AAS Public Policy Blog

A Senate press release details the Science money in the stimulus bill.

The NSF receives less than in the House version, NASA receives more (but the more for Constellation and Aeronautics, science gets $100 million less than the House version) . A House/Senate conference committee to reconcile the two bills is likely.

• National Science Foundation (NSF) Research: $1.2 billion total for NSF including: $1 billion to help America compete globally; $150 million for scientific infrastructure; and $50 million for competitive grants to improve the quality of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education.

• National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA): $1.3 billion total for NASA including: $450 million for Earth science missions to provide critical data about the Earth’s resources and climate; $200 million to enable research and testing of environmentally responsible aircraft and for verification and validation methods for complex aerospace systems and software; $450 million to reduce the gap in time that the U.S. does not have a vehicle to access the International Space Station; and $200 million for repair, upgrade and construction at NASA facilities.

• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA): $1 billion total for NOAA, including $645 million to construct and repair NOAA facilities, equipment and vessels to reduce the Nation’s coastal charting backlog, upgrade supercomputer infrastructure for climate research, and restore critical habitat around the Nation.

• National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST): $475 million total for NIST including: $307 million for renovation of NIST facilities and new laboratories using green technologies; $168 million for scientific and technical research at NIST to strengthen the agency’s IT infrastructure; provide additional NIST research fellowships; provide substantial funding for advanced research and measurement equipment and supplies; increase external grants for NIST-related research.

• The Department of Energy’s Science program sees $330 million for laboratory infrastructure and construction.

Based on this list, it would seem that the NSF survived in the stimulus; though it’s been reduced to $1.2 billion from $1.4 billion. The House number was $3 billion. Assuming the Senate version passes and this list is accurate, it’ll take a conference committee to hammer out the differences in the House and Senate bills, as well as input from the White House.

A bipartisan group trying to trim money from the stimulus would cut NASA fund in half and eliminate NSF funds, according to an early draft document of the amendment floating around yesterday.

The cut list is evolving:

“It’s very difficult, because everyone has certain pet programs in this bill,” said Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), the leader of the Republican faction in the bipartisan group.

You can express your opinion on the funding of NASA and NSF in the stimulus bill by calling your Senators’ offices.

Update The Information and Technology and Innovation foundation has shown (PDF link) the impact that investment in basic sciences has on job creation. $20 billion in research infrastructure will produce 402,000 jobs, according to ITIF.

From the comments, AAS Executive officer Kevin Marvel writes:

Contacts to the Hill at any time are very useful, at a time like now, they can be extremely useful. When members contact the hill, be sure to let them know who you are, where you work, how many grad students or postdocs you support and, most importantly, that you support increases to agencies that support research like DoE, NSF and NASA. A good argument can be made that these investments have a big impact on our country’s long term economic success.

Look for an action alert from the AAS in the coming weeks as the final negotiations on the stimulus bill take plac

Updated Twice Below with Links to Full Bill Text and Committee Report

A new Senate Press Release (PDF file) has more details on the Senate stimulus money that relates to science:

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• National Science Foundation (NSF) Research: $1.4 billion total for NSF including: $1 billion to help America compete globally; $350 million for scientific infrastructure; and $50 million for competitive grants to improve the quality of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education.

• National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA): $1.5 billion total for NASA including: $500 million for Earth science missions to provide critical data about the Earth’s resources and climate; $250 million to enable research and testing of environmentally responsible aircraft and for verification and validation methods for complex aerospace systems and software; $500 million to reduce the gap in time that the U.S. does not have a vehicle to access the International Space Station; and $250 million for repair, upgrade and construction at NASA facilities.

• The Department of Energy’s Science program sees $430 million for laboratory infrastructure, for construction, and for advanced computing development.

Update The full bill text is available

Interestingly, the bill text does not specify that the NASA science money goes to earth science. It simply says:

For an additional amount for ‘‘Science’’, $500,000,000, to remain available until September 30, 2010.

Unlike the House bill which says:

For an additional amount for ‘‘Science’’, $400,000,000, of which not less than $250,000,000 shall be solely for accelerating the development of the tier 1 set of Earth science climate research missions recommended by the National Academies Decadal Survey.

Still, I say it’s near certain that when these two bills are reconciled, the money will be flagged for earth science that was mentioned in the Senate press release.

Update II

The committee report is out which both summarizes the spending and gives justification. The AIP’s latest FYI gives a nice summary of the science money therein.

