WEISS'S NOTEBOOK

Down Payment on a Scientific Future

Grim Stimulus Prospects Turn to Long-Needed Support

A funny thing happened when Senate and House conferees got together to hammer out the details of a final stimulus bill. The overall bump for the science budget, which had been encouragingly substantial in the original House version but got largely gutted in the Senate, ended up even bigger than it was in the initial House proposal.

Senate-House conferences are closed door affairs, and a clear picture of the horse-trading that went on in that room (with record-breaking speed, we might add; amazing what Congress can do when a holiday week is nigh) may not leak out for some time. Moreover, not every segment of the U.S. scientific enterprise came out ahead. The Centers for Disease Control, a perennial Congressional stepchild (when it’s not a full-blown whipping boy) got largely stiffed, despite a frightening array of looming public health issues on the horizon. And NASA is going to have to trim a few celestial sails.

But the end-product of this harrowing political process—$ 21.5 billion, or the equivalent of about a 15 percent “tip” on top of conventional, government-wide, annual science appropriations—reflects with gratifying fidelity President Obama’s oft-repeated commitment to get science and technology back on track after eight years of government-inflicted starvation and abuse.

Things were looking grim a few days ago. The National Science Foundation, for example, which is the major government funder of physical sciences and science education-related research in this country, had been in line to get $3 billion under the House plan, until the Senate trimmed that figure to $1.2 billion. But when conferees came out of their huddle, squinting in the limelight like a gaggle of groundhogs in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, funding had been restored—not to some compromise level but to the full $3 billion.

That bolus of money represents about half again what the NSF typically gets appropriated per year, and it is in line to be spent immediately—to fund grants that have already passed peer-review, to support science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education programs, and to purchase equipment and finance building construction.

The Department of Energy enjoyed a similar reprieve. After the House voted to authorize $1.6 billion for that department’s Office of Science and an additional $400 million for the new Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy, or ARPA-E, the Senate reduced the science office allocation by about four-fifths to a mere $330 million and totally zeroed out the ARPA-E budget. At the end of the conference, however, both were fully funded again.

“I’m especially glad to see funding that will establish ARPA-E eighteen months after it was signed into law,” Rep. Bart Gordon (D-TN), chairman of the House Committee on Science and Technology, said in a news release suffused with an almost palpable sense of relief. ARPA is designed to mimic the renowned Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, which has successfully pursued especially creative, blue-skies initiatives for the defense community. “Besides pursuing the high-risk, high-reward research, I believe ARPA-E is uniquely positioned to be the bridge to the new energy economy—and, with it, the ‘green’ jobs we need, the same way DARPA formed the underpinnings of the multi-billion dollar defense industry,” Gordon said.

The National Institutes of Health also pulled a rabbit out of its hat—though in this case it was the Senate language that saved the day. The House had promised $3.9 billion, and the Senate had upped that ante to $10.4 billion—a one-time boost amounting to more than a third of that agency’s standard operating budget. In the end, the Senate language carried the day, providing a long-needed cash infusion for the nation’s premier biomedical research agency, which has been flat-funded for the past five years.

These are important victories and, we can hope, down-payments on a debt to science that America is at last poised to repay. But the work of rebuilding the nation’s scientific infrastructure is far from complete.

NASA, for example, did not fare as well. The embattled agency, which faces tough decisions in the next few years as the shuttle program winds down and as other priorities—including climate-change-related earth observation research—orbit aimlessly as though weightless in limbo, was in line to get $600 million from the House while the Senate had pushed for fully $1.3 billion. In the end, it was told to settle for a compromise of $1 billion.

Worse, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which has important responsibilities in the arena of climate research and monitoring and whose leader, the widely renowned marine scientist Jane Lubchenco, is poised to be confirmed by the Senate any day now, had been in line to get $1 billion under the House plan and a tad more under the Senate plan but came out of conference with just $833 million.

Similarly, the ever-inadequately funded U.S. Geological Survey—the only science office within the Interior Department, responsible for earth science, as well as research on earthquakes and other natural disasters—had hopes of getting $200 million under the House plan but is now in line to get just $140 million, just a hair above the penurious $135 million recommended by the Senate.

And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has long had a deserving hand extended for physical plant improvements, and was at last in line to get either $462 million (House) or $412 million (Senate) for buildings, ended up with not a penny from the conferees.

Finally, in an especially worrisomely short-sighted decision, House-Senate conferees zeroed out the $420 million that the House had recommended for pandemic flu preparations under the Department of Health and Human Services, despite accumulating evidence that a terrible emergency is brewing in Asian chicken farms. They also offered no funding at all for HHS biodefense countermeasures.

When it comes to bird flu, it seems, Congress has its head in the sand, hoping to get by on two wings and a prayer.

Rick Weiss is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and Science Progress.

Tags: funding, NIH, NSF

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