Senate Clears Science Bill

As part of a surge of activity before the end of the year, the Senate passed a bill to reauthorize the America Competes Act, a 2007 law that aims to double over a decade the budgets of the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Standards & Technology, and the Department of Energy's Office of Science. The measure cleared the Senate on Friday by unanimous consent.

The Senate-passed reauthorization bill (S. 3605) is now with the House of Representatives awaiting a vote that is expected to come today. The House passed its own version of the bill (H.R. 5116) in late May (C&EN, June 7, page 9), but will now have to vote again on the Senate-passed measure before it can be sent to the President for his signature.

Both versions of the bill recommend budget increases for NSF, NIST, and DOE's Office of Science, but, because they are only authorization measures, they set guidelines for future funding levels and do not actually provide any money to the three agencies. Under the Senate-passed act, the NSF budget would jump 20% by 2013, NIST's budget would increase 21%, and DOE's Office of Science by 22%.

A key difference in the two bills is the number of years each covers, and therefore the overall cost of acting on its recommendations. The House version, passed on May 28, lays out suggested spending levels for five years, whereas the Senate version is for three years—reducing the authorized spending by nearly half and making the measure more palatable to Republicans. Also, the Senate bill carries a more conservative approach to boosting research budgets by stretching the completion of the budget doubling period from seven to 10 years. According to an analysis by the Alliance for Science & Technology Research in America (ASTRA), the Senate bill authorizes about 3% less money from 2011 to 2013 than the House version, about $44.2 billion versus $45.6 billion.

Beyond setting recommended funding levels, the Senate legislation would reorganize and create new research programs within the agencies. For example, the bill calls for NSF to establish a dedicated "Green Chemistry Basic Research Program" that would award competitive grants to support research on clean, safe, and economical alternatives to traditional chemical products and practices. S. 3605 also directs NSF to establish a policy to use at least 5% of the agency's research budget to fund high-risk, high-reward research proposals. Many science education programs receive additional support under the bill.

Congressional action to pass the reauthorization of the America Competes Act during the current lame-duck congressional session was seen as a long shot with stakeholders such as Robert S. Boege, executive director for ASTRA, giving it a 10–15% chance of passing. But that changed, Boege says, thanks to the work of Republican Sens. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (Texas), who rallied GOP support.

"If there was any objection from anywhere, it would have derailed it totally," Boege says. He notes that Senate leadership didn't want to raise much fanfare of the reauthorization passing, fearing such publicity about a bill authorizing additional spending would have killed hopes of it passing.

"We're still not out of the woods," Boege says. "There could be efforts to amend it on the floor of the House, but my assessment is we should be able to pull it off."

In a statement released late last Friday afternoon, House Science & Technology Committee Chairman Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.) said he's hopeful a vote on the reauthorization bill will come before the House this week. "I cannot think of anything I would rather do as one of my final acts in Congress than sending this bill, with strong bipartisan support, to the President's desk," said Gordon, who is retiring at the end of the year after four years as the House science committee chairman.