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Category: Committee Work

House Committee Approves Defense Bill, More Action Scheduled for Later This Week

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The full House Appropriations Committee cleared the FY2022 Defense spending bill yesterday by a party-line vote of 33-23.  Among other efforts, the legislation funds Pentagon-supported basic and applied research programs .  The detailed committee report that outlines the individual accounts in bill is available here.

The committee is scheduled to take up additional measures of interest to UW later this week, with the Labor-HHS-Education and Commerce-Justice-Science bills slated to be marked up tomorrow and the Energy and Water Development legislation on deck for Friday.

Earlier today, the committee released the reports for the Labor-HHS-Education bill and the CJS bill and we will provide additional details about all of these bills after further analysis.  The Energy and Water Development report is not yet available.

 

 

Appropriations Process Kicks Into Gear

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With six more bills scheduled for at least subcommittee action this week, the annual appropriations process for FY2022 has kicked into gear. This week’s activities follow those that took place the last week of June.  This means that all 12 spending bills will have moved through at least the subcommittee process by the end of this week.

The following pieces of legislation are scheduled for subcommittee action this week:

On Tuesday, the full Appropriations Committee is scheduled to take up the Defense and Homeland Security bills.  The committee is currently scheduled to mark up the E&W and THUD bills on Friday.

The following bills have already cleared the full committee:

The Legislative Branch and Financial Services bills are still awaiting full committee action.

We will provide details as they become available.

NSF Legislation Adopted in Senate

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After several weeks on the floor, the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act– formerly known as the “Endless Frontier Act”– was cleared by the Senate yesterday. The final vote was 68 – 32.

The House has its own version of the bill, the NSF for the Future Act.

Science Nominees Move Forward

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Earlier this morning, a number of nominees for key science posts in the Biden Administration moved forward.

The Senate Commerce Committee reported out favorably the nomination of Dr. Eric Lander for the position of Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

The committee also held the confirmation hearing for Dr. Rick Spinrad, the Biden Administration’s nominee for NOAA Administrator, and Col. Pamela Melroy, for the position of NASA Deputy Administrator.

NSF Reauthorization Introduced in House

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The House Science, Space, and Technology has introduced legislation to reauthorize the NSF. The legislation is sponsored by committee Chairwoman Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) and Ranking Member Frank Lucas (R-OK) along with Subcommittee on Research and Technology Chairwoman Haley Stevens (D-MI) and Ranking Member Michael Waltz (R-FL). It was introduced as the National Science Foundation for the Future Act. The bipartisan legislation increases overall agency funding by $2 billion, addresses key challenges for data access and accountability, security concerns, and creates a new Directorate for Science and Engineering Solutions.

A summary is available here.