Category: Committee Work

Ahead of the markup scheduled for tomorrow, the House Appropriations Committee has released the report for the House bill and the report for the Energy and Water bill.

Defense

The Defense bill to be marked up tomorrow would fund the basic and applied research programs in the following manner:

• Total Basic Research (“6.1”):  $2.51 billion (4.2% below the FY2019 level and 7.5% above the budget request)
• Total Applied Research (“6.2”):  $5.56 billion (8.4% below current level, 4.3% above the request)
• Army 6.1:  $527.5 million (4.1% increase, 13.7% increase)
• Army 6.2:  $1.03 billion (34.5 % decrease, 13.5% increase)
• Navy 6.1:  $629.3 million (-7.4%, +3.7%)
• Navy 6.2:  $984.7 million (-3.4%, +4.9%)
• Air Force 6.1:  $549.8 million (-15.6%, +3.6%)
• Air Force 6.2:  $1.49 billion (+0.8%, +3.8%)
• Defense-wide 6.1:  $801.8 million (+2.6%, +9.0%)
• Defense-wide 6.2:  $2.05 billion (2.8%, -0.3%)
• DARPA Total:  $3.53 billion (+2.8%, -0.8%)

Energy and Water

Not surprisingly, the House draft bill would fund many of the programs and offices of interest to the University of Washington at higher levels than those contained in the President’s budget request (PBR).  In most cases, they are higher than the FY2019 levels, including the following:

Office of Science (Total): $6.87 billion ($285 million above FY2019, $1.32 billion above PBR)

• Basic Energy Sciences: $2.14 billion (-$23.0 million, +$284.7 million)
• Biological and Environmental Research:  $730.0 million (+$25.0 million, +$235.6 million)
• Fusion:  $688.0 million (+$124 million, +$285 million)
• High-energy physics:  $1.05 billion (+$65 million, +$277 million)
• Nuclear Physics:  $735 million (+$45 million, +$110.1 million)

ARPA-E:  $425 million (+$59.0 million, +$712 million)

Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EER&E):  $2.65 billion (+$272 million, +$2.31 billion)

Four more FY2020 spending bills are scheduled to be taken up by the full House Appropriations Committee this week.

On Tuesday, the committee is expected to mark up the Defense and Energy and Water Development bills.  The committee is scheduled to bring up the Commerce-Justice-Science and Interior measures on Wednesday.

The reports for the bills have not yet been released.  We will continue to provide additional details as they become available.

As noted previously, the House Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations Bill is scheduled to be marked up on Friday.  A copy of the draft bill has just been released.  The accompanying report will not become available until after the subcommittee markup, just before the full committee markup, which is most likely to occur sometime next week.

While most details will not be available until next week, we can report the following about the bill:

• The bill calls for $73.9 billion in new spending, an increase of $9.8 billion above the current level
• Within that amount, $8.6 billion would be for NSF, an increase of $561.4 million above the FY2019 level, and the Research and Related Activities account would be funded at $7.1 billion, an increase of $586 million above the current level
• NOAA would be funded at $5.48 billion (an increase of $54.3 million)
• NASA would see an increase of $815 million to a total of $22.3 billion, including $7.16 billion for the Science Directorate ($255.6 million above FY2019 level).

The markup is scheduled for 9:30 AM EDT tomorrow.  It will be webcast here.

In preparation for the markups scheduled for tomorrow, the texts of the House Energy and Water Development, Interior, and Defense spending bills have been released by the Appropriations Committee.

While most details in the bills will not become public until the accompanying reports are released, some highlights are now available.

Energy and Water

• Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy – The bill provides $2.65 billion, an increase of $273 million above the fiscal year 2019 level and $2.3 billion above the request.
• Science – The bill provides $6.87 billion, an increase of $285 million above the fiscal year 2019 level and $1.3 billion above the request.
• Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy – The bill provides $425 million, an increase of $59 million above the fiscal year 2019 level and rejects the budget proposal to eliminate the program.

The full text of the bill is here.

Interior

The bill would provide $3.41 billion for EPA’s core science and environmental program work, an increase of $105 million above the 2019 enacted level and $1.03 billion above the President’s budget request. Within these amounts, the bill includes:

• $476 million for Geographic Programs which represents an increase of $19 million above the 2019 enacted level and $438 million above the President’s budget request.

The bill would also provide $167.5 million each for the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, which is $12.5 million more than the 2019 enacted levels and rejects the President’s budget request proposal to eliminate both agencies.

The full text of the bill is here.

Defense

The bill would provide $100.7 billion for Research, Development, Test and Evaluation.  This represents an increase of $5.7 billion above the current level and $1.9 billion below the request.

The bill also includes $920 million for the Congressionally directed medical research program.

The full text of the defense bill is here.

All three of these bills are scheduled to be marked up tomorrow at the subcommittee level.  Detailed reports accompanying the bills will not be available until just before the full committee markup of the bills.