Thanks to Spaf and Dave Farber’s Interesting-People list for the pointer to this column by The New Republic’s Jonathan Chait taking Congress to task for approving a cut to the National Science Foundation while at the same time allowing more dubious pork-barrel spending to flourish. It’s more than a little partisan, but still interesting. Here’s a bit:
The new evidence is that Congress voted last month to cut the budget for the National Science Foundation, or NSF, which supports basic scientific research. This means that next year the NSF will have about 1,000 fewer research grants. This comes at a time when scientific experts worry that the United States is losing its worldwide primacy in science and technology.
Now, some of you righties may be saying to yourselves, “Great! We scaled back another big government program.” But, remember, Republicans over at least the last decade have flaunted their support of science and technology. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich used to go on about dinosaur research and giving poor people laptop computers. Bush grandly promised a new mission to land humans on Mars in his last State of the Union address.
And the GOP commitment to science, at least until recently, very much included the NSF. Two years ago, the Republican Congress voted to double the foundation’s budget by 2007. At the time, Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard wrote that the White House considered the NSF to be one of the few “programs that work.” Its grants go out on a competitive basis.
Mitch Daniels, then Bush’s budget director, told Barnes that the NSF “has supported eight of the 12 most recent Nobel Prize awards earned by Americans at some point in their careers.”
Still, you say, don’t we face a huge deficit now? Indeed we do, but cutting support for scientific research is an incredibly mindless way to solve that problem. Deficits are bad because they represent a form of borrowing against the future. Every dollar we spend beyond our means today is one less dollar that we’ll have to spend someday down the road. But scientific research is an investment in future prosperity. Cutting the NSF budget is like a family in debt pulling its children out of college but keeping its country club membership.
CRA’s CRA-Bulletin is a free electronic bulletin that aims to inform about timely events we think will be of interest to computing researchers. This edition’s topics (frequent blog readers will have seen some of these before…):
In a story yesterday, Information Week reports that the Bush Administration will look in FY 06 to focus on R&D funding and IT policy in response to challenges that the US technological leadership is slipping globally. Here’s a snip:
While many agree that emerging economies such as China, India, and South Korea are mounting a serious challenge to the United States’ long-held role as the leading technology innovator, some question the administration’s focus on the task at hand and its ability to deliver adequate funding given the burgeoning federal deficit.
“The Bush administration’s philosophy is to create an environment for innovation and an environment for participation,” says Phillip Bond, the Commerce Department’s undersecretary for technology.
Federal research and development funding, crucial to the administration’s ability to create innovative technologies, has increased 44% since 2001, Bond says. The administration contributes $2 billion annually to networking and IT R&D alone at agencies such as the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology, the National Science Foundation, and areas within the Defense Department. The Bush administration has also allocated $1 billion for the development of nanotechnology and taken an interest in quantum communication, an emerging encryption system.
The article doesn’t note whether any of the Administration’s focus will result in increased funding for IT R&D — and I don’t have any information on that either — but it’s worth pointing out that the 44% figure quoted by Bond above isn’t reflected in the actual amounts spent (and requested) for federal IT R&D spending from FY 01 – FY 05 (as can be seen on the bottom half of this chart). As others have noted, the bulk of that 44% increase has gone to the Defense Department, which is increasing its support for more short-term, development-oriented research and de-emphasizing long-term, fundamental research. Here’s more on CRA’s concerns about DOD research.
But keep it tuned here for all the details of the President’s FY 06 budget request, due February 7th…. Update: Also forgot that I’d whipped up this little chart that showed how Federal IT R&D funding had fared in the various Administrations. Here’s the post in which it originally appeared, which contains detail on how the chart was assembled.
[I may be on vacation in soggy LA, but computing research policy waits for no one! So here’s an update from the road…]
The National Academies have released their long-awaited report, Assessment of Department of Defense Basic Research. This is the study that was requested by the Senate Armed Services Committee in the FY 2004 Defense Authorization Act after they raised questions about the state of DOD basic research (“6.1” research in defense parlance) as part of the hearings leading up to the bill.