A couple of interesting snippets:

NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION

The Committee recommends a total of $1,502,000,000 for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration [NASA]. NASA is one of the Nation’s premier innovation agencies. Funding recommended for NASA is estimated to create over 10,000 jobs, including 8,000 high-tech jobs.

NASA is directed to report to the Committees on Appropriations with the intended allocation of these funds no later than 60 days after enactment of this act.

NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION

The Committee recommends a total of $1,402,000,000 for the National Science Foundation [NSF]. This funding is critical to support valuable investments for America’s competitiveness in research and technology, and is expected to create an estimated 25,000 jobs. NSF is directed to provide a spend plan no later than 60 days after enactment of this act detailing the proposed use of these funds.

The Senate’s version of the stimulus bill has been released; well at least the Senate Appropriations committee has released a summary of the spending in the bill (PDF file). It’s not nearly as detailed as what the House committee released – there’s no conference report or bill text. Science is listed very simply:

Science:

• National Science Foundation (NSF) Research: $1.4 billion in funding for scientific research, infrastructure and competitive grants.
• National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA): $1.5 Billion for NASA, including $500 million for Earth science missions to provide critical data about the Earth’s resources and climate.

The Senate amended HR 6063 last night and passed by unanimous consent. I’m still going over bits and pieces of the legislation. The Senate had their own version of a NASA Authorization bill as well. I’m still determining exactly what changes the Senate made, but there’s no nicely formatted version of the bill just yet. The bill passed the House as well on Saturday, by voice vote.

The House Science press release lauds the bill. There is a section by section (PDF) breakdown of the bill as well. And there is a Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation press release as well.

One bit of the Space Science section that I can tell changed was the addition of this section:

SEC. 505. SUBORBITAL RESEARCH ACTIVITIES.

(a) Sense of Congress.–It is the sense of Congress that suborbital flight activities, including the use of sounding rockets, aircraft, and high-altitude balloons, and suborbital reusable launch vehicles, offer valuable opportunities to advance science, train the next generation of scientists and engineers, and provide opportunities for participants in the programs to acquire skills in systems engineering and systems integration that are critical to maintaining the Nation’s leadership in space programs. The Congress believes that it is in the national interest to expand the size of NASA’s suborbital research program. It is further the sense of Congress that funding for suborbital research activities should be considered part of the contribution of NASA to United States competitive and educational enhancement and should represent increased funding as contemplated in section 2001 of the America COMPETES Act (42 U.S.C. 16611(a)).

along with additional discussion of calling for a National Academies review of the suborbital mission capabilities of NASA.

That was an obvious change because it was a new section. There are some other changes within sections that I’m slowly discovering and will post more on next week. You can see the original bill text (click on the 4th and final version of the bill) and perhaps discover more changes. Feel free to post these in the comments if you find anything interesting.

Update The latest version is now available here, there’s a fifth version, you can compare it to the next-to-last version that passed the House originally.

Or more specifically they passed “Motion To Concur In House Amdts To Senate Amdt To House Amdt To Senate Amdt To H.R. 2642.” As described previously, this includes funding for the NSF, NASA, and DOE Office of Science.

The money is included in a very broad war supplemental funding bill negotiated between the White House and the House of Representatives.

FYI has an excellent summary of NASA funding in the Commerce, Justice, Science appropriations bill in the Senate. You can also read the entire Senate Report.

I’ll try to write more about this later in the week – for now I will, like the FYI newsletter, quote the introduction to the Senate report.

NASA’s vision for space exploration maps out an aggressive role for the United States in manned space exploration. However, the potential costs are substantial and will likely be very difficult to maintain at the current estimated funding levels. In addition, the Committee feels strongly that NASA must show its commitment to those human spaceflight activities already underway. The Shuttle program and the construction of the International Space Station [ISS] continue to be the primary focus of the Nation’s manned space flight activities. Nevertheless, the replacements for the Space Shuttle’s manned and heavy lift capabilities must also be considered as part of any plan for continued human access to space but not to the detriment of existing obligations.

The Committee is concerned that NASA will neglect areas that only tangentially benefit, or do not fit within, the exploration vision. The Committee believes that NASA must work diligently to balance existing programs and priorities with its plans for the future. Counterbalancing future priorities against current programs places existing research and expertise in jeopardy and risks squandering significant Federal investments that may be essential to the exploration vision.

In addition, the Committee is concerned that the strong, balanced science program that has served the Nation so successfully for many years is being left behind rather than being nurtured and sustained. That science program has been based on a set of carefully crafted scientific strategies that are founded on scientific and technical merit, relevance to overall national needs, and broad consultation with the scientific community.”