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INSIDE (THE BELTWAY) SCOOP- Jon
Retzlaff, LEGISLATIVE DIRECTOR
When the “302b” allocations for the House
Appropriations Subcommittees were released,
there were plenty of reasons to be optimistic.
The subcommittees that have jurisdiction over
the science agencies we advocate for– NIH, NSF,
DOE’s Office of Science, VA’s Medical and
Prosthetics Research Program, USDA’s National
Research Initiative, and NASA– each received
generous allocations. Also, the House
Appropriations Committee provided support for
our healthy dose of optimism as it recommended
significant increases for NSF, DOE’s Office of
Science, and VA’s Medical and Prosthetics
Research Program.
However, the events of the past few days
signaled that we still have numerous challenges
to overcome. First on the list is that the 1.9
percent increase recommended by the L/HHS
Appropriations Subcommittee for NIH in FY2008
would result in a 1.8 percent decline in the
agency’s purchasing power. Of course, it is
important to recognize that Chairman Obey
provided $1 billion more for NIH in FY2008 than
the President proposed. And, while we have (at
least in the past) held out hope that the Senate
will provide a larger increase for the House,
the allocation provided to the Senate L/HHS
Appropriations Subcommittee is $2 billion below
the House, making it extremely difficult to
imagine that they will be able to improve much
beyond the 1.9 percent increase proposed by the
House.
In addition, when the President decided to back
off his earlier veto threat on the House
Military Construction–VA Appropriations Bill
(even though it is $4 billion above his
request), he stated that reductions would have
to be made in other spending bills to offset the
increases for veterans programs or those other
bills would certainly meet Mr. Bush’s veto pen.
Therefore, those “other bills” include the ones
that provide funding for the science agencies we
advocate for, and as a result, they may be
squeezed even more since Republicans appear to
have the necessary 146 votes to sustain a
Presidential veto on any appropriation bill that
spends more than the President recommended.
At the beginning of the year, I believed that
there was more momentum for science
programs than had existed during the previous
three or four years. However, these recent
developments are beginning to make me question
some of the earlier optimism I
possessed.
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BILL ACTION
On June 6th, the House passed S.5, the Senate
version of the Stem Cell Research
Enhancement Act, legislation that FASEB
supported, by a vote of 247-176. The
House
had passed a similar bill in January, during the
first 100 hours of their legislative
schedule, but the Senate version included some
language related to research on
alternative means to derive pluripotent stem
cells that had to be reconciled.
Unfortunately, the House vote falls far short of
the numbers needed to override a
Presidential veto of the bill, which is expected
at any time. Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA),
Chair of the subcommittee which provides
appropriations to NIH, has threