research activity, ramping the authorization for the program up to $600 million in FY 2015, $59 million more than the President requested.
After hearing the opening remarks from both sides, Ranking Member of the Full Committee, Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) also gave a brief comment on the markup that day. She criticized how dysfunctional the committee has become, and strongly opposed the consideration and passage of the bill.
The markup ended awkwardly. After the opening remarks, the bill is then read into the record, a procedural process which is usually dispensed with under unanimous consent. However, in this instance the Democrats used it to their advantage: they withheld their consent and required that the bill be read, in full, into the record. As this would have tied up the subcommittee for hours, the Republicans instead adjourned the meeting.
The prospect of the bill moving forward this summer is unlikely. The real news from this markup is that the House Science Committee has become increasingly polarized and neither side intends to cooperate with the other. This does not bode well for future science legislation.
On May 22nd the House Science Committee took up the Frontiers in Innovation, Research, Science, and Technology (or FIRST) Act of 2014. The bill’s lead sponsor is the House Science Committee chairman, Lamar Smith (R-TX). This bill is to reauthorize the majority of the America COMPETES Act of 2010, and focuses on the non-energy agencies (NSF, NIST, and OSTP). Sadly, this piece of legislation is neither as visionary for American science, nor as supportive of said science, as its predecessor bill.
To get right into the problems with the bill, first, it only authorizes the agencies for two years; one of which is the current fiscal year (FY14) we are operating in and have approved appropriations. The previous versions of the COMPETES Act authorized the agencies for three years. There were attempts by the Democratic minority to amend the legislation to include a third year, but those were defeated on a party line vote.
In addition, the FIRST Act authorizes very small increases (~1.5 percent) for NSF and NIST (1 percent) in FY15. The FY14 authorized numbers are the same as what was appropriated in the Omnibus, but with one exception: it strips $100 million in authorization from the Social, Behavioral, & Economic Sciences Directorate at NSF. That money seems to be spread around within the other NSF directorates, including about $70 million for CISE in FY15. Again, there were amendments offered by Democrats to reverse these cuts, but they ultimately failed as all the Republicans voted against them. Though these authorized levels are slightly higher than what is in the President’s FY15 budget request, they still don’t keep up with inflation.
Here is a more complete look at the comparison of the FIRST Act budget numbers versus the last reauthorization of the COMPETES Act.
In addition, the Chairman included troubling language requiring NSF to affirm that all grant awards funded by the Foundation are “worthy of Federal funding” and in the national interest “as indicated by having the potential to achieve:”
increased economic competitiveness in the US;
advancement of the health and welfare of the American public;
development of a STEM workforce and increased public scientific literacy in the US;
increased partnerships between academia and industry;
support for the national defense;
promotion of the progress of science.
This is being referred to as “NSF Accountability,” and is an improvement over what had been circulated in draft versions of the bill. Smith’s original draft was problematic because it required that prior to the award of any funding NSF had to publish on a website the justification for that award (based on the above criteria), along with the name of the employee or employees who made the determination. The version that was included in the final bill strips that language and just requires that public announcement of the award include “a written justification from a responsible Foundation official” that the grant meets the criteria. It’s somewhat better, though it still provides a hook for Congress to call that “responsible Foundation official” on the carpet for any dubious (in their, i.e. Congressional, minds) grant. Of course, Congress already has that power.
In one point of good news for the CS community, the bill includes reauthorization of the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) Program. CRA, along with IEEE-USA, SIAM, and USACM, endorsed this a year ago when it was introduced in a stand-alone bill as the Advancing America’s NITRD Act.
Some other news that came out of this markup:
An amendment by Rep. Broun (R-GA) passed on a voice vote to cut the FY15 authorized levels for the Office of Science Technology Policy by $1M (original it would $5.55M; now it is $4.55M);
There was a bipartisan amendment to change the Open Access provisions in the bill to be more in line with what OSTP and the Obama Administration are already doing on this subject.
To get a fuller picture of what happened at the hearing, here are twogood articles by Jeffrey Mervis at Science.
The next step for the FIRST Act will be consideration on the full House floor. Passage is likely, though in what form is an interesting question. There is always a possibility that fiscally conservative elements of the Republican Party will propose amendments to strip out even more funding. As well, there could be other amendments to restrict what types of research the science agencies can spend Federal funds on. Whether any of those types of amendments will pass the full House is an open question. As well, it’s unlikely that there will be any successful amendments to restore or increase funding; the environment of Washington is one of austerity right now.
The two possible silver linings in all this is that, first, the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee is expected to release their version of a COMPETES reauthorization any week now. The hope within the science community is that it will be a more true reauthorization of COMPETES and will be more bipartisan in nature. The second silver lining is that FIRST is an authorizing bill, which means this is only covers how NSF can spend its money (rather than an appropriations bill which determines how much money NSF gets). Current year funding for NSF has already been determined and is unlikely to be impacted by this bill, assuming it gets signed into law. As well, next year’s funding levels have already passed the House Appropriations Committee, and they did not incorporate the FIRST Act levels in what they approved (FYI: The CJS bill will be on the House floor today for voting; we are expecting amendments to be offered to bring it in line with the SBE authorizations in FIRST, but it’s an open question as to whether they will pass). We’ll keep our readers posted on further developments with this legislation.
On Wednesday evening, the Coalition for National Science Funding (or CNSF) held their yearly Exhibition on Capitol Hill. The exhibition, probably best described as a science fair with some really smart people, is a showcase of research and education projects supported by the National Science Foundation. It gives a great venue to show members of Congress and Congressional staff what the American people have funded.
From left to right: Joseph DelPreto, Ankur Mehta, Farnam Jahanian (Director of CISE at NSF), and Robert Katzschmann.
CRA, a member of CNSF, sponsored two grad students and a postdoc from MIT to come to Washington to talk about their work. Joseph DelPreto and Ankur Mehta talked about their printable robots; super cheap, 3D robots that can be printed on a 2D printer. Robert Katzschmann demonstrated his autonomous, self-contained soft robotic fish, which is considered a “soft robot”. Check out some demonstrations of his work in these twovideos. All three young researchers are advised by Daniela Rus at MIT, who is also a CCC Council member.