The NAS panel’s recommendations mirror a lot of things we’ve been saying about the DOD research — mainly that it’s become less basic and it’s declining in both absolute dollars and as a percentage of the overall DOD science and technology budget. The full report doesn’t seem to be online (I get an error at the NAS link above), but here’s a copy of the summary (pdf, ~740k). I haven’t read the full report so far, but from the executive summary the recommendations are worth reading:
Recommendations Recommendation 1. The Department of Defense should change its definition of basic research to the following:
Basic research is systematic study directed toward greater knowledge or understanding of the fundamental aspects of phenomena and has the potential for broad, rather than specific, application. It includes all scientific study and experimentation directed toward increasing fundamental knowledge and understanding in those fields of the physical, engineering, environmental, social, and life sciences related to longterm national security needs. It is farsighted high-payoff research that provides the bases for technological progress. Basic research may lead to (a) subsequent applied research and advance technology developments in Defense-related technologies, (b) new and improved military functional capabilities, or (c) the discovery of new knowledge that may later lead to more focused advances in areas relevant to the Department of Defense.
Recommendation 2. The Department of Defense should include the following attributes in its guidance to basic research managers and direct that these attributes be used to characterize 6.1-funded research: a spirit that seeks first and foremost to discover new fundamental understanding, flexibility to modify goals or approaches in the near term based on discovery, freedom to pursue unexpected paths opened by new insights, high-risk research questions with the potential for high payoff in future developments, minimum requirements for detailed reporting, open communications with other researchers and external peers, freedom to publish in journals and present at meetings without restriction and permission, unrestricted involvement of students and postdoctoral candidates, no restrictions on the nationality of researchers, and stable funding for an agreed timetable to carry out the research. Recommendation 3. The Department of Defense should abandon its view of basic research as being part of a sequential or linear process of research and development (in this view, the results of basic research are handed off to applied research, the results of applied research are handed off to advanced technology development, and so forth). Instead, the DOD should view basic research, applied research, and the other phases of research and development as continuing activities that occur in parallel, with numerous supporting connections among them. Recommendation 4. The Department of Defense should set the balance of support within 6.1 basic research more in favor of unfettered exploration than of research related to short-term needs. Recommendation 5. Senior Department of Defense leadership should clearly communicate to research managers its understanding of the need for long-term exploration and discovery. Recommendation 6. Personnel policies should provide for the needed continuity of research management in order to ensure a cadre of experienced managers capable of exercising the level of authority needed to effectively direct research resources. Further, in light of the reductions in positions reported to the Committee on Department of Defense Basic Research, the Department of Defense should carefully examine the adequacy of the number of basic research management positions. Recommendation 7. The Department of Defense should redress the imbalance between its current basic research allocation, which has declined critically over the past decade, and its need to better support the expanded areas of technology, the need for increased unfettered basic research, and the support of new researchers. Recommendation 8. The Department of Defense should, through its funding and policies for university research, encourage increased participation by younger researchers as principal investigators. Recommendation 9. To avoid weakening the long and fruitful partnership between universities and Department of Defense agencies, DOD agreements and subagreements with universities for basic research should recognize National Security Decision Directive 189, the fundamental research exclusion providing for the open and unrestricted character of basic research. DOD program managers should also explicitly retain the authority to negotiate export compliance clauses out of basic research grants to universities, on the basis of both the programs specific technologies and its objectives.
The Wall Street Journal online edition has an interesting article on the federal budget deficit and the President’s plan for overcoming it. Included is some info about the impact of appropriation cuts on the National Science Foundation and a good primer on the challenge facing the President and Congress in looking for other places to cut. But the one nugget that caught my eye was this:
For fiscal 2005, the growth in [non-defense] domestic spending was held to just 0.8%. At that rate, spending in this area will decline as a portion of the overall budget. Yet the president aims to shrink this piece even further. In February, Mr. Bush will call for a spending freeze for fiscal 2006, according to people familiar with administration’s deliberations. [emph. added]
No additional detail in the article, but this would obviously be a very bad thing for an agency like NSF, which saw it’s overall budget cut for FY 05. But it’s hard to know whether this means the President is hoping to hold the discretionary spending number even overall (which would mean NSF could grow as long as some other agency shrinks), or just a flat freeze on FY 06 numbers (ie, FY 05 = FY 06). In either case, this is yet another sign that FY 06 promises to be a very difficult one for science funding.
