ALERT re: Response to Congressional Action on the Information Technology R&D Initiative

August 2, 1999

As you probably already know, much of the news is bad; there are, however, hopeful signs for the future and I want to stress that this year's budget process is far from over.

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 low numbers can be attributed primarily to the politics of the overall federal budget situation. In fact the subcommittee expressed strong support for information technology research at NSF, calling this year's unfortunately low funding a "down payment" on a multi-year commitment. This attitude — a near reversal of the widespread skepticism with which the initiative was met when first introduced — no doubt reflects the hard work of the community in building Congressional support.

The Senate appropriations subcommittee will mark up the NSF's budget when Congress returns from its summer break the second week of September. As for the other agencies participating in the IT initiative: DARPA's $70 million request was cut down to $30 million by the House and $45 million by the Senate; DOE was denied all funding for participating in the initiative; NASA's budget was hit hard; and the bill covering NIH has not yet been written.

We are not done yet. There are still 2+ months to go in this process and there is still hope that these numbers, especially the NSF's, can be increased. Progress on bipartisan authorizing legislation now pending in the House Science Committee, the Networking and Information Technology R&D Act, is working in our favor.

At this time, CRA asks the computing research community to redouble its efforts to promote congressional support for the IT research initiative . Congress will be in recess August 7 to September 7, and most Members will be campaigning in their home districts/states. Please contact your state's legislators in their local offices or at local events. Urge both of your Senators to work toward a VA-HUD appropriations bill that makes up the IT funding shortfalls in the House version of the bill.

CRA has issued a response to the House's action on NSF appropriations. Additional information will continue to be posted to the Advocacy page on the CRA website and distributed to the Computing Research Advocacy Network.

Thank you very much for your interest and support! Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.

Lisa Thompson
Director of Government Affairs
Computing Research Association
1100 17th Street NW
Washington, DC 20036
202-234-2111
202-667-1066 fax
thompson@cra.org