Joseph DelPreto of MIT explains his printable robots to Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ).
All of this research and work is supported from the CISE directorate at NSF. Both projects were well received by the attendees of the exhibition; in fact, two members of Congress stopped by their table, as did the head of the NSF CISE directorate, and multiple Congressional staffers and NSF employees.
Ankur Mehta, center, of MIT, explains his printable robots to an attendee at the 2014 CNSF Exhibition.
A number of other organizations had tables and were showing off NSF funded research. From Tufts University’s “Engineering Solutions to Clean Water;” to the Entomological Society of America’s “Optimizing Crop Yields: Pollinators, Pests and Pathogens;” to American Psychological Association and Vanderbilt University’s joint table of “Russell the Robot: Engaging Children with Autism through Psychological and Engineering Research,” the event was a great display of the different types of research being supported by the Foundation. Click here to see a full list of participating organizations and what each exhibitor was presenting.
The title of this post was the last question, asked by Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), at the Senate Appropriations hearing Tuesday afternoon. It was a telling question and got to the root of the budgetary problems facing the Federal science agencies at this point in time: would it be better to have more (modest) funding right now, which will only be cut back when the paused Sequestration starts back up in two years; or would it be best to have lower numbers now but an end to Sequestration (meaning more certainty) to allow the agencies to plan? Mikulski was clear that they couldn’t have both, as she explicitly said that the committee would be following the Murray/Ryan Budget Agreement . After she made her question, the Senator did give the witnesses an out, saying “you may not want to answer that.”
For the most part, the witnesses answered that question by saying: more certainty. Director Collins pointed out that because of the Sequester NIH lost, taking into account inflation, about 10% of its budget. He said, “a stable predictable trajectory,” for the agency’s budget was a necessity. Director Prabhakar, in saying that she needed more certainty, pointed out that DARPA is not trying to grow significantly. That combined with an 8% Sequester cut and a 12% decline in recent years means that DARPA has been hit very hard. Secretary Moniz echoed both of those positions and said DOE needs certainty. The only person who said more funding would be best was Director Cordova; she made the point that we should, “do now what we can do now.” She illustrated that by pointing out the Foundation was not able to fund about 700 proposals and that impacted around 800 scientists. That answer also made the point that there is no good/right answer here.
As for the rest of the hearing, there was very little political posturing and ideologically based questions, and both sides of the aisle felt more had to be done to get money to scientists. In fact, the next day Director Holdren was quoted as calling the hearing, “nearly a love fest.” The only instances of anything that could be called an ideological statement was when Senator Shelby (R-AL), the highest ranked Republican on the committee, said in his opening statement, “if we cannot practice fiscal discipline today, we will pay a much higher price in the future,”? while pointing out that the committee can’t simply increase funding for these agencies (in his closing statement, Senator Shelby did say he was open to giving the science agencies “leeway” with their budgets). However, Senator Blunt (R-MO), a long time supporter of research at NIH, made the counterpoint, “is the health of our country discretionary?” Neither of these statements is a surprise, given the budgetary environment of Congress; but they do demonstrate the constraints that the committee is working with and what the science agencies have to work under.
The Democratic side mainly focused on specific areas that concerned them and their state specific constituents. However, one of the more interesting exchanges was between Senator Harkin (D-IA) and Director Collins of NIH, where the Senator pointed out that it was almost impossible to get private sector funding for the Genome Initiative until the early successes of the Federally backed science showed promise. Senator Harkin, speaking off the cuff, said that an “initial Federal investment of around $3.5B produced an estimated $900B market in return.” The implication was that this is an example that shows private money will follow only when the Federally backed basic research shows promise. Beyond that, Chairwoman Mikulski had many of the best points, such as when she said she “wanted to make sure they (American scientists) can do what they’re educated to do;” which is research.
On the whole, the hearing was positive. It showed that the Federal science agencies have a good reputation with Senate Appropriators (also demonstrated with the House Appropriations Commerce, Justice, Science subcommittee passing a bill favorable to NSF and NIST). Also, there are leaders in Congress, on both sides of the aisle, who want to protect science in the budget process. This is an on-going process; the specter of Sequestration starting up again in two years is hanging over everyone. And Chairwoman Mikulski’s question is still sitting there: which would be more helpful, more money or an end to Sequestration?
Tomorrow the full Senate Appropriations Committee will be holding an major hearing on “Driving Innovation through Federal Investments.” This is important news as the list of witnesses being called is a who’s-who of Federal science agencies: the Secretary of Energy, the President’s science advisor, and the Directors of NSF, DARPA, and NIH. Of course, you might remember the Senate Appropriations Committee from being one half of being in charge of funding the Federal Government. As I said, MAJOR hearing next week.
The Appropriations Committee chairwoman, Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), is a huge champion for science, and it’s clear that she feels the Federal Government can be doing more to spur innovation through investing in the science agencies. The science advocacy community in Washington is very excited, because our issues haven’t had such a high profile venue like this for some time.
To take advantage of that venue, CRA is joining with fifty other organizations in submitting testimony for the hearing. These organizations are organizing around the message “Close the Innovation Deficit,” which the Senate Appropriations Committee has picked up on. The term “Innovation Deficit” means the, “the widening gap between the actual level of federal government funding for research and higher education and what the investment needs to be if the United States is to remain the world’s innovation leader.” We’d highly recommend going to their website, checking out the video, and reading the testimony (it includes the other organizations which have signed on). We’ll have a recap of the hearing later in the week as well.
Given the relatively austere budget caps for FY2015 the President and Congress agreed to as part of last December’s budget agreement, the President’s relatively flat budget request for the National Science Foundation in FY2015 isn’t unexpected. In fact, the President’s request for NSF would have the agency grow just 1 percent over FY14 (to $7.3 billion), while research at the agency would actually decrease by $3 million under the President’s plan ($5.191 billion in FY14 vs. $5.188 billion in FY15).
