Republicans fail to shut down Commerce

By Stephen Barlas
Special to CRN

Despite an initial frenzy of freshman Republican emotion, GOPers seemed to have failed to shut down the Commerce Department in 1995. They did eliminate some key Commerce programs, chipped away at some others and scared Commerce into merging still others.

Although they likely will remain open in 1996, Commerce's agencies are scurrying to respond to Republican antipathy. Nowhere is that clearer than at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, home to eight different laboratories, vaunted centers for basic research. The Commerce dismantling bill introduced by Rep. Dick Chrysler (R-MI) would have sold off those labs to the private sector, even though there are senior Republicans--primarily House Science chair Rep. Robert Walker (R-PA)--who are protective of the labs because of their basic research mission.

NIST is already moving pre-emptorily to protect the labs from a renewed Chrysler assault in 1996. According to NIST spokeswoman Anne Enright Shepherd, top officials at the Gaithersburg, MD, agency want to combine the Computer Systems Laboratory and the Computing and Applied Math Laboratory into one new Information Technology Lab. The concept has been approved by top NIST officials but has not gone to either Commerce's hierarchy or to the Office of Management and Budget. Both would have to approve the consolidation. Those would be the only two labs merged.

The Computer Systems Laboratory helps set the direction for federally funded computer system research, among other things. Shepard says that Shukri Wakid, the director of that lab and acting director of the second, was not interested in talking about how the new Information Technology Lab would differ from the two old ones, should the reorganization happen.

The budget for all eight NIST labs was $246.9 million in fiscal 1995. Congress provided the same amount for 1996.

Though Commerce is still standing, its Advanced Technology Program (ATP) is not. Congress refused to provide any funds for the program in 1996. President Clinton had wanted $491 million for this program, which provides federal grants to companies for the development of risky technology. The 1995 budget was $340.5 million.

One of the burgeoning ATP focus areas had been component-based software. A first round of winners was announced in December 1994 and a second in September 1995. Awards are generally for three years, with NIST providing around $2 million over that period--unless there is a megagrant--and the companies matching the federal funds from NIST. David Fisher, the program director for the software grants, said pre-fiscal 1996 funds are available for at least the first-year funding for the second-round grants and maybe for the second year of the first-round grants.

The Republicans also took a big bite out of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration's (NTIA) information infrastructure grants. Funding for that program will fall from $36 million in 1995 to $21.5 million in 1996. The 1995 award winners were announced November 9, with the money going to 117 public institutions in 47 states.

The 13 universities in the higher-education category received $4.2 million. But academic programs were represented in nearly all the other categories, such as community networking, economic development and health. "Proposals to dismantle the Commerce Department would eliminate the only federal program that is helping to alleviate the gap between those who are prepared for the Information Age and those in real danger of being left behind," NTIA administrator Larry Irving said when the grants were announced.

Though it did not pass Congress, the House actually passed Chrysler's bill twice, as part of the first budget reconciliation bill and as an amendment to the first debt-ceiling bill. Both bills passed the House in November. However, both times the Senate passed different versions of the bills, each minus the Chrysler amendment, among other things. And when both bills came back to the House for a second vote, the Chrysler amendment was dropped. That meant the House Republican leadership viewed Commerce's dismantling as too controversial an issue to stick with, at least with time running out in the 1995 session.

Sen. Spencer Abraham (R-MI) sponsored the Commerce dismantling bill on the other side of the Hill. It never came up for a floor vote there. An aide to Abraham said Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-KS) has committed to bringing the bill up for a vote. The aide could not say whether that would happen in late December 1995 or early 1996. The latter was much more likely. Moreover, the aide indicated that Abraham was still shy some Republican votes to actually pass the bill.

Julie Rice, a Commerce Department spokeswoman, explained that the business community was slow to react when Chrysler first introduced his bill earlier in 1995. "At first, they didn't take the bill seriously," she said. But once corporate America began to chime in, senior congressional Republicans took note, blunting the momentum of the Chrysler bill, which had been championed primarily by freshman Republicans.

But a Commerce official, who asked to remain anonymous, said the Republicans simply ran out of time. The official pointed out that Dole is a strong supporter of the dismantling. "I don't want anyone to think Commerce is out of the woods," the official said.