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News and updates

News and updates

Impact of Sequestration on NSF

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The National Science Foundation has issued an Important Notice concerning the impact of sequestration on the NSF programs. In that notice, NSF indicates that they intend to make the necessary FY 2013 reductions with “as little disruption as possible to established commitments” and will use the following set of core principles to guide sequestration planning activities:

  • Protect commitments to NSF’s core mission and maintain existing awards;
  • Protect the NSF workforce; and
  • Protect STEM human capital development programs.

The notice goes on to detail what they foresee as the major impact of sequestration, which will be noticed through reductions to the number of new research grants and cooperative agreements awarded in FY 2013. They anticipate that the total number of new research grants will be reduced by approximately 1,000 for the remainder of this fiscal year.

But the good news for existing grants is that all continuing grant increments in FY 2013 will be awarded, as scheduled, and there will be no impact on existing NSF standard grants. The same intent applies to annual increments for cooperative agreements, though overall funding constraints may require reductions to certain major investments. These will be handled on a case-by-case basis.

Jewell Confirmation Hearing March 7th

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The Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee will consider the nomination of Sally Jewell to be the Secretary of the Interior next Thursday, March 7th, at 10:30am ET. The hearing will be webcast live on the Committee’s website, and an archived video will be available shortly after the hearing is complete. Witness testimony will be available on the website at the start of the hearing.

Sequestration Likely

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Congress returns to work Monday after a week-long recess period. Foremost on their agenda this week will be the sequester, which is set to take effect on Friday unless Congress takes legislative action before then. Barring an extremely unlikely last-minute deal, about $85 billion is set to be cut from military, domestic, and some health-care programs beginning March 1st. Even if Congress decides to replace or delay some cuts during the late March debate on funding government for the remaining seven months of FY 2013, some cuts will certainly go into effect before then.

Sequestration involves trimming $85 billion from a $3.6 trillion annual federal budget, or about 2.4 percent. But the cuts will not affect Social Security or Medicaid, and the Medicare cuts total only about $11 billion in FY 2013. Thus, entitlement spending, which poses the biggest long-term challenge to the federal budget, accounts for only a sliver of the cuts. That leaves more than $70 billion in cuts to be applied over the next seven months to the roughly two-fifths of the budget that is devoted to discretionary spending, including research, education, the military, and dozens of other categories.

NIH Prepares for Sequestration Implementation

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As mentioned in our blog post yesterday, NIH Director Francis Collins announced that NIH IC directors will develop their own plans for how to apply sequestration cuts to their institutes and centers. This was followed by NIH’s official notice posted yesterday that due to sequestration,  NIH likely will reduce funding levels of non-competing continuation grants, make fewer competing awards, and for continuation awards that have already been made, may not be able to reach the full FY 2013 commitment level described in Notice of Award.  Confirming Collins’ announcement, it also states that if sequestration occurs, NIH ICs will announce their individual plans to meet new budget levels. Read the full NIH notice here.

The anticipated cuts are already being seen: PIs are receiving awards sharply reduced from committed levels, forcing universities to make up the difference or find cuts, including letting go lab staff.  The sequester is scheduled to take effect just a week from today.

NIH Director Indicates Some Flexibility on Sequester Cut within Institute

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NIH Director Francis Collins announced to reporters yesterday after a tour of facilities with Senator Mikulski (D-MD), that he had informed each director of the 27 individual institutes and centers that they will have the authority to determine how to take the looming 5.1% ($1.5 billion) sequester cut to NIH scheduled to take effect on March 1st. Director Collins instructed institute directors “to figure out how to distribute that amongst the many difference kind of mechanisms, grants and centers, in terms of the intramural program, but everything will take a hit.” The NIH will attempt to prioritize things that seem most promising and critical to public health, although there is still expected to be across-the-board damage to virtually everything.

Senator Mikulski indicated that Congress is looking at March 27th when the continuing resolution (CR) expires for a potential sequester fix. According to the Senator, that would create a legislative vehicle “to solve the problem of sequester to get us beyond the CR and to give certainty for this year and then focus on fiscal year ’14 appropriations while the President hopes to seek, with other leadership, a grand bargain.”