Funding for NSF’s Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate, the home of the great bulk of NSF’s computing research and infrastructure investments, follows a similar trajectory in the President’s budget. Under the President’s plan, the CISE budget would remain at essentially the same level ($893 million) as in FY14 ($894 million). Coming after two years in which CISE did disproportionately “well” in the budget calculus, this flat budget is a little easier to bear. But it does mean that CISE AD Farnam Jahanian had to do a little reshuffling to protect priorities within the CISE budget. In particular, the directorate’s contributions to a number of cross-agency initiatives would be scaled back somewhat in order to take care of “core” research funding within the directorate.
In his letter to the computing research community, Jahanian noted four areas of priority within the directorate request: expansions of CISE foundational research; investments in crosscutting programs led by CISE; investments in advanced cyberinfrastructure, and education and workforce development.
In addition to CISE’s investments in its core foundational research, the directorate will remain a player in a number of key cross-agency programs, albeit in a slightly reduced role in some cases. Here are some details:
Cyber Enabled Materials, Manufacturing, and Smart Systems (CEMMSS): This is a $213 million program across the Foundation geared towards accelerating advances in “21st century smart engineered systems.” CISE’s investment of $81.5 million in FY15 (down from $85 million in FY14) would focus on advanced manufacturing, cyber physical systems, the National Robotics Initiative, Critical Resilient Interdependent Infrastructure Systems and Processes (CRISP) and their interaction and synthesis.
Cyberinfrastructure Framework for 21st Century Science and Engineering (CIF21): The Foundation would spend $125 million across all the major research directorates in FY15, with CISE contributing $80 million (down from $85 million in FY14). CISE’s focus includes work on Big Data, data infrastructure building blocks, building new computational and data-enabled science and engineering research communities, advancing new computational infrastructure and building partnerships.
Cognitive Science and Neuroscience: NSF’s contribution to the White House’s BRAIN initiative (with NSF, NIH and DARPA), would be $29 million foundation-wide in FY15. CISE would contribute $5.65 million vs. $3.5 million in FY14. CISE’s focus is on addressing the challenges of research integration across multiple scales and builds on ongoing NSF investments like the Collaborative Research in Computational Neuroscience collaboration with NIH, Germany and France.
Innovation Corps (I-Corps): The Foundation would invest $25 million in this program designed to accelerate innovations from the lab to the market. CISE’s contribution would grow to $10 million (up from $8 million in FY14), and Jahanian noted that given the level of interest in the program from the community, the directorate could easily invest twice as much.
Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC): The Foundation would spend $100 million on SaTC in FY15 under the President’s plan, and $67 million of that investment would be in the CISE directorate. The focus of CISE’s effort in this space is to support fundamental scientific advances and technologies to protect cyber-systems from malicious behavior, while preserving privacy and promoting usability.
Jahanian’s presentation from the NSF budget roll-out goes into additional detail about these programs and the other efforts the directorate plans for FY15, and the official justification to Congress contains even more detail. The President’s “Opportunity, Growth, and Security Initiative” — his supplemental budget request, should Congress feel the need to spend more than the caps they agreed to — includes $552 million in new spending for NSF, some of which would find its way into CISE for investments in cybersecurity, clean energy/sustainable computing, and core research activities. However, this is essentially dead on arrival in Congress. Sorry.
In our continuing series on the Fiscal Year 2015 (FY15) Presidential Budget request, we next come to NIST, or the National Institute of Standards and Technology. NIST is on the smaller size of the science agencies, budget-authority-speaking, but it is still a significant contributor for IT research.
The main part of the agency that CRA is concerned about is the Scientific and Technical Research and Services account, or STRS. This part of the agency’s budget handles the research grants, special programs, and laboratory operations of NIST. STRS is slated to receive $680 million in the president’s budget, which represents a 4.5 percent increase over the FY14 enacted levels.
The increases will go to a number of special programs that the Administration has marked as vital to the national interest. Three of these increases are in areas that are of particular concern to members of CRA. For example, the Administration is interested in increasing its investment in the “Advanced Cyber-Physical Systems for National Priorities” program. This program focuses on Cyber-physical systems, or CPSs, which, “combine the cyber and physical worlds with technologies that can respond in real time to their environments and incoming data.” CPSs were identified as a national priority for Federal R&D by PCAST. The increase in funding would be $7.5 million, bringing the total amount for the program to $11.7 million.
As well, there is a suggested increase of $5 million, for a total of $18.8 million, for the Materials Genome Initiative, “an interagency effort to dramatically influence the pace for bringing new materials to market (Found here in the Executive Summary). Through this program, “NIST is developing infrastructure to support innovation in advanced materials, including data assessment and validation, data standards and modeling and simulation tools.”
The last program of note to our readers would be the NIST’s request for $6 million to develop laboratory-to-market strategies that accelerate commercialization of federal technologies. NIST has government-wide responsibilities for ensuring that taxpayer-funded technologies are transitioned to the marketplace. Congress and the Administration have taken a particular interest in technology transfer in recent years, hoping that it will translate into jobs and economic growth.
So, on the whole, NIST is doing relatively well in the President’s Request; no serious cuts and healthy increases, for the current budget environment. We’ll have to keep a close eye on the agency as the budget process moves forward, but things are looking ok so far.
As we mentioned, President Obama released his budget request for the Fiscal Year 2015 (FY15) on Tuesday. We’ll be doing a series of posts on the assorted agencies’ budgets that are important to the computing research community. The first agency that we want to highlight is the Department of Energy (DOE), as they released their top line numbers on March 4th (most of the other science agencies are releasing their numbers next week).
