Appropriators Cut FY 2000 Funding For IT²

By Lisa Thompson

As Congress prepares to return to business the second week of September, the overall budget picture is still cloudy. Although forecasts suggest that the federal budget surplus will reach $3 trillion over the next ten years, the White House and Congress disagree about how to use it. Both sides agree that about two-thirds of it should be left in the Social Security Trust Fund. And Congressional Republicans have passed an $800 billion tax cut bill that would use most of the rest of it.

Although the White House and even many Republicans would like to apply some of the surplus to discretionary spending, neither side is willing to be the first to suggest it openly. So Congress is preparing the FY 2000 federal budget under tight caps on discretionary spending enacted several years ago. While most appropriations panels have written their FY 2000 spending bills, a few are waiting to see if more money becomes available so they can avoid deep cuts in their programs.

The appropriations process is far from over and there is still a chance of securing additional funds for IT. CRA is asking the computing research community to redouble its efforts to promote Congressional support for the IT research initiative, in particular urging the Senate to work toward a VA-HUD appropriations bill that makes up the NSF's IT funding shortfalls in the House version of the bill. Please see http://www.cra.org/Policy/advocacy.html for more information.

As a result of the impasse, the Administration's budget request for the Information Technology for the Twenty-First Century (IT2) initiative has been cut by all the panels that have considered it so far (for different reasons though).

The House appropriations subcommittee responsible for NSF provided a $35 million increase above CISE's current budget to begin funding the IT initiative. This is well below CISE's request for a $110 million increase. An additional $36 million request for development of terascale computing systems was not funded at all. The subcommittee made clear, however, that the cuts were made "without prejudice," that is, because money was not available to provide the requested increases and not because the subcommittee opposes the idea of expanding support for IT research. The report accompanying the spending bill says:

"Budget constraints make it impossible for the Committee to provide the funding level as provided in ... the full budget request for this new initiative without adversely disrupting funding in all other program areas. Nevertheless, the Committee believes $35,000,000 is a significant down-payment towards what it expects will be a long-term, comprehensive research program in this important field of computing and information technologies."

The report says much the same about the terascale computing program: "The Committee, however, is not prepared at this time to commit resources to the construction of a single site, five teraflop computing facility as requested in the budget submission. The Committee has taken this action, without prejudice, due to budget constraints and other, higher priority pressures on available financial resources. The Committee expects to consider this request in future year budget submissions and would hope to have the benefit of any new IT research that may be available to assist during those forthcoming deliberations."

The Senate appropriations subcommittee will mark up the NSF's budget after the congressional recess.

The Department of Energy's proposed participation in IT2, the $70 million Scientific Simulation Initiative, was not funded by either the House or Senate Energy and Water appropriations subcommittees. The House panel explained that it could not afford to fund the SSI program in addition to DoE's ongoing Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative:

"The budget justification for SSI failed to justify the need to establish a second supercomputing program in the Department of Energy. The Congress has been supportive of the ASCI program which the Department claimed would have benefits in addition to the defense purposes for which it was originally created. The proposed SSI program has a goal of building and operating a separate, yet similar, program dedicated exclusively to domestic purposes.

At this time, the Committee cannot support this massively parallel proposal to manage and fund two separate supercomputing programs."

At the Department of Defense, DARPA's $70 million request for IT2 was cut down to $30 million by the House and $45 million by the Senate. Both of the Defense appropriations subcommittees considered the new program to be a low priority even within a growing DoD R&D budget. When Congress returns it will continue work on the appropriations bill and set about reconciling the differences between the House and Senate versions. The President will most assuredly veto the Republican tax-cut legislation. This, and the possible veto of one or more appropriations bills, could lead either to negotiations on a compromise package of tax cuts and spending increases, or to a continuation of the impasse. As always, the outcome will reflect political calculations made by both sides as they position themselves for the 2000 Presidential election. [an error occurred while processing this directive]