In a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy, researchers at Penn State University determined that the National Science Foundation is the “most acknowledged” agency in computing research. The researchers “text-mined” 335,000 papers in computer science in the CiteSeer database and discovered the science agency had been acknowledged 12,287 times. DARPA was second with 4,712 acknowledgments (though, using a different metric — citations to acknowledgements — DARPA came in first and NSF third, “suggesting that DARPA funds only established researchers who already have done high impact work.”)
I suppose, given the current trends in IT R&D funding, NSF’s top rank shouldn’t be surprising….
Here’s the PSU press release. Thanks to Tim Finin for the head’s up!
The Council on Competitiveness’ long-awaited report on their National Innovation Initiative is now out (pdf) and contains some very strong recommendations in support of the federal role in funding fundamental research. Here’s a first brief peek at their recommendations for “[Revitalizing] Frontier and Multidisciplinary Research”:
Spur radical innovation by reallocating three percent of all federal agency R&D budgets toward “Innovation Acceleration” grants that invest in novel, high-risk and exploratory research.
Affirm the goal set in the Quadrennial Defense Review (2001) and by the Defense Science Board that at least three percent of the total Department of Defense budget be allocated for defense science and technology. Within this amount, the Department of Defenses historic commitment to fundamental knowledge creation should be restored by directing at least 20 percent of the total Department of Defense science and technology budget to long-term, basic (6.1) research performed at the nations universities and national laboratories.
Increase significantly the research budgets of agencies that support basic research in the physical sciences and engineering, and complete the commitment to double the NSF budget. These increases should strive to ensure that the federal commitment of research to all federal agencies totals one percent of U.S. GDP.
Allocate an increasing proportion of future research funding at universities to multi-and interdisciplinary research — and to the facilities and research infrastructure to support it.
Recognize “services science” as a new academic discipline — and encourage universities, community colleges and industry to partner in developing curricula and in training a workforce focused on services and enterprise transformation.
Enact a permanent, restructured R&E tax credit and extend the credit to research conducted in university-industry consortia
As the FY 05 appropriations process demonstrated, the current organization of congressional appropriationssubcommittees (and thus, appropriations bills) is a mess that puts science agencies at a disadvantage in the competition for federal dollars. The current structure is a mish-mash of jurisdictions that forces agencies that have little or nothing to do with each other to compete for the limited funds within each bill — one bill pits the National Science Foundation and NASA against the Veteran’s Administration and federal housing programs, for example, and in another, it’s NIST and NOAA against the State Department. More often than not, in that competition the science agencies get the short end of the stick.
But there’s an interesting proposal floating around DC to recast the appropriations panels to make their jurisdictions more sensible. Normally, a proposal to realign something as significant as the 13 appropriations committees would be dead on arrival — especially a proposal like this one, which would reduce the number of subcommittees, and therefore subcommittee chairmen (called “cardinals” in deference to their power), from 13 to 10. But this one is being floated by the most powerful man in the House (and probably Congress), House Majority Leader Tom Delay (R-TX), and has the backing of the House GOP leadership.
Delay’s motive in proposing the reorganization is apparently to realign the committees to represent GOP and Democratic themes, according to CQ’s (sub. req’d) Andrew Taylor. So, there’d be a “Regulatory Agencies” subcommittee that would include agencies like OSHA, another that would combine all of the funding for Congress, the White House, and the Judicial branch, and another for traditionally Democratic priorities like public housing. In the few news reports I’ve seen on the proposal, there hasn’t been any mention of a subcommittee combining all the non-defense agencies for science. But a subcommittee comprised of the civilian science agencies seems like a logical part of any reorganization — and indeed, the rumors circulating around town suggest it is.
