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Appropriations Details Begin to Emerge

With a number of bills moving to the full committee stage, details contained in various appropriations bills are beginning to emerge.  For example, the House Interior Appropriations bill would provide:

  • $25 million for the USGS Cooperative Research Units (an increase of $1 million);
  • $41.3 million for the USGS Climate Adaptation Science Centers program ($3-million increase);
  • $25.7 million for the ShakeAlert West Coast earthquake early warning system (level funded);

The bill is scheduled to be marked up by the full Appropriations Committee tomorrow morning.  We will continue to provide updates as more details become available.

FY2021 Appropriations Bills Finally Moving

With schedules and logistics thrown into complete disarray by COVID-19, progress on the FY2021 spending bills had been stalled.  The logjam has been partially broken, at least for now, in the House, with all 12 bills scheduled for markup this week.

Office of Federal Relations will provide additional details as they become available.  The following are some of the highlights of several different bills so far:

Labor-HHS-Education

National Institutes of Health

  • $47 billion total, an increase of $5.5 billion above current level ($5 billion of the increase is emergency appropriations, meaning the regular appropriation for the agency is $42 billion)

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

  • $343 million, an increase of $500 million

Student Aid

  • Pell Grant Maximum:  $6,945, an increase of $150
  • SEOG:  $880 M ($15-million increase)
  • Federal Work Study:  $1.2 billion ($30-million increase)
  • GEAR UP:  $1.1 billion (an increase of $5 million)

The legislation would also prohibit the Department of Education from implementing its new Title IX regulations.

The text of the bill is available here and a summary of the bill prepared by the committee staff is available here.  The report accompanying the bill, which contains most of the detailed breakdown of funding, is not yet available.

Commerce-Justice-Science

National Science Foundation

Under the bill unveiled earlier today, NSF would be funded at $8.55 billion, an increase of $270 million.  Within NSF:

  • Research and Related Activities Directorate would be funded at $6.97 billion (an increase of $229.9 million
  • Education and Human Resources would be funded at $970 million (an increase of $30 million.

NASA

NASA would be flat-funded at $22.63 billion in the bill.  The bill proposes to divide up the funding, in part, in the following manner:

  • Science:  $7.1 billion (a decrease of $42 million)
  • Aeronautics:  $819 million (an increase of $35 million)
  • Space Tech:  $1.1 billion (level funded)
  • Space Grant:  $50 million (an increase of $2 million)

NOAA

The bill would fund NOAA at $5.45 billion, an increase of $101.9 million.

This is the text of the bill and a summary is available here.

Interior

The current version of the House bill contains $36.76 billion in regular appropriations, an increase of $771 million, and $15 billion in emergency appropriations.

While we have not yet seen further breakdowns for the agency, the USGS is slated to receive an increase of $22 million under this bill.

Both the NEH and the NEA would each be funded at $170 million, an increase of $7.5 million.

The bill text is available here and the summary of the bill is available here.

Energy and Water

Under the the subcommittee-approved bill, the Department of Energy Office of Science would see an increase of $50 million and would be funded at $7.05 billion.

ARPA-E would see an increase of $10 million, while the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy program.would be funded at $2.85 billion, an increase of $58 million.

The summary for the bill is available here.

Full Committee

The full Appropriations Committee is slated to take up the Interior bill on Friday and is scheduled to mark up both the Labor-HHS-Education and Energy and Water bills next Monday.

We will provide further details as they become available.

 

Research Community Reiterates Call for At Least $26 Billion for Research

In an updated letter to Congressional leadership, associations representing a swath of research institutions reiterated their call to invest at least $26 billion in scientific research in future COVID-19 response bills.  Unlike previous communications, this letter calls out specific funding levels for a number of individual agencies, including:

  • $3 billion for NSF
  • $3 billion for DOD
  • $10 billion for NSF
  • $5 billion for DOE
  • $2 billion for NASA

The letter also calls for additional funds for agencies which have research budgets greater than $100 million, including NOAA and the Institute for Education Science.

The letter is available here.

NOAA Publishes COVID-19 Guidance for Grant Recipients

NOAA has made available guidance regarding research impacted due to COVID-19 and suspension of campus operations. Researchers with grants funded by NOAA should review the document to determine reporting requirements and the possibility of extensions. The full document is available here.

 

Broader Higher Education Community Looks to Engage with Federal Government to Address Community-Wide Challenges

Yesterday, the broader higher education community sent to Congress a series of recommendations and requests for assistance aimed at stabilizing the entire enterprise as it tries to cope with COVID-19.  The requests fall into a number of distinct categories:

  • One set of requests addresses the immediate financial challenges facing both students and institutions.
  • Another set of requests focuses on the unique circumstances that research universities face as they deal with trying to mitigate the impact on research.
  • The third set  focuses on tax-related provisions that could assist students, families, and institutions.