Two key parts of the agency for the computing community are the Office of Science (SC), home of most of the agency’s basic research support, and ARPA-E. For SC, the office would only see a 0.9 percent increase from FY14 to FY15 (going from $5.07B to $5.11B). However, that small overall increase masks significant gains for the subaccount that matters most to computing researchers: ASCR or Advanced Scientific Computing Research. ASCR would see a significant increase in funding, going up by 13.2 percent (or $478M in FY14 to $571M in FY15). Much of the justification for this increase is tagged to work on achieving exascale computing, application of high performance computer simulation and modeling, and operations & upgrades to ASCR facilities. ASCR would receive the largest increase within DOE SC’s request. This is obviously good, but the details are important, and we should get those soon.
As for ARPA-E (or Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy), it would see a large increase of 16.1 percent (or $280M in FY14 to $325M in FY15). This increase is to support, “transformational energy R&D…as part of a $5.2 billion DOE investment in clean energy technology programs.” While this number is encouraging, it is important to note that a large increase in ARPA-E’s budget has been a regular occurrence with Obama Administration budget requests over the years. And Congress doesn’t have a good record of passing those suggested increases. In the FY14 Omnibus, for example, the agency received just enough funding to roll back much of what it had lost to the sequester in FY13 ($275M in FY12; $252M in FY13; and $280M in FY14) but still fell well short of the President’s request for FY14 ($379M).
It is both important, and not important, to note that the President has signaled DOE as a major agency in his “Opportunity, Growth, and Security Initiative,” or his wish list of programs that ought to receive extra funding beyond the FY15 budget caps. It is important because it demonstrates that the Administration is still concerned about scientific research. However, it is not important because the Initiative is dead on arrival with Congress. Whether this is good or bad, to paraphrase Obi-Wan Kenobi, “depends greatly on a certain point of view.”
To sum up, the President’s DOE request is good news for the computing research community, at least at the top line level. Remember, detailed budget info has not been released yet and, as the saying goes, the devil is in the details. As more information is released, we’ll be posting it here, so stay tuned.
So, the good news this year was that the President and Congress were working from the same set of numbers for the first time in a long time. The bad news is that those numbers are pretty underwhelming. The President introduced his FY15 budget request today, a budget that would remain largely flat — increasing discretionary spending just $2 billion over FY14 ($1.014 trillion in FY15 vs. $1.012 trillion in FY14). NSF would grow just 1 percent (to $7.3 billion) under the “base budget” in the President’s plan. Research at NSF would actually decrease $3 million under the President’s plan ($5.191 billion in FY14 vs. $5.188 billion in FY15). (We’ll have lots more information about NSF’s budget request next Monday when the agency rolls out its detailed budget justification.)
Recognizing that the agreed-to budget caps were overly constraining for all the Administration’s priorities, the President included a $52 billion “wish list” of additional funding proposals — called the “Opportunity, Growth, and Security Initiative” — that includes increased funding for key science agencies that could be offset by cuts to farm subsidy programs, tax increases on “multi-million dollar retirement accounts,” and other spending cuts and tax increases identified by the Administration. Were that wish list to be approved by Congress, NSF could see an additional $552 million in funding (and R&D agencies overall would see an increase of $5.3 billion) However, congressional Republicans have already declared the wish list DOA.
Funding for other agencies in the President’s base budget is a bit of a mixed bag:
DOE basic and applied research would be up 6.1 percent in the President’s plan ($8.412 billion in FY 15 vs. $7.932 billion in FY14)
DOD basic and applied research would see an increase of 4.4 percent ($6.582 billion vs. $6.307 billion
NIST basic and applied research would increase 3.3 percent ($598 million vs $579 million)
NIH basic and applied research would increase 0.7 percent ($29.403 billion vs. $29.205 billion)
Homeland Security basic and applied research would decrease 1 percent ($250 million vs. $251 million).
Keep in mind that the expected inflation rate between FY 2014 and FY 2015 is about 2 percent.
The White House has released an R&D Budget Fact sheet that goes into some of the details.
But we’ll learn more about the agency priorities as the agencies roll out their own budget request over the next week or so.
As always, we’ll have the details as we learn them!
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STEM Education Bill Introduced in the House
/In: STEM /by Brian MosleyToday the chairman of the House Science Committee introduced H.R. 5031, the “STEM Education Act of 2014’”, to promote STEM education at NSF. The computer science community is a direct beneficiary: the first item in the bill would require federal agencies to include computer science in their definition of STEM.
You’ll recall Science Committee Chair Lamar Smith (R-TX) has been trying to move a reauthorization of the COMPETES Act, called the FIRST Act, but had met with much resistance from both the science advocacy community and the Democrats in the committee minority. That bill’s route to passage promised to be challenging, and ever since a rather contentious markup of the bill its progress has stalled.
However, in the interests of still wanting to do something legislatively, Smith decided to work with the Democratic minority on his committee to break out parts of FIRST to use as stand alone bills. These would be the least contentious and most bipartisan parts of the FIRST Act. This STEM bill is the first of possibly three total bills (the other possible bills are NIST reauthorization and international science cooperation).
As for specifics of the bill, it has three parts (it is actually a very short bill). The first part, which is of most importance to the CS community, is the explicit inclusion of Computer Science in the definition of “STEM education.” The inclusion of CS in STEM is aimed at ensuring that CS won’t get left out of future STEM Ed initiatives at the Federal level (at least at NSF, NASA, NOAA, Energy, and NIST…the agencies under the jurisdiction of the Science Committee). The bill also authorizes STEM agencies to fund research that advances the field of informal STEM education and expands the NSF Noyce Scholarship Program to include awardees with bachelor’s degrees (currently only people with master degrees qualify) and provide funding authorization to support NSF Master Teacher Fellows for a year. All three of these provisions are largely bipartisan and funding neutral.
This bill is very good news for the CS community and the science community as a whole, and hopefully indicates a new embrace of bipartisanship on the committee, after a fairly discordant period.
A Fruitless Markup on Department of Energy R&D Act of 2014
/In: Research /by Brian Mosley[Editor’s Note: This post marks the debut of CRA’s new Tisdale Policy Fellow for Summer 2014, Yiyang Shen. Yiyang is a sophomore at NYU, with an interest in Mathematics and Computer Science, and will spend this summer with CRA working on science policy issues, including tracking the progress of efforts to reauthorize the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. Expect to see more of him on the blog!]
