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CRA Letter to Members of the House Subcommittee
on VA, HUD, and Independent Agencies Appropriations
on FY 2001 Funding for the National Science Foundation

May 9, 2000

The Honorable James T. Walsh
Chairman, Subcommittee on VA, HUD,
  and Independent Agencies
Committee on Appropriations
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Chairman Walsh:

As you begin to wrap up work on the VA-HUD appropriations bill, I am writing to urge you to take every available measure to provide full funding for the research, education, and infrastructure programs of the National Science Foundation.

It is widely recognized that the prosperity the United States currently enjoys is in large measure the result of wise federal investments in fundamental research made in the past. This is particularly true in the case of computing research and information technology: without federal support for long-term, broad-based research programs in these fields, the tools that have enabled the explosive growth of electronic commerce revolution would have never been invented. The contributions of e-commerce to U.S. income and revenues depend on the development of, for instance, web browsers, encryption technologies, search engines, and of course the Internet itself.

The VA-HUD subcommittee is to be commended for adding $90 million to last year's NSF budget to fund the Information Technology Research initiative and maintain the stream of investment. You may be interested to know that roughly 1,500 proposals were received for this initiative, of which only about 150 can be funded. An incredible amount of high-quality research and education - the backbone of U.S. world leadership in information technology - remains to be done.

We would like to thank you for your past support of the NSF and urge you to provide the NSF's full budget request of $4,572 million in your FY 2001 bill. We believe this is a small price to pay, especially in this time of prosperity, to ensure our Nation's future.

Sincerely,

Edward Lazowska
Board Chair