Appropriations Agreement Reached

By Louise Arnheim

It is a process that must be repeated annually: federal lawmakers must reach agreement by October 1 on the 13 appropriations bills that fund all federal departments and agencies for the coming fiscal year. During the final weeks of September, the 105th Congress added the final touches to legislation that not only included funding for federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and the Department of Energy (DOE), but also new initiatives such as the Next Generation Internet (NGI).

Once an appropriation act is introduced, it travels a long road to passage and presidential signature. For example, the "Departments of Veterans Affairs, and Housing and Urban Development and Independent Agencies Bill, 1998" ("VA-HUD bill", which included the appropriations for NSF and NASA) was referred to the House Committee on Appropriations February 6, 1997, about a week after Super Bowl XXXI. By the time the House subcommittee began hearings on the bill, college basketball was nearing March Madness. Shortly after baseball's All Star break in July (and after several amendments were offered), the House passed the VA-HUD bill and sent it to the Senate, which approved the bill two days later. By the time conferees reached agreement on September 30, football fans were starting to think about Super Bowl XXXII.

How did the various research-related agencies and programs fare this year? In general, the 105th Congress gave programs and departments of interest to the computing research community a boost over FY '97 (one exception, however, was NASA, which received slightly less than it did in FY '97).

NSF: Congress set NSF's spending this fiscal year at $3.4 billion, an increase of $134 million over FY '97 and $37 million more than the President requested. As reported in the September issue of Computing Research News, a large part of NSF's budget, $90 million, will go towards rebuilding the foundation's Antarctic facility, though some will be deferred. In a statement released shortly after House and Senate conferees reached agreement on NSF's budget, Neal Lane, NSF Director said: "I am particularly grateful for the efforts made by the science and engineering community to work with the Congress. These efforts played a large part in obtaining such strong Congressional support for NSF."

Lane also expressed appreciation to conferees for their "vote of confidence and support for our involvement in the Next Generation Internet and other important areas of research and education." Though House and Senate conferees decided upon $23 million for the NGI initiative, they directed that the money actually come from an interest-bearing account run by an NSF contractor, Network Solutions Inc. (NSI). NSI, which registers domain names, was required two years ago to put 30% of registration fees collected into an intellectual infrastructure fund (see related story). The conference report directs that this account be used for NSF "research and related activities." NGI will also get funding from DARPA.

DARPA: Overall, Congress approved $9.821 billion for "research, evaluation and testing, defense-wide." This is $752 million more than requested by the Administration. DARPA funding for NGI was designated at $42 million.

NASA: While Congress gave NASA $148 million more of a budget to work with than President Clinton proposed, it also gave it less than in FY'97 - $61 million less. For FY '98, NASA will receive $13.648 billion.

DOE: The Department received a comprehensive package for funding that includes $220 million for a technology development program, of which $4 million is designated for the University Research Program in Robotics.