On June 11th the Energy Subcommittee, of the House Science, Technology, & Space Committee, held a markup of the Department of Energy Research and Development Act of 2014. Surprisingly, this hearing was very contentious and Democratic members used procedural tactics to obstruct consideration of this bill to reauthorize research and development (R&D) programs at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The hearing was finally adjourned by the Republicans on a party line vote after Democrats refused to waive the reading of the bill.
The markup was originally scheduled at noon, but the subcommittee chairwoman, Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), did not convene the hearing until ~12:10pm. Representative Alan Grayson (D-FL) surprisingly started the “parliamentary game” then, interrupting the chairwoman’s opening remarks by requesting a recorded vote to change the official start time in the subcommittee records. His point of order was ultimately tabled by vote but it signaled Democrats’ strong opposition to the bill.
In her opening statement, Lummis stated that, “the draft bill provides a $250 million increase in funding for basic research. The bill provides deficit reduction by making cuts to outdated, wasteful and duplicative programs within DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.” The main point, as Republicans hold for the previous FIRST Act of 2014, is to use money wisely, provided the limited resources.
In response, the Ranking Member Eric Swalwell (D-CA) conveyed two central problems with this “premature” markup in his opening statement. The first relates to process: the bill was not shared with Democratic members of the Subcommittee until the last Friday before the markup. Given that this 103-page bill proposes to reauthorize all of DOE’s research and development programs, Mr. Swalwell said, “that means we’re being asked to make tough decisions about how to allocate billions of taxpayers’ dollars after having less than three business days to consider the bill.”
Mr. Swalwell then pointed out the second problem the minority has with the bill. The budget for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) is substantially cut; ARPA-E funding is largely reduced; and the bill includes burdensome limitations on what research DOE can fund. In addition, it includes particularly objectionable language that bars the results of DOE-funded R&D activity from being, “used for regulatory assessments or determinations by Federal regulatory authorities.” Specifically, this language is meant to keep the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from using research data to support their operations and any environmental regulations. Of interest to computing researchers, the bill does include increased authorizations for the Advanced Scientific Computing Research activity, ramping the authorization for the program up to $600 million in FY 2015, $59 million more than the President requested.
After hearing the opening remarks from both sides, Ranking Member of the Full Committee, Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) also gave a brief comment on the markup that day. She criticized how dysfunctional the committee has become, and strongly opposed the consideration and passage of the bill.
The markup ended awkwardly. After the opening remarks, the bill is then read into the record, a procedural process which is usually dispensed with under unanimous consent. However, in this instance the Democrats used it to their advantage: they withheld their consent and required that the bill be read, in full, into the record. As this would have tied up the subcommittee for hours, the Republicans instead adjourned the meeting.
The prospect of the bill moving forward this summer is unlikely. The real news from this markup is that the House Science Committee has become increasingly polarized and neither side intends to cooperate with the other. This does not bode well for future science legislation.
FIRST Act Marked Up By the Full House Science Committee
/In: Policy /by Brian MosleyOn May 22nd the House Science Committee took up the Frontiers in Innovation, Research, Science, and Technology (or FIRST) Act of 2014. The bill’s lead sponsor is the House Science Committee chairman, Lamar Smith (R-TX). This bill is to reauthorize the majority of the America COMPETES Act of 2010, and focuses on the non-energy agencies (NSF, NIST, and OSTP). Sadly, this piece of legislation is neither as visionary for American science, nor as supportive of said science, as its predecessor bill.
To get right into the problems with the bill, first, it only authorizes the agencies for two years; one of which is the current fiscal year (FY14) we are operating in and have approved appropriations. The previous versions of the COMPETES Act authorized the agencies for three years. There were attempts by the Democratic minority to amend the legislation to include a third year, but those were defeated on a party line vote.
In addition, the FIRST Act authorizes very small increases (~1.5 percent) for NSF and NIST (1 percent) in FY15. The FY14 authorized numbers are the same as what was appropriated in the Omnibus, but with one exception: it strips $100 million in authorization from the Social, Behavioral, & Economic Sciences Directorate at NSF. That money seems to be spread around within the other NSF directorates, including about $70 million for CISE in FY15. Again, there were amendments offered by Democrats to reverse these cuts, but they ultimately failed as all the Republicans voted against them. Though these authorized levels are slightly higher than what is in the President’s FY15 budget request, they still don’t keep up with inflation.
Here is a more complete look at the comparison of the FIRST Act budget numbers versus the last reauthorization of the COMPETES Act.
In addition, the Chairman included troubling language requiring NSF to affirm that all grant awards funded by the Foundation are “worthy of Federal funding” and in the national interest “as indicated by having the potential to achieve:”
This is being referred to as “NSF Accountability,” and is an improvement over what had been circulated in draft versions of the bill. Smith’s original draft was problematic because it required that prior to the award of any funding NSF had to publish on a website the justification for that award (based on the above criteria), along with the name of the employee or employees who made the determination. The version that was included in the final bill strips that language and just requires that public announcement of the award include “a written justification from a responsible Foundation official” that the grant meets the criteria. It’s somewhat better, though it still provides a hook for Congress to call that “responsible Foundation official” on the carpet for any dubious (in their, i.e. Congressional, minds) grant. Of course, Congress already has that power.
In one point of good news for the CS community, the bill includes reauthorization of the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) Program. CRA, along with IEEE-USA, SIAM, and USACM, endorsed this a year ago when it was introduced in a stand-alone bill as the Advancing America’s NITRD Act.
Some other news that came out of this markup:
To get a fuller picture of what happened at the hearing, here are two good articles by Jeffrey Mervis at Science.
The next step for the FIRST Act will be consideration on the full House floor. Passage is likely, though in what form is an interesting question. There is always a possibility that fiscally conservative elements of the Republican Party will propose amendments to strip out even more funding. As well, there could be other amendments to restrict what types of research the science agencies can spend Federal funds on. Whether any of those types of amendments will pass the full House is an open question. As well, it’s unlikely that there will be any successful amendments to restore or increase funding; the environment of Washington is one of austerity right now.
The two possible silver linings in all this is that, first, the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee is expected to release their version of a COMPETES reauthorization any week now. The hope within the science community is that it will be a more true reauthorization of COMPETES and will be more bipartisan in nature. The second silver lining is that FIRST is an authorizing bill, which means this is only covers how NSF can spend its money (rather than an appropriations bill which determines how much money NSF gets). Current year funding for NSF has already been determined and is unlikely to be impacted by this bill, assuming it gets signed into law. As well, next year’s funding levels have already passed the House Appropriations Committee, and they did not incorporate the FIRST Act levels in what they approved (FYI: The CJS bill will be on the House floor today for voting; we are expecting amendments to be offered to bring it in line with the SBE authorizations in FIRST, but it’s an open question as to whether they will pass). We’ll keep our readers posted on further developments with this legislation.
Printable Robots and Soft Robots Wow Attendees at the 2014 CNSF Exhibition
/In: CRA /by Brian MosleyOn Wednesday evening, the Coalition for National Science Funding (or CNSF) held their yearly Exhibition on Capitol Hill. The exhibition, probably best described as a science fair with some really smart people, is a showcase of research and education projects supported by the National Science Foundation. It gives a great venue to show members of Congress and Congressional staff what the American people have funded.
From left to right: Joseph DelPreto, Ankur Mehta, Farnam Jahanian (Director of CISE at NSF), and Robert Katzschmann.
CRA, a member of CNSF, sponsored two grad students and a postdoc from MIT to come to Washington to talk about their work. Joseph DelPreto and Ankur Mehta talked about their printable robots; super cheap, 3D robots that can be printed on a 2D printer. Robert Katzschmann demonstrated his autonomous, self-contained soft robotic fish, which is considered a “soft robot”. Check out some demonstrations of his work in these two videos. All three young researchers are advised by Daniela Rus at MIT, who is also a CCC Council member.
Joseph DelPreto of MIT explains his printable robots to Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ).
All of this research and work is supported from the CISE directorate at NSF. Both projects were well received by the attendees of the exhibition; in fact, two members of Congress stopped by their table, as did the head of the NSF CISE directorate, and multiple Congressional staffers and NSF employees.
Ankur Mehta, center, of MIT, explains his printable robots to an attendee at the 2014 CNSF Exhibition.
A number of other organizations had tables and were showing off NSF funded research. From Tufts University’s “Engineering Solutions to Clean Water;” to the Entomological Society of America’s “Optimizing Crop Yields: Pollinators, Pests and Pathogens;” to American Psychological Association and Vanderbilt University’s joint table of “Russell the Robot: Engaging Children with Autism through Psychological and Engineering Research,” the event was a great display of the different types of research being supported by the Foundation. Click here to see a full list of participating organizations and what each exhibitor was presenting.
“Which would you rather have: more money or end of Sequestration?”
/In: FY15 Appropriations, Policy /by Brian MosleyThe title of this post was the last question, asked by Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), at the Senate Appropriations hearing Tuesday afternoon. It was a telling question and got to the root of the budgetary problems facing the Federal science agencies at this point in time: would it be better to have more (modest) funding right now, which will only be cut back when the paused Sequestration starts back up in two years; or would it be best to have lower numbers now but an end to Sequestration (meaning more certainty) to allow the agencies to plan? Mikulski was clear that they couldn’t have both, as she explicitly said that the committee would be following the Murray/Ryan Budget Agreement . After she made her question, the Senator did give the witnesses an out, saying “you may not want to answer that.”
For the most part, the witnesses answered that question by saying: more certainty. Director Collins pointed out that because of the Sequester NIH lost, taking into account inflation, about 10% of its budget. He said, “a stable predictable trajectory,” for the agency’s budget was a necessity. Director Prabhakar, in saying that she needed more certainty, pointed out that DARPA is not trying to grow significantly. That combined with an 8% Sequester cut and a 12% decline in recent years means that DARPA has been hit very hard. Secretary Moniz echoed both of those positions and said DOE needs certainty. The only person who said more funding would be best was Director Cordova; she made the point that we should, “do now what we can do now.” She illustrated that by pointing out the Foundation was not able to fund about 700 proposals and that impacted around 800 scientists. That answer also made the point that there is no good/right answer here.
As for the rest of the hearing, there was very little political posturing and ideologically based questions, and both sides of the aisle felt more had to be done to get money to scientists. In fact, the next day Director Holdren was quoted as calling the hearing, “nearly a love fest.” The only instances of anything that could be called an ideological statement was when Senator Shelby (R-AL), the highest ranked Republican on the committee, said in his opening statement, “if we cannot practice fiscal discipline today, we will pay a much higher price in the future,”? while pointing out that the committee can’t simply increase funding for these agencies (in his closing statement, Senator Shelby did say he was open to giving the science agencies “leeway” with their budgets). However, Senator Blunt (R-MO), a long time supporter of research at NIH, made the counterpoint, “is the health of our country discretionary?” Neither of these statements is a surprise, given the budgetary environment of Congress; but they do demonstrate the constraints that the committee is working with and what the science agencies have to work under.
The Democratic side mainly focused on specific areas that concerned them and their state specific constituents. However, one of the more interesting exchanges was between Senator Harkin (D-IA) and Director Collins of NIH, where the Senator pointed out that it was almost impossible to get private sector funding for the Genome Initiative until the early successes of the Federally backed science showed promise. Senator Harkin, speaking off the cuff, said that an “initial Federal investment of around $3.5B produced an estimated $900B market in return.” The implication was that this is an example that shows private money will follow only when the Federally backed basic research shows promise. Beyond that, Chairwoman Mikulski had many of the best points, such as when she said she “wanted to make sure they (American scientists) can do what they’re educated to do;” which is research.
