FY2008 APPROPRIATIONS BILLS-OVERVIEW AND OUTLOOK

FY2008 Appropriations Bills Overview FY2008 House Appropriations Capitol Hill Day INSIDE (The Beltway) SCOOP – Jon Retzlaff Bill Action Congressional Schedule FASEB Washington Update Archives

Appropriations Overview/Outlook: Debate on Earmarks & President’s Veto Threats
The FY2008 appropriations process has gotten off to a rocky start. House Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-WI) was forced to reconsider his decision to withhold earmarks until conference negotiations with the Senate after debate on the Homeland Security Appropriations Bill stretched until 2 a.m. on Thursday, June 14, 2007. Republicans used procedural moves to force continual debate, while criticizing Democrats for agreeing to withhold earmarks from appropriations bills until the House –
Senate conference reports are provided to Congressional Members. It now appears that Democrats have relented and will provide a list of all earmarks prior to consideration by the full Appropriations Committee. This development has forced the postponement of numerous House Appropriations Committee mark-ups to allow subcommittee staff time to review the 32,000 earmark requests and ensure that the projects meet specific
requirements.

In addition, another challenge that has surfaced involves President Bush’s threat to veto any appropriations bill that proposes to spend more than was included in his budget. The
Democratic Budget Resolution proposes to spend $21 billion more than the President’s $933 billion cap for discretionary spending. And, based on the allocations that each of the House Appropriations Subcommittees received, this would result in the President vetoing eight of the twelve appropriations bills, including the ones that fund the six agencies FASEB advocates for (NIH, NSF, DOE’s Office of Science, USDA’s National Research Initiative, VA’s Medical and Prosthetics Research Program and NASA).

NIH: House Labor-HHS-Education (L/HHS) Appropriations Subcommittee Recommends a $750 million increase for NIH in FY2008
On June 7, 2007, L/HHS Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman David Obey (D-WA)
recommended that NIH receive a $750 million increase in FY2008, to $29.649 billion (a
2.6% increase). However, because the House has agreed with the President’s proposal to increase the amount (by $201 million) that NIH is required to transfer to the Global
HIV/AIDS program, the House subcommittee is actually proposing that NIH receive an
increase in FY2008 of $549 million (a 1.9% increase). Thus, even though the increase
proposed (in dollar terms) is among the highest NIH has received in the past four years,
the proposed increase falls significantly short of the 6.7% increase recommended by
FASEB and the broader medical research community. The 6.7% increases for each of the
next three years would erase the inflationary losses suffered by NIH since 2003.

The House Appropriations Committee postponed its mark-up of the Labor-HHS Education
Bill in order to provide subcommittee staff with additional time to insert
earmarks into the bill before it is considered by the full committee.

House L/HHS Subcommittee’s FY2008 Proposed Funding Levels for NIH Institutes
and Centers (and Common Fund and Children’s Health Study)

NSF: House Subcommittee recommends a $593 million increase for NSF in FY2008
On Monday, June 11, 2007, the House Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related
Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee recommended that NSF receive a $593 million
increase in FY2008, to $6.51 billion (a 10% increase). The House’s proposal matches
FASEB’s recommendation for NSF in FY2008. The President proposed $6.43 billion for
NSF (an 8.7% increase). Therefore, the House provided an $80 million increase over
what the President proposed. The momentum for the proposed increase comes from the
American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI), a bi-partisan initiative to ensure that the U.S.
remains the leader in science and technology. The goal of the ACI is to double the
budgets of NSF and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science over ten years. The
full committee is scheduled to mark-up the bill on Monday, June 18, 2007, provided that
subcommittee staff has sufficient time to ensure that earmarks are included in the
committee report.

VA: House Appropriations Committee provides VA Medical and Prosthetics
Program with a $68 million increase
The House Appropriations Committee passed the Military Construction, Veteran’s
Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill, which proposed to provide the VA
Medical and Prosthetics Research Program with an appropriation of $480 million for
FY2008 (a 14% increase), which is exactly what FASEB recommended in its Federal
Funding Report for the VA program in FY2008. The bill is scheduled to be debated on
the floor of the House of Representatives sometime this week.

Department of Energy (DOE): House Appropriations Committee passes Energy and
Water Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill
The House Appropriations Committee passed the Energy and Water Development, and
Related Agencies Appropriations Bill, which proposes to provide the DOE’s Office of
Science with an appropriation of $4.4 billion for FY2008 (a 15% increase). The
President’s FY2008 request for DOE’s Office of Science was also $4.4 billion, as was
FASEB’s recommendation in its Federal Funding Report for FY2008.

One of the goals of the American Competitiveness Initiative is to double the budget of
DOE’s Office of Science over ten years. The 15 percent increase recommended by the
subcommittee is a down payment toward reaching this goal.

The bill is scheduled to be debated on the floor of the House of Representatives once staff adds the earmarks.

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FY2008 HOUSE APPROPRIATIONS ALLOCATIONS

House Appropriations Allocations to Twelve Subcommittees
On June 5, 2007, House Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-WI) announced
subcommittee allocations (commonly referred to as the 302b allocations) for each of the
twelve House Appropriations panels. On June 6, 2007, the House Appropriations
Committee ratified the allocations proposed by Chairman Obey.