I haven’t seen the proposal, but I think it would be reasonable to assume that a “Science” subcommittee would have to include appropriations for NIH, NSF, DOE Science, NASA, NIST, and NOAA — basically all the major non-defense agencies involved in research. Obviously, a reorganization of that magnitude would change the dynamics of the appropriations process for science. I’ve been doing some thinking about whether it would be a positive or negative change. I’m coming to the conclusion that it would probably be positive overall…but I’m open to feedback from a different perspective. (Some of this may seem “inside baseball,” but I think it’s important.)
I think the first change is that the annual 302(b) budget allocation — the divvying up of the funds authorized by the annual Congressional Budget Resolution (CBR) into spending limits for each appropriations bill — would become much more meaningful for the scientific community. In the current system, we advocate for science in the CBR, but it’s a little disconnected from the 302(b) process. We advocate for the highest possible “Function 250” line — the “General Science, Space and Technology” line in the CBR — but that doesn’t obviously translate into increased funding for any of the appropriations bills we care about because that function is an aggregate that gets split among a whole bunch of different appropriations bills. We could advocate for the highest possible 302(b) allocation for specific approps bills, like the VA-HUD-Independent Agencies appropriation, which includes NSF and NASA funding, but there’s no guarantee that any of that increased funding will go towards the science agencies in that bill.
With an Appropriations Subcommittee for Science there would be a corresponding 302(b) allocation for “Science.” If we’re looking to draw a bright line for science in the budget process, that’s about as bright as it gets. There would be no doubt whether Congress was supportive of science in any particular year — a look at the 302(b) allocation would tell you.
Drafting the Science Appropriations Bill each year would also be an interesting exercise. With essentially all of the civilian research agencies represented under one subcommittee’s jurisdiction, there would be few hurdles to overcome to address issues of balance in the federal research portfolio, for example. Federal gov’t focused too heavily on the life sciences? The committee would have the authority to reprogram money from NIH to NSF or DOE Science. Too much applied research and not enough basic? Reprogram NIST ATP money to NSF. Can’t do that under the current arrangement. There may also be efficiencies that result from having everything in one place. Coordinating research activities across research agencies may be easier when agencies can’t hide behind the stovepipes of different appropriations committees.
Of course, the appropriators could just as easily reverse the situation under this scenario — reprogram NSF funds to NIST ATP to bolster applied research, NSF to NIH to bolster life sciences. But it seems to me that, in general, we’d be well-positioned in those debates. Under the current committee structure, those debates are essentially impossible.
So, I think it’d be a net positive for us and for science generally. But I’m open to arguments in opposition.
Assuming this reorganization is a good idea, the next question is what we in the science community can do to help it go forward. Politically, the odds are against reorganization, even with Delay and the House GOP Leadership strongly in favor. If it were up to the House alone, it would probably be a done deal. Delay has ensured himself significant political capital by delivering an increased majority to the GOP in the House via his almost single-handed redistricting push in Texas. In addition, there will be a new Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee in the 109th Congress, and the House leadership will play the primary role in deciding who that will be (it’s looking like Ralph Regula (R-OH)), so they’ll have considerable leverage in guaranteeing support for their proposal.
The real hurdle is the Senate. As a practical matter, any reorganization of the House Approps Committee will have to be mirrored in the Senate Approps Committee — otherwise, conferencing the various appropriations bills will be chaos. The Senate will also have a new Appropriations Chair, Thad Cochran (R-MS), who has expressed opposition to the proposal. (In particular, he doesn’t like the idea that it would eliminate the Agriculture Subcommittee, which he chaired). The opposition might not be unanimous across the Senate — CQ says the Senate leadership apparently isn’t “dismissive” of the idea — but it’s a long shot. I think if the science community does decide to weigh in in support of the proposal, focusing our efforts on the Senate — Cochran in particular — would be the best approach.
But even if the proposal doesn’t have a great chance of going forward, I think it’s beneficial for Congress to have the reorganization debate…especially if an element of that debate is the potential benefit to U.S. science a reorganization might bring.
According to this report at Space.com, NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe will step down this week and may take a position at Lousiana State University. Apparently the former head of DOD’s anti-ballistic missile shield program, Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, is the leading candidate to replace him, though the others mentioned as possibilities are interesting:
Former Rep. Bob Walker, former Chair of the House Science Committee and now big-time DC lobbyist
Ron Sega, current head of DDR&E at the Pentagon, and a former astronaut
Two other former astronauts, Charles Bolden and Robert Crippen.
