Category: Uncategorized

The House this week passed the Military Construction-VA and the Agriculture Appropriations bills. While Military Construction-VA passed with little difficulty, the Agriculture bill passed with all Democrats and 19 Republicans opposing the measure. Many democrats have spoken out against the Agriculture bill because they are concerned that it contans deep cuts to programs that are vital to low income citizens.

Also this week, the House Appropriations Committee marked up and passed the Energy & Water and Defense Spending Bills. Energy and Water was approved by a vote of 26 to 20 and the latest markup contained no significant changes to accounts of particular interest to research universities. The Defense Appropriations bill also passed with increased funding for Defense 6.1 Basic Research above both the FY11 level and the Administration’s FY12 request. Amounts for programs relevant to the higher ed community are as follows:

• 6.1 Basic Research: $2.099 billion, an increase of 7.8% above FY11
• 6.2 Applied Research: $4.672 billion, an increase of 4.9% above FY11
• National Defense Education Program: $86.6 million, a cut of 8.2% below FY11
• DARPA: no set amount is given, but the following language was provided in the accompanying report: 

“…DARPA’s mission is to maintain the technological superiority of the U.S. military and prevent technological surprise from harming our national security by sponsoring revolutionary, high-payoff research bridging the gap between fundamental discoveries and their military use…Corporate strategies have greatly improved the efficiency of DARPA’s financial execution and ability to obligate funds. The Committee has determined that these efficiencies will result in cost reductions of $100,000,000 in fiscal year 2012. Therefore, the Director of DARPA shall provide to the congressional defense committees, not later than 60 days after enactment of this Act, a report detailing by program element and project the application of each detailed reduction.”

The Senate Appropriations Committee has held a handful of hearings, but otherwise their spending bills remain stagnant.

Below is a link to a chart highlighting the final FY11 appropriated numbers for federal agencies and programs.

Final FY11 Numbers

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of a private pharmaceutical company in a heated patent rights battle (Stanford v. Roche). Last week’s decision complicates current university patents, as the majority of justices ruled that neither the government nor institutions that receive federal research grants are guaranteed automatic rights to patents that may arise from the research.

In 2005, Stanford University contested Roche Molecular Systems’ patent rights of an HIV detection kit, as the kit process heavily relied on polymerase chain reaction technology initially developed at the university. This R&D was produced by former faculty member Mark Holodniy who went onto expand the research at Cetus, a private biotechnology research company. Holodniy had originally signed a contract ensuring Stanford University the authority to assign patent rights in the future to his research, though later yielded all patent rights because of his access to Cetus research facilities. Consequently, Holodniy’s intellectual property was guaranteed to Cetus and was later acquired by Roche.

Although much of the flak for Stanford’s loss in the ruling stems from the ambiguous language of the initial contract between Holodniy and the university, other research universities and their associations such as the American Association of Universities (AAU) and Association of Public and Land Grant Universities (APLU) are still concerned with the long-standing implications of this decision.

With current stopgap funding expiring tomorrow (Friday) night at midnight, negotiators are in a race against time to reach a deal on FY11 funding.  President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Reid, and House Speaker Boehner emerged from a late-night meeting at the White House Wednesday claiming serious progress, but nobody was ready to announce a deal even though they’re only several billion dollars apart in their positions.  Negotiators are thought to be talking about spending cuts of between $33 billion and $40 billion, including cuts to both discretionary and mandatory programs.

The House GOP has a back-up plan in place and will take action today by bringing to the floor their one-week continuing resolution (CR) extension, which cuts another $12 billion from domestic spending while fully funding the Defense programs for the year.  Democrats oppose the measure, which was introduced on Monday, mostly because of its spending cuts but also because it includes policy provisions that they object to.  If a deal on FY11 spending can’t be reached, House passage of the GOP measure would place Senate Democrats and President Obama in the position of causing a government shutdown by either blocking it or vetoing it.  Obama earlier this week said he wouldn’t sign any more stopgap measures unless a deal was reached and a “clean” stopgap measure was needed to give Congress time to enact the agreement.

And it may simply be too late to reverse the momentum that has been building toward a shutdown. Speaker Boehner still contends with a caucus eager to show it’s serious about dramatically cutting federal spending, Majority Leader Reid can’t keep going back to his members with an objectionable list of cuts, and Obama wants to avoid giving away the store to Republicans.   

Meanwhile, the House Budget Committee reported its budget resolution for FY12, which has sparked an intense debate regarding federal spending and fiscal policy.  House Budget approved its FY12 plan last night after a day-long markup in which several Democratic amendments were rejected.  Committee Democrats argued that the budget proposal cuts spending for vulnerable populations and key national priorities too deeply while protecting tax cuts for the wealthy, corporations, and oil and gas interests.  Rejected amendments included those intended to prevent cuts in areas such as education and Head Start, NIH cancer and other medical research, aid to local police and firefighters, veterans’ programs, food safety activities, and financial regulation and consumer protection.

In addition to assuming fundamental changes to Medicare and Medicaid, the GOP budget calls for overhauling tax policy and creating spending caps and other enforcement mechanisms to reduce the size and scope of federal government.  It would cut spending by $6.2 trillion over 10 years compared with Obama’s FY12 proposed budget, and reduce cumulative deficits by $4.4 trillion.  It would also cap discretionary spending for FY12 at $1.019 trillion, roughly holding federal spending at FY08 levels.

The budget proposal moves to the House floor for consideration next week, when several substitute budgets will be considered.  Democrats will offer their own version of the budget, as will the more conservative arm of the Republican party.  Both will likely fall short of votes necessary to replace the current proposal.

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee held a hearing last week to assess hydrokinetic energy as an untapped resource with enormous potential opportunity. Bill S630 regarding Marine and Hydrokinetic Renewable Energy Promotion Act of 2011 was the primary focus of the hearing and if passed would secure funding for research and development of this natural, clean energy resource towards reaching the President’s goal of 33% domestic energy dependency by 2025. Currently, there are no tidal energy facilities within the US, demonstrating a critical need for such a facility. In order for the US to maintain its standing as a world leader in renewable energy, Senator Murkowski (R-AK) had proposed Bill S630 to invest in hydrokinetic energy, as it remains at least twenty years behind wind and solar power in terms of research and development. Witnesses at the hearing also mentioned a proposed increase for higher education student grants in the environmental and marine science fields to contribute to R&D in hydrokinetic tidal power.

Senator Shaheen (D-NH) expressed considerable interest in implementing new hydrokinetic facilities on the coasts of the United States, namely through the supervision of universities or national laboratories, to conduct research and development in this field for renewable energy purposes. Senator Murkowski (R-AK) was also interested in prospective opportunities to secure funding for facility grants by the Department of Energy, as she considers marine hydropower to be the largest untapped source of natural energy in the United States. After construction of an effective hydrokinetic facility, it is projected that power could be generated for 2-4 US cents per kilowatt hour and that 1.4 million jobs could be created in the next 15 years in the field of hydropower in both the public and private sectors. Within the House, Congressman Doc Hastings (R-WA)  has set forth several hearings towards an initiative that will speed up developments in offshore oil production as a means of domestic dependence and will consequently create jobs.