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Category: Defense

Additional Support Will Be Needed For DOD S&T Programs Going Forward

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As noted previously, the House Appropriations Committee approved the FY2022 Defense spending bill earlier this week. The detailed report for the bill is available here.

At this point, for the most part, the bill would fund basic and applied research programs at levels below the current level.  The committee-approved bill would fund basic (“6.1”) and applied (“6.2”) research programs in the following manner:

  • Overall 6.1 research:  $2.44 billion, a decrease of $230.0 million (8.6%)
  • Overall 6.2 research:  $5.92 billion, a decrease of $521.8 million (8.1%)

Army

  • 6.1:  $535.7 million, a decrease of $55.8 million (9.4%)
  • 6.2:  $1.15 billion, a decrease of $375.1 million (24.6%)

Navy

  • 6.1:  $632.3 million, a decrease of $21.6 million (3.3%)
  • 6.2:  $1.08 billion, a decrease of $101.0 million (8.5%)

Air Force

  • 6.1:  $490.7 million, a decrease of $46.6 million (8.7%)
  • 6.2:  $1.41 billion, a decrease of $150.6 million (9.6%)

Defense-wide

  • 6.1:  $782.7 million, a decrease of $106.0 million (11.9%)
  • 6.2:  $2.09 billion, an increase of $131.0 million (6.7%)

DARPA (Total)

  • $3.48 billion, a decrease of $16.8 million (0.5%)

Historically, the Senate has been more generous with respect to DOD Science and Technology programs.  We will continue to provide updates on the Defense funding bill as the process moves forward.

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.

Senate Debates Endless Frontier Act

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The Senate will begin debate on the bipartisan Endless Frontier Act, which advanced out of committee last week. The legislation would create a new Directorate for Technology and Innovation within the NSF, establish supply chain resiliency programs, and create new reporting on jobs, the economy, and security. The bill advanced out of committee despite the addition of a contentious amendment to shift $71 billion from the NSF to the Department of Energy for R&D purposes. Several amendments include China-related and other research security provisions.

Senate Hearing on Foreign Influence in Biomedical Research

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The US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will convene a hearing titled Protecting U.S. Biomedical Research: Efforts to Prevent Undue Foreign Influence. 

Date: Thursday, April 22nd, 2021

Time: 10:00am ET (7:00am PT)

Witnesses:

  1. Michael Lauer, MD, Deputy Director for Extramural Research, National Institutes of Health
  2. Lisa Aguirre, Acting Director, Office of National Security, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
  3. Gary L. Cantrell, Deputy Inspector General for Investigations, Office of Inspector General, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
  4. Candice N. Wright, Acting Director, Science, Technology Assessment, and Analytics, U.S. Government Accountability Office

Watch live here.