Here’s a snippet from the space.com article:
CAPE CANAVERAL — NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe will resign this week, and the retired director of the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency tops a list of five men that President Bush is considering to take over the space agency, FLORIDA TODAY has learned.
Louisiana State University is aggressively recruiting O’Keefe to become the Baton Rouge, La., school’s next chancellor. O’Keefe said he is interested in the job, and school officials told FLORIDA TODAY a deal could be made this week.
Meanwhile, a White House team is weighing five candidates and plans to announce O’Keefe’s departure and pick a new NASA administrator by Thursday, according to a source familiar with the selection process.
His name is Sam Bodman, formerly Deputy Secretary of Commerce and a former Associate Professor in chemical engineering at MIT. That’s about all I know about him at the moment. If confirmed, he’ll replace current Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham.
The President’s announcement is here.
Abraham’s press release is here.
And Sherry Boehlert, Chair of the House Science Committee, has a release, too.
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Catching Up: Chait Dings Congress for Slashing NSF While Boosting Pork
/In: Funding /by Peter HarshaThanks to Spaf and Dave Farber’s Interesting-People list for the pointer to this column by The New Republic’s Jonathan Chait taking Congress to task for approving a cut to the National Science Foundation while at the same time allowing more dubious pork-barrel spending to flourish. It’s more than a little partisan, but still interesting. Here’s a bit:
Read the whole thing here.
The New CRA-Bulletin is Out!
/In: CRA /by Peter HarshaCRA’s CRA-Bulletin is a free electronic bulletin that aims to inform about timely events we think will be of interest to computing researchers. This edition’s topics (frequent blog readers will have seen some of these before…):
If you don’t receive CRB and you want to, you can find subscription information at the bottom here.
R&D Funding And IT Policy To Play Major Role In Bush’s Second Term, Information Week reports
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaIn a story yesterday, Information Week reports that the Bush Administration will look in FY 06 to focus on R&D funding and IT policy in response to challenges that the US technological leadership is slipping globally. Here’s a snip:
The article doesn’t note whether any of the Administration’s focus will result in increased funding for IT R&D — and I don’t have any information on that either — but it’s worth pointing out that the 44% figure quoted by Bond above isn’t reflected in the actual amounts spent (and requested) for federal IT R&D spending from FY 01 – FY 05 (as can be seen on the bottom half of this chart). As others have noted, the bulk of that 44% increase has gone to the Defense Department, which is increasing its support for more short-term, development-oriented research and de-emphasizing long-term, fundamental research. Here’s more on CRA’s concerns about DOD research.
But keep it tuned here for all the details of the President’s FY 06 budget request, due February 7th….
Update: Also forgot that I’d whipped up this little chart that showed how Federal IT R&D funding had fared in the various Administrations. Here’s the post in which it originally appeared, which contains detail on how the chart was assembled.
New NAS Report on 6.1 Research at DOD
/In: Policy /by Peter Harsha[I may be on vacation in soggy LA, but computing research policy waits for no one! So here’s an update from the road…]
The National Academies have released their long-awaited report, Assessment of Department of Defense Basic Research. This is the study that was requested by the Senate Armed Services Committee in the FY 2004 Defense Authorization Act after they raised questions about the state of DOD basic research (“6.1” research in defense parlance) as part of the hearings leading up to the bill.
The NAS panel’s recommendations mirror a lot of things we’ve been saying about the DOD research — mainly that it’s become less basic and it’s declining in both absolute dollars and as a percentage of the overall DOD science and technology budget. The full report doesn’t seem to be online (I get an error at the NAS link above), but here’s a copy of the summary (pdf, ~740k). I haven’t read the full report so far, but from the executive summary the recommendations are worth reading:
Funding Freeze for FY 2006?
