Effort to double funding for science agency hits Senate snag

The reauthorization bill that would put the National Science Foundation (NSF) on track to double its budget in five years snagged in the Senate just before lawmakers recessed last week.

The bill, H.R. 4664, was set for voice-vote passage last Tuesday, according to the Senate Democratic cloakroom, but a senator anonymously objected, leading to no action before senators departed Thursday to campaign for the Nov. 5 election.

Industry groups charge that a Republican senator delayed action on behalf of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), reportedly because of concerns about the planned spending increase. But an OMB spokeswoman said the office has no official position on the bill.

The House passed the measure June 5 by a margin of 397-25. It would authorize 15 percent funding increases for NSF each year from fiscal 2003 through fiscal 2005, including $5.5 billion for the agency next year, an increase of $719 million from fiscal 2002.

"The irony of the situation is [that] the appropriations committees have called for 13 to 14 percent program increases at NSF in the coming year," said David Peyton, director of technology policy at the National Association of Manufacturers.

Proponents of the bill said it would put NSF on a similar funding course as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), whose budget currently is being doubled over five years. According to an industry source, a White House official early in the Bush administration said that officials saw a lot of political support for NIH but not as much for other research areas.

As a result the tech industry "has been working hard" to increase political support for NSF's budget increase and believed it had succeeded. "So what's the problem?" the source said.

Funding for NSF falls under the appropriations bill for the Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development departments.

Before departing, the Senate did approve by voice vote another bill sought by some in the tech industry. The measure, H.R. 2733, would authorize the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to work with manufacturing industries to develop and employ standards for information exchanges aimed at ensuring a seamless flow of information along the supply chain.

"We're looking for ways to reduce the costs of software duplication to the supply chain, where suppliers have to run multiple programs to do business with different customers" Peyton said. "We're going after excess cost in the supply chain."

The problem affects the automobile and aerospace industries in particular, he said. The bill would authorize $47 million over four years for NIST to work with industries. "We look forward to the appropriations committees funding the work in line with the authorization," Peyton said.