A Congressional panel on Thursday approved legislation that would flatten the budget of the National Science Foundation and revive past attempts to tie the agency’s spending on research to a definable economic payback.
The measure, a policy-setting bill for the NSF and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, would give the NSF a budget in the 2015 fiscal year of $7.28-billion, about 1.5 percent beyond its current level of $7.17-billion. President Obama, in his 2015 budget proposed this month, suggested $7.3-billion, while House Democrats are seeking $7.52-billion.
Yet in a sign of future compromise before the bill reaches the Democratic-controlled Senate, the Republican majority on the House Science Subcommittee on Research and Technology accepted nine separate Democratic amendments, including a partial retreat from plans to severely cut the NSF’s budget for social-science research.
The changes stood as a “good faith” effort to bridge political differences on the bill, Rep. Dan Lipinski of Illinois, the top Democrat on the subcommittee, told his Republican chairman, Rep. Larry Bucshon of Indiana.
The bill is the starting point for an anticipated third reauthorization bill for the NSF since a 2005 commission formed by the National Academies warned lawmakers of an urgent need to expand federal spending on science to keep the country economically competitive.
The two previous measures committed Congress to doubling the budgets of the NSF and related federal agencies over about seven years, as suggested by the “Gathering Storm” commission report. Congress never came close, and the new measure doesn’t even suggest such a thing. The House Republican proposal instead would keep the NSF budget increase for 2015 below the anticipated rate of inflation, and downward as a percentage of gross domestic product.
The Republican plan aims to flatten NSF spending by setting specific budget levels for each directorate within the agency, and then sharply reducing spending on those areas of scientific inquiry—most notably in the social sciences—that the Republicans regard as less valuable to the national economy.
At a time when Republicans are committed to cutting federal spending, Congress must set spending priorities “that drive future economic growth,” Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, chairman of the Science Committee, told the subcommittee as it began consideration of the bill.
‘Politically Motivated Cuts’
Democrats pushed back, both by warning of the dangerous precedent of attacking the social sciences and by rebutting with specific examples.
“There is no legitimate scientific reason for these cuts,” said Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas, the top Democrat on the committee. “These are politically motivated cuts to appease a conservative ideology that doesn’t believe in certain kinds of science.”
Mr. Lipinski listed economically valuable products of social-science research, including studies that help the police anticipate crime patterns and analyses that more efficiently match kidney donors and recipients. Reaching inside the NSF to set directorate-by-directorate budget limits—a practice that Congress already employs with the National Institutes of Health—"may open the door for partisan meddling from either side of the aisle,” he said.
In many instances beyond the broad budget numbers, however, Mr. Lipinski and Mr. Bucshon opted for dialogue and compromise. With Mr. Bucshon’s accession, the subcommittee agreed to raise the proposed budget of the NSF’s Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences from $150-million to $200-million. That amount, however, would still be a cut of 22 percent from the directorate’s fiscal-2014 budget of $257-million.
Protecting ‘Rotators’
Rep. Elizabeth Esty, a Democrat of Connecticut, objected to language in the bill requiring scientists to sign a statement promising not to misrepresent their research, calling it a message of distrust that’s unnecessary given existing legal protections at the NSF. She withdrew an amendment to remove the language after Mr. Bucshon agreed to consider other approaches.
A similar promise from Mr. Bucshon led Mr. Lipinski to withdraw a bid to protect “rotators"—university scientists working on multiyear temporary assignments at NSF headquarters. The bill would limit total NSF spending on such workers to 110 percent of the cost of a regular employee, a response to what Mr. Bucshon described as years of frustration with the NSF’s failure to address problems with rotators identified by the agency’s own inspector general.
Only two items reached recorded votes during the subcommittee’s session on Thursday, both offered by Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat of California, and both ending in party-line rejections by the Republican majority. One would have revised the bill’s budget allocations within the NSF to help the social sciences.
The other concerned efforts by the Obama administration to ensure open public access to articles in science journals that result from federally sponsored research. The administration has suggested a 12-month limit on journals’ exclusive possession of such articles, and the bill under consideration would impose a series of new requirements and rounds of consultation before that initiative could be carried out.
Ms. Lofgren rejected the idea as a “seriously wrong” attempt to protect one industry—publishers of science journals—at the cost of restricting the free sharing of scientific discovery. Without identifying it by name, she cited one such publisher, Elsevier, as having a reported profit of $1-billion a year.
‘In the National Interest’
One item in the bill that had been attracting protests from researchers—a requirement that the NSF certify that all its research grants were “in the national interest"—drew little attention at the hearing. Congress imposed a similar requirement about a year ago, applying it only to grants involving political science and prompting the NSF last August to suspend a round of grants while it considered how to apply the mandate.
The NSF later established an additional layer of grant review to meet that certification, but the mandate expired in January, when Congress adopted a fiscal-2014 budget that did not include the language.
If that requirement were now applied across the NSF, the agency’s ability to comply might be relatively straightforward, but the implications could be ominous, said Rick K. Wilson, a professor of political science at Rice University.
Even with compromises, it was a tough day for social scientists, said Mr. Wilson, who also is editor of the American Journal of Political Science. “Bipartisanship was only briefly in the air. An increase from a savage cut at $150-million to a major cut at $200-million is still very painful.”