/In: Funding /by Peter HarshaThe Wall Street Journal online edition has an interesting article on the federal budget deficit and the President’s plan for overcoming it. Included is some info about the impact of appropriation cuts on the National Science Foundation and a good primer on the challenge facing the President and Congress in looking for other places to cut. But the one nugget that caught my eye was this:
No additional detail in the article, but this would obviously be a very bad thing for an agency like NSF, which saw it’s overall budget cut for FY 05. But it’s hard to know whether this means the President is hoping to hold the discretionary spending number even overall (which would mean NSF could grow as long as some other agency shrinks), or just a flat freeze on FY 06 numbers (ie, FY 05 = FY 06). In either case, this is yet another sign that FY 06 promises to be a very difficult one for science funding.
NSF Most Thanked Agency in Computer Science
/In: Research /by Peter HarshaIn a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy, researchers at Penn State University determined that the National Science Foundation is the “most acknowledged” agency in computing research. The researchers “text-mined” 335,000 papers in computer science in the CiteSeer database and discovered the science agency had been acknowledged 12,287 times. DARPA was second with 4,712 acknowledgments (though, using a different metric — citations to acknowledgements — DARPA came in first and NSF third, “suggesting that DARPA funds only established researchers who already have done high impact work.”)
I suppose, given the current trends in IT R&D funding, NSF’s top rank shouldn’t be surprising….
Here’s the PSU press release. Thanks to Tim Finin for the head’s up!
Competitiveness Report Cites Need for “Significantly” Increased Federal R&D Funds
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaThe Council on Competitiveness’ long-awaited report on their National Innovation Initiative is now out (pdf) and contains some very strong recommendations in support of the federal role in funding fundamental research. Here’s a first brief peek at their recommendations for “[Revitalizing] Frontier and Multidisciplinary Research”:
I’ll have more as I get through the report….
Could An Appropriations Reorganization Help U.S. Science?
/In: Funding, Policy /by Peter HarshaAs the FY 05 appropriations process demonstrated, the current organization of congressional appropriations subcommittees (and thus, appropriations bills) is a mess that puts science agencies at a disadvantage in the competition for federal dollars. The current structure is a mish-mash of jurisdictions that forces agencies that have little or nothing to do with each other to compete for the limited funds within each bill — one bill pits the National Science Foundation and NASA against the Veteran’s Administration and federal housing programs, for example, and in another, it’s NIST and NOAA against the State Department. More often than not, in that competition the science agencies get the short end of the stick.
But there’s an interesting proposal floating around DC to recast the appropriations panels to make their jurisdictions more sensible. Normally, a proposal to realign something as significant as the 13 appropriations committees would be dead on arrival — especially a proposal like this one, which would reduce the number of subcommittees, and therefore subcommittee chairmen (called “cardinals” in deference to their power), from 13 to 10. But this one is being floated by the most powerful man in the House (and probably Congress), House Majority Leader Tom Delay (R-TX), and has the backing of the House GOP leadership.
Delay’s motive in proposing the reorganization is apparently to realign the committees to represent GOP and Democratic themes, according to CQ’s (sub. req’d) Andrew Taylor. So, there’d be a “Regulatory Agencies” subcommittee that would include agencies like OSHA, another that would combine all of the funding for Congress, the White House, and the Judicial branch, and another for traditionally Democratic priorities like public housing. In the few news reports I’ve seen on the proposal, there hasn’t been any mention of a subcommittee combining all the non-defense agencies for science. But a subcommittee comprised of the civilian science agencies seems like a logical part of any reorganization — and indeed, the rumors circulating around town suggest it is.
I haven’t seen the proposal, but I think it would be reasonable to assume that a “Science” subcommittee would have to include appropriations for NIH, NSF, DOE Science, NASA, NIST, and NOAA — basically all the major non-defense agencies involved in research. Obviously, a reorganization of that magnitude would change the dynamics of the appropriations process for science. I’ve been doing some thinking about whether it would be a positive or negative change. I’m coming to the conclusion that it would probably be positive overall…but I’m open to feedback from a different perspective. (Some of this may seem “inside baseball,” but I think it’s important.)