On the whole, the hearing was positive. It showed that the Federal science agencies have a good reputation with Senate Appropriators (also demonstrated with the House Appropriations Commerce, Justice, Science subcommittee passing a bill favorable to NSF and NIST). Also, there are leaders in Congress, on both sides of the aisle, who want to protect science in the budget process. This is an on-going process; the specter of Sequestration starting up again in two years is hanging over everyone. And Chairwoman Mikulski’s question is still sitting there: which would be more helpful, more money or an end to Sequestration?
Major Senate Hearing on Federal Science Investments
/In: Policy /by Brian MosleyTomorrow the full Senate Appropriations Committee will be holding an major hearing on “Driving Innovation through Federal Investments.” This is important news as the list of witnesses being called is a who’s-who of Federal science agencies: the Secretary of Energy, the President’s science advisor, and the Directors of NSF, DARPA, and NIH. Of course, you might remember the Senate Appropriations Committee from being one half of being in charge of funding the Federal Government. As I said, MAJOR hearing next week.
The Appropriations Committee chairwoman, Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), is a huge champion for science, and it’s clear that she feels the Federal Government can be doing more to spur innovation through investing in the science agencies. The science advocacy community in Washington is very excited, because our issues haven’t had such a high profile venue like this for some time.
To take advantage of that venue, CRA is joining with fifty other organizations in submitting testimony for the hearing. These organizations are organizing around the message “Close the Innovation Deficit,” which the Senate Appropriations Committee has picked up on. The term “Innovation Deficit” means the, “the widening gap between the actual level of federal government funding for research and higher education and what the investment needs to be if the United States is to remain the world’s innovation leader.” We’d highly recommend going to their website, checking out the video, and reading the testimony (it includes the other organizations which have signed on). We’ll have a recap of the hearing later in the week as well.
NSF’s Budget Request Flat for FY15
/In: Funding, FY15 Appropriations /by Peter HarshaGiven the relatively austere budget caps for FY2015 the President and Congress agreed to as part of last December’s budget agreement, the President’s relatively flat budget request for the National Science Foundation in FY2015 isn’t unexpected. In fact, the President’s request for NSF would have the agency grow just 1 percent over FY14 (to $7.3 billion), while research at the agency would actually decrease by $3 million under the President’s plan ($5.191 billion in FY14 vs. $5.188 billion in FY15).
Funding for NSF’s Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate, the home of the great bulk of NSF’s computing research and infrastructure investments, follows a similar trajectory in the President’s budget. Under the President’s plan, the CISE budget would remain at essentially the same level ($893 million) as in FY14 ($894 million). Coming after two years in which CISE did disproportionately “well” in the budget calculus, this flat budget is a little easier to bear. But it does mean that CISE AD Farnam Jahanian had to do a little reshuffling to protect priorities within the CISE budget. In particular, the directorate’s contributions to a number of cross-agency initiatives would be scaled back somewhat in order to take care of “core” research funding within the directorate.
In his letter to the computing research community, Jahanian noted four areas of priority within the directorate request: expansions of CISE foundational research; investments in crosscutting programs led by CISE; investments in advanced cyberinfrastructure, and education and workforce development.
In addition to CISE’s investments in its core foundational research, the directorate will remain a player in a number of key cross-agency programs, albeit in a slightly reduced role in some cases. Here are some details:
Cyber Enabled Materials, Manufacturing, and Smart Systems (CEMMSS): This is a $213 million program across the Foundation geared towards accelerating advances in “21st century smart engineered systems.” CISE’s investment of $81.5 million in FY15 (down from $85 million in FY14) would focus on advanced manufacturing, cyber physical systems, the National Robotics Initiative, Critical Resilient Interdependent Infrastructure Systems and Processes (CRISP) and their interaction and synthesis.
Cyberinfrastructure Framework for 21st Century Science and Engineering (CIF21): The Foundation would spend $125 million across all the major research directorates in FY15, with CISE contributing $80 million (down from $85 million in FY14). CISE’s focus includes work on Big Data, data infrastructure building blocks, building new computational and data-enabled science and engineering research communities, advancing new computational infrastructure and building partnerships.
Cognitive Science and Neuroscience: NSF’s contribution to the White House’s BRAIN initiative (with NSF, NIH and DARPA), would be $29 million foundation-wide in FY15. CISE would contribute $5.65 million vs. $3.5 million in FY14. CISE’s focus is on addressing the challenges of research integration across multiple scales and builds on ongoing NSF investments like the Collaborative Research in Computational Neuroscience collaboration with NIH, Germany and France.
Innovation Corps (I-Corps): The Foundation would invest $25 million in this program designed to accelerate innovations from the lab to the market. CISE’s contribution would grow to $10 million (up from $8 million in FY14), and Jahanian noted that given the level of interest in the program from the community, the directorate could easily invest twice as much.
Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC): The Foundation would spend $100 million on SaTC in FY15 under the President’s plan, and $67 million of that investment would be in the CISE directorate. The focus of CISE’s effort in this space is to support fundamental scientific advances and technologies to protect cyber-systems from malicious behavior, while preserving privacy and promoting usability.
Jahanian’s presentation from the NSF budget roll-out goes into additional detail about these programs and the other efforts the directorate plans for FY15, and the official justification to Congress contains even more detail. The President’s “Opportunity, Growth, and Security Initiative” — his supplemental budget request, should Congress feel the need to spend more than the caps they agreed to — includes $552 million in new spending for NSF, some of which would find its way into CISE for investments in cybersecurity, clean energy/sustainable computing, and core research activities. However, this is essentially dead on arrival in Congress. Sorry.
NIST FY15 Request
/In: FY15 Appropriations /by Brian MosleyIn our continuing series on the Fiscal Year 2015 (FY15) Presidential Budget request, we next come to NIST, or the National Institute of Standards and Technology. NIST is on the smaller size of the science agencies, budget-authority-speaking, but it is still a significant contributor for IT research.
