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Month: June 2012

This Week in Congress

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The House was in recess last week, while the Senate kept itself busy with continued consideration of the “Farm Bill”. This bill authorizes agricultural research programs, as well as a host of other programs that support the US agriculture industry. The Senate Appropriations Committee also considered a few more spending bills, including the FYFiscal Year 2013 Financial Services spending bill and the FYFiscal Year 2013 Labor-HHS-Education bill, which funds the National Institutes of Health. Both the House and Senate will be in session this week, beginning the busy rush that will lead up to the 4th of July recess week.

Appropriations & the Sequester:  Having passed nearly half their annual spending bills, House appropriators return this week expecting to take on three additional FY 2013 measures:  Interior-Environment, Transportation-HUD, and Agriculture. However, slow-moving negotiations on a long-term surface transportation reauthorization (highway and transit programs) could force leaders to hold off on moving the spending bill for the departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which would provide $51.6 billion in discretionary funding.

Appropriators from both chambers are seeking answers from the Obama Administration on how it plans to carry out automatic spending cuts (sequester) early next year, as directed by the Budget Control Act approved last August.  Senate appropriators unanimously backed a recent provision that would require the administration to report to Congress with details about how the sequester would be applied. That provision in the Senate Financial Services Appropriation bill is nearly identical to language found in the House Financial Services draft bill. It would require the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which is funded under the measure, to send Congress a list of each account that would be subject to the automatic cuts, organized by appropriations subcommittee, within 60 days of enactment. It also would require the President to report within 30 days on how the sequester would be applied for FY 2013 based either on appropriations bills or the current rate of a continuing resolution (CR), if one is in effect.

Surface Transportation Negotiations:  House and Senate negotiators say they are still talking about a new surface transportation bill but the two chambers now face a serious schedule crunch. The House officially gets back to work this afternoon following a weeklong recess, which leaves just two weeks of work before the next scheduled recess period. With the two sides still so far apart on big issues, more observers now think Congress will have to extend current road and transit programs so they don’t expire at the end of this month.

The next two weeks is critical for lawmakers as they try to finish the highway bill, and at the same time they are negotiating final legislation on student loan interest rates, flood insurance, Food and Drug Administration user fees, and farm policy. And to add fuel to the fire, their attention could be diverted at any moment from a pending Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act.

“DREAM Act” Closer to Reality

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President Obama took executive action today to end the deportation of people who would be eligible for the DREAM Act if it were enacted. The new policy, effective immediately, will grant the people eligible for the program renewable, deferred action on their immigration status and the ability to apply for work authorization. The DREAM Act would provide a path to citizenship for illegal immigrant children who go to college or join the military, but it has been blocked in Congress. This will certainly become a big issue in the presidential campaign.

NRC Report on Research Universities

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This morning the National Research Council’s (NRC) Committee on Research Universities released the long anticipated 220-page report:  Research Universities and the Future of America: Ten Breakthrough Actions Vital to Our Nation’s Prosperity and Security. In the report, the committee states: “America’s public research universities are at great risk” and makes 10 major recommendations, including calling for the “nation to reaffirm and revitalize the unique partnership that has long existed among the nation’s research universities, federal government, states, business and industry.”

The Committee’s report is a follow-up to NRC’s 2007 landmark report, Rising Above the Gathering Storm, and examines the health and competitiveness of the nation’s research universities.  Senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) and Representatives Bart Gordon (D-TN) and Ralph Hall (R-TX) requested the report in 2009.

You can also get more information and download a copy of the Executive Summary from the NRC website.

Senate L-HHS-ED Appropriations

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Earlier today, the Senate Labor, Health and Human Services (HHS), Education Appropriations Subcommittee approved their FY 2013 appropriations measure by a vote of 10-7.  That bill would provide $158.8 billion in discretionary spending for the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, as well as related agencies.  This is about $2 billion more than the FY 2012 level and roughly equal to the President’s budget request.  The bill includes a discretionary program level of $12.342 billion for the Department of Labor (FY 2012 level $12.553 billion), $71.0 billion for the Department of HHS (FY 2012 level $69.62 billion), $68.52 billion for the Department of Education (FY 2012 level $68.112 billion) and $14.15 billion for related agencies (FY 2012 level $13.832 billion).

The full Senate Appropriations Committee plans to markup the bill on Thursday.  At this time, we hope to also see the report accompanying the bill, which will provide more detailed information on how funds are to be spent within each of the programs.  Stay tuned for more information.

You can read a summary of the bill on the Senate Appropriations Committee web page.

Reports and Papers

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On Thursday, the National Academies of Science will officially release a report entitled “Research Universities and the Future of America: Ten Breakthrough Actions Vital to Our Nation’s Prosperity and Security.” This report is being billed as a follow-up report to the National Academies report Rising Above the Gathering Storm, which in 2007 issued a clarion cry for increased national commitment to federal support of research and education. This new report was requested by Congress to identify “the top ten actions that Congress, the federal government, state governments, research universities, and others could take to assure the ability of the American research university to maintain the excellence in research and doctoral education needed to help the United States compete, prosper, and achieve national goals for health, energy, the environment, and security in the global community of the 21st century.” Read more here.

The National Science Foundation released an Info brief entitled Graduate Enrollment in Science and Engineering Grew Substantially in the Past Decade but Slowed in 2010.  As the title suggest, the report finds that graduate student enrollment in the U.S. has grown by 30 percent over the last decade, but tapered off a bit most recently.  Read more here.

The National Science Foundation also released its annual FY 2011 merit review report to the National Science Board. This report provides an annual look at the number of grant proposals received by the NSFNational Science Foundation, along with the success rates (number of proposals that are awarded), broken down by several categories. While the report finds that NSFNational Science Foundation received 7 percent fewer grant applications than last year, it also demonstrated that the number of proposals received by the agency has increased dramatically (60 percent) since 2001. Read more here.