On a largely partly-line vote last week, the U.S. House of Representatives advanced legislation to reauthorize the National Science Foundation and other U.S. Science Agencies. The scientific community largely opposed the bill, H.R. 1806, the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2015, because of cuts to funding for the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE) and the Geosciences (GEO) directorates and other concerns.
With all Democrats and 23 Republicans opposing H.R. 1806, the bill passed the House 217-205 and now waits for action by the Senate, which seems to be developing their legislation separately. Already, Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) has introduced a bipartisan bill for the Department of Energy portion of COMPETES, that has been welcomed by the scientific community.
Like the predecessor bill in the previous Congress for the NSF portion of the bill—see this March 17, 2014 House Science Committee Advances Controversial NSF Reauthorization Bill—the scientific community has opposed H.R. 1806. Indeed, the minority website for the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee has an extensive list of scientific groups voicing concern of the bill (with the ASA being represented through the letters of COSSA, CNSF, and the Task Force on American Innovation.) I have not located letters in support of H.R. 1806 on the majority corresponding website but the question was raised by Congressman Bill Foster (D-IL) in committee mark-up and Chairman Smith (R-TX) listed many supporting organizations which did not seem to include universities or professional associations. The Office of Management and Budget also issued a strong Statement of Administration Policy opposing H.R. 1806.
As stated above, the primary objection by the scientific community to the NSF portion of H.R. 1806 is its provisions to limit or cut the SBE and GEO budgets. For SBE, the bill authorizes $150 million in FY16 (of which $50 million would go for the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics), a 45% cut from its FY15 level of $272 million. For GEO, the bill authorizes $1.200 billion, an 8% cut below the FY15 level of $1.304 billion. The SBE cuts are particularly concerning to the statistical community because, as mentioned last year in Ron Wasserstein's blog entry on ASA Advocacy, the SBE "directorate funds important research across the board but two of the more important components [for the statistical community] are the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics and the Methodology, Measurement, and Statistics Program." To date, the scientific community has stood united in opposing cuts to any single directorate.
As discussed in this ScienceInsider article by Jeff Mervis, After 2-year battle, House passes COMPETES Act on mostly party-line vote, the bill would also "tighten the strings on NSF’s grantsmaking process in ways that Republicans say are simply meant to serve the national interest but that most scientists consider too restrictive." (See Debate sharpens over proposed criteria for NSF grants; Science subscription required.)
In terms of the actual impact of this bill on NSF funding, the Nature article on this bill, US lawmakers advance controversial science-policy bill, points out the "House measure suggests — but does not determine — funding levels for the NSF, the DOE’s science office and NIST. Doling out the cash is the job of the House and Senate appropriations committees, which, each year, write spending bills for consideration by the full US Congress." Already, however, the GEO and SBE cuts in COMPETES are reflected in the FY16 House bill funding NSF: House spending panel does its best to hide large cut to NSF social and geosciences research. Further the House FY16 CJS bill report language includes this stipulation, echoing a component of H.R. 1806:
The Committee supports section
106 of the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2015,
H.R. 1806, as reported, that enhances transparency and accountability
of NSF grants by requiring that public award abstracts articulate
how the projects serve the national interest. The Committee
understands that NSF has already taken steps to implement
these transparency processes. NSF is directed to comply with
section 106 and provide periodic updates to the Committee on its
transparency activities.
As I wrote previously, "The original COMPETES Act was a response to the National Academies' 2007 report, Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future, written by the Committee on Prospering in the Global Economy of the 21st Century: An Agenda for American Science and Technology. The report warned of the U.S. losing its lead in research and innovation, which in turn undermined U.S. economic competitiveness in the global economy. It urged large boosts in basic research funding and a strengthening of our STEM education system. The 2007 and 2010 COMPETES act authorized increased in basic research funding, with the former approving a seven-year doubling path and the latter a ten-year doubling path." The new COMPETES bill authorizes budgets for NSF in FY16 and FY17 that would not keep up with inflationary increases through FY17. (The bill authorizes a 3.5 percent increase over FY15 in FY16 but provides no increase in FY17 over FY16.)
For more on this bill (besides the hyperlinks above, see the extensive COSSA analysis of the bill.
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