The main part of the agency that CRA is concerned about is the Scientific and Technical Research and Services account, or STRS. This part of the agency’s budget handles the research grants, special programs, and laboratory operations of NIST. STRS is slated to receive $680 million in the president’s budget, which represents a 4.5 percent increase over the FY14 enacted levels.
The increases will go to a number of special programs that the Administration has marked as vital to the national interest. Three of these increases are in areas that are of particular concern to members of CRA. For example, the Administration is interested in increasing its investment in the “Advanced Cyber-Physical Systems for National Priorities” program. This program focuses on Cyber-physical systems, or CPSs, which, “combine the cyber and physical worlds with technologies that can respond in real time to their environments and incoming data.” CPSs were identified as a national priority for Federal R&D by PCAST. The increase in funding would be $7.5 million, bringing the total amount for the program to $11.7 million.
As well, there is a suggested increase of $5 million, for a total of $18.8 million, for the Materials Genome Initiative, “an interagency effort to dramatically influence the pace for bringing new materials to market (Found here in the Executive Summary). Through this program, “NIST is developing infrastructure to support innovation in advanced materials, including data assessment and validation, data standards and modeling and simulation tools.”
The last program of note to our readers would be the NIST’s request for $6 million to develop laboratory-to-market strategies that accelerate commercialization of federal technologies. NIST has government-wide responsibilities for ensuring that taxpayer-funded technologies are transitioned to the marketplace. Congress and the Administration have taken a particular interest in technology transfer in recent years, hoping that it will translate into jobs and economic growth.
So, on the whole, NIST is doing relatively well in the President’s Request; no serious cuts and healthy increases, for the current budget environment. We’ll have to keep a close eye on the agency as the budget process moves forward, but things are looking ok so far.
Dept of Energy FY15 Request: Good for IT Research, but with Qualifiers
/In: Funding, FY15 Appropriations /by Brian MosleyAs we mentioned, President Obama released his budget request for the Fiscal Year 2015 (FY15) on Tuesday. We’ll be doing a series of posts on the assorted agencies’ budgets that are important to the computing research community. The first agency that we want to highlight is the Department of Energy (DOE), as they released their top line numbers on March 4th (most of the other science agencies are releasing their numbers next week).
Two key parts of the agency for the computing community are the Office of Science (SC), home of most of the agency’s basic research support, and ARPA-E. For SC, the office would only see a 0.9 percent increase from FY14 to FY15 (going from $5.07B to $5.11B). However, that small overall increase masks significant gains for the subaccount that matters most to computing researchers: ASCR or Advanced Scientific Computing Research. ASCR would see a significant increase in funding, going up by 13.2 percent (or $478M in FY14 to $571M in FY15). Much of the justification for this increase is tagged to work on achieving exascale computing, application of high performance computer simulation and modeling, and operations & upgrades to ASCR facilities. ASCR would receive the largest increase within DOE SC’s request. This is obviously good, but the details are important, and we should get those soon.
As for ARPA-E (or Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy), it would see a large increase of 16.1 percent (or $280M in FY14 to $325M in FY15). This increase is to support, “transformational energy R&D…as part of a $5.2 billion DOE investment in clean energy technology programs.” While this number is encouraging, it is important to note that a large increase in ARPA-E’s budget has been a regular occurrence with Obama Administration budget requests over the years. And Congress doesn’t have a good record of passing those suggested increases. In the FY14 Omnibus, for example, the agency received just enough funding to roll back much of what it had lost to the sequester in FY13 ($275M in FY12; $252M in FY13; and $280M in FY14) but still fell well short of the President’s request for FY14 ($379M).
It is both important, and not important, to note that the President has signaled DOE as a major agency in his “Opportunity, Growth, and Security Initiative,” or his wish list of programs that ought to receive extra funding beyond the FY15 budget caps. It is important because it demonstrates that the Administration is still concerned about scientific research. However, it is not important because the Initiative is dead on arrival with Congress. Whether this is good or bad, to paraphrase Obi-Wan Kenobi, “depends greatly on a certain point of view.”
To sum up, the President’s DOE request is good news for the computing research community, at least at the top line level. Remember, detailed budget info has not been released yet and, as the saying goes, the devil is in the details. As more information is released, we’ll be posting it here, so stay tuned.
President’s Budget Request Underwhelming for Science – First Look
/In: Funding, FY15 Appropriations /by Peter HarshaSo, the good news this year was that the President and Congress were working from the same set of numbers for the first time in a long time. The bad news is that those numbers are pretty underwhelming. The President introduced his FY15 budget request today, a budget that would remain largely flat — increasing discretionary spending just $2 billion over FY14 ($1.014 trillion in FY15 vs. $1.012 trillion in FY14). NSF would grow just 1 percent (to $7.3 billion) under the “base budget” in the President’s plan. Research at NSF would actually decrease $3 million under the President’s plan ($5.191 billion in FY14 vs. $5.188 billion in FY15). (We’ll have lots more information about NSF’s budget request next Monday when the agency rolls out its detailed budget justification.)
Recognizing that the agreed-to budget caps were overly constraining for all the Administration’s priorities, the President included a $52 billion “wish list” of additional funding proposals — called the “Opportunity, Growth, and Security Initiative” — that includes increased funding for key science agencies that could be offset by cuts to farm subsidy programs, tax increases on “multi-million dollar retirement accounts,” and other spending cuts and tax increases identified by the Administration. Were that wish list to be approved by Congress, NSF could see an additional $552 million in funding (and R&D agencies overall would see an increase of $5.3 billion) However, congressional Republicans have already declared the wish list DOA.
Funding for other agencies in the President’s base budget is a bit of a mixed bag:
Keep in mind that the expected inflation rate between FY 2014 and FY 2015 is about 2 percent.
The White House has released an R&D Budget Fact sheet that goes into some of the details.
But we’ll learn more about the agency priorities as the agencies roll out their own budget request over the next week or so.
As always, we’ll have the details as we learn them!