I think the first change is that the annual 302(b) budget allocation — the divvying up of the funds authorized by the annual Congressional Budget Resolution (CBR) into spending limits for each appropriations bill — would become much more meaningful for the scientific community. In the current system, we advocate for science in the CBR, but it’s a little disconnected from the 302(b) process. We advocate for the highest possible “Function 250” line — the “General Science, Space and Technology” line in the CBR — but that doesn’t obviously translate into increased funding for any of the appropriations bills we care about because that function is an aggregate that gets split among a whole bunch of different appropriations bills. We could advocate for the highest possible 302(b) allocation for specific approps bills, like the VA-HUD-Independent Agencies appropriation, which includes NSF and NASA funding, but there’s no guarantee that any of that increased funding will go towards the science agencies in that bill.
With an Appropriations Subcommittee for Science there would be a corresponding 302(b) allocation for “Science.” If we’re looking to draw a bright line for science in the budget process, that’s about as bright as it gets. There would be no doubt whether Congress was supportive of science in any particular year — a look at the 302(b) allocation would tell you.
Drafting the Science Appropriations Bill each year would also be an interesting exercise. With essentially all of the civilian research agencies represented under one subcommittee’s jurisdiction, there would be few hurdles to overcome to address issues of balance in the federal research portfolio, for example. Federal gov’t focused too heavily on the life sciences? The committee would have the authority to reprogram money from NIH to NSF or DOE Science. Too much applied research and not enough basic? Reprogram NIST ATP money to NSF. Can’t do that under the current arrangement. There may also be efficiencies that result from having everything in one place. Coordinating research activities across research agencies may be easier when agencies can’t hide behind the stovepipes of different appropriations committees.
Of course, the appropriators could just as easily reverse the situation under this scenario — reprogram NSF funds to NIST ATP to bolster applied research, NSF to NIH to bolster life sciences. But it seems to me that, in general, we’d be well-positioned in those debates. Under the current committee structure, those debates are essentially impossible.
So, I think it’d be a net positive for us and for science generally. But I’m open to arguments in opposition.
Assuming this reorganization is a good idea, the next question is what we in the science community can do to help it go forward. Politically, the odds are against reorganization, even with Delay and the House GOP Leadership strongly in favor. If it were up to the House alone, it would probably be a done deal. Delay has ensured himself significant political capital by delivering an increased majority to the GOP in the House via his almost single-handed redistricting push in Texas. In addition, there will be a new Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee in the 109th Congress, and the House leadership will play the primary role in deciding who that will be (it’s looking like Ralph Regula (R-OH)), so they’ll have considerable leverage in guaranteeing support for their proposal.
The real hurdle is the Senate. As a practical matter, any reorganization of the House Approps Committee will have to be mirrored in the Senate Approps Committee — otherwise, conferencing the various appropriations bills will be chaos. The Senate will also have a new Appropriations Chair, Thad Cochran (R-MS), who has expressed opposition to the proposal. (In particular, he doesn’t like the idea that it would eliminate the Agriculture Subcommittee, which he chaired). The opposition might not be unanimous across the Senate — CQ says the Senate leadership apparently isn’t “dismissive” of the idea — but it’s a long shot. I think if the science community does decide to weigh in in support of the proposal, focusing our efforts on the Senate — Cochran in particular — would be the best approach.
But even if the proposal doesn’t have a great chance of going forward, I think it’s beneficial for Congress to have the reorganization debate…especially if an element of that debate is the potential benefit to U.S. science a reorganization might bring.
More Science Agency Shakeups
/In: People /by Peter HarshaAccording to this report at Space.com, NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe will step down this week and may take a position at Lousiana State University. Apparently the former head of DOD’s anti-ballistic missile shield program, Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, is the leading candidate to replace him, though the others mentioned as possibilities are interesting:
Here’s a snippet from the space.com article:
President Nominates New Energy Secretary
/In: People /by Peter HarshaHis name is Sam Bodman, formerly Deputy Secretary of Commerce and a former Associate Professor in chemical engineering at MIT. That’s about all I know about him at the moment. If confirmed, he’ll replace current Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham.
The President’s announcement is here.
Abraham’s press release is here.
And Sherry Boehlert, Chair of the House Science Committee, has a release, too.