Specifically, Chairman Obey provided the L/HHS subcommittee with $9 billion more
(when including advance appropriations for FY 2009 and cap adjustments for FY2008)
than its FY2007 level, which is $12 billion more than the President proposed (and which
means that the President actually proposed to cut labor, health and education programs by $3 billion in FY2008). You may recall that FASEB’s Office of Public Affairs alerted its
society members to contact their respective Members of Congress and request an increase of $14 billion to the L/HHS Appropriations Subcommittee. While it did not get the full $14 billion, the L/HHS appropriations subcommittee did receive two-thirds of what FASEB and the entire biomedical research community requested. Unfortunately, the L/HHS Subcommittee’s allocation increase did not translate into two-thirds of the  6.7 percent increase for NIH that we are advocating for. While we are concerned that NIH's increase would result in the loss of purchasing power in 2008, it’s important to remember that this is only the beginning of a long process, and that Chairman Obey's decision to add $12 billion more to the L/HHS subcommittee than the President recommended was a very positive step. We hope to improve on this overall number for NIH at every other step along the way, beginning with the Senate mark-up of the L/HHS Appropriations Bill that is scheduled for Tuesday, June 19, 2007.

Among the issues that need to be considered as to why NIH may have received a
smaller increase than we had hoped for:

1) The President recommended significant increases for two programs that are very
important to Democrats. The President proposed a $2.5 billion increase for Pell
Grants in FY2008 and a $1 billion increase for the No Child Left Behind program.
The House was going to have to put significant money into these programs to at least
come close to matching the President. And, in fact, the House provided $2 billion
more for Pell Grants in FY2008 and $2 billion more for the No Child Left Behind
program in FY2008. Therefore, essentially the first $4 billion of the $9 billion
increase (in the L/HHS allocation) over FY2007 levels was essentially reserved for
those two programs.

2) The House wants to provide increases to many programs because they have come
to expect that the Senate champions for NIH, Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Arlen
Specter (R-PA), will provide a significant increase for NIH. If the Senate provides a
significant increase for NIH, it is not likely to be able to provide comparable
increases for many of the programs the House regards as priorities. Thus, during
conference negotiations, the House will be able to advocate for those programs in
which they recommended a higher funding level for (when compared to the Senate)
and hopefully support the higher Senate number for NIH. During conference
negotiations in previous years the House has been willing accede to the higher Senate
number for NIH as a way to provide additional funds for the agency.

Chairman Obey also provided $2.3 billion in additional funds (beyond the President’s
request) to the Commerce, Justice and Science Appropriations Subcommittee (which has
jurisdiction for NSF and NASA), $1.1 billion in additional funds (beyond the President’s
request) to the Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee (which has jurisdiction
for DOE’s Office of Science), $4 billion in additional dollars (beyond the President’s
request) to the Military Quality of Life and VA Subcommittee (which has jurisdiction for
VA’s Medical & Prosthetics Research Program), and $990 million more than the
President requested for the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee (which has
jurisdiction for USDA’s National Research Initiative). Click on this link to see a breakdown of spending on each L/HHS account.

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FASEB'S 3rd ANNUAL CAPITOL HILL DAY

FASEB President Leo Furcht (left) and FASEB Board Member David Bylund (right) present Rep. Joe Barton with the Federation's Public Service Award

FASEB’s 3rd Annual “Capitol Hill Day” took place June 4-5, 2007. FASEB’s Science
Policy Committee Members met with six Congressional offices and FASEB Board
Members visited twelve Congressional offices. In addition, FASEB’s Board presented
Ranking Member Joe Barton (R-TX) with the 2007 FASEB Public Service Award for
working very closely with FASEB on numerous issues, including helping to promote the
importance of investigator-initiated research. Unfortunately, due to the Appropriations
Committee mark-ups that were occurring, we had to postpone the ceremony for the other recipient of FASEB’s Public Service Award in 2007, Chairman David Obey (D-WI).

The meetings provided an opportunity for FASEB society leaders to discuss the
importance of federally funded scientific research, provide information about their
individual work, share their personal experience of what it's like to be an extramural
researcher (for example, how competitive it is to acquire funding, their involvement with
peer review panels, etc.) and provide the Congressional offices with various FASEB
resources, such as the FASEB Federal Funding Reports, FASEB’s Breakthrough Articles
and the community's recommendation for NIH funding in FY2008.

The following excerpt from Nature summarized a message the FASEB society leaders
conveyed during their meetings with regard to NIH funding: “Only four years after
completion of a historic “doubling” of the NIH budget, biomedical researchers in the U.S.
are experiencing unprecedented competition for research funding and for many there is
deteriorating morale about the prospects for survival in research careers. Three factors, in combination, account for this dramatic change: Flat funding for NIH has left funded
researchers and their institutions vulnerable to the rising costs of biomedical research;
funds for new and competing continuations have been cut; and the increased capacity for research has resulted in a higher demand for funds. Boom and bust cycles are wasteful and inefficient. Steady, long-term growth will provide the optimal conditions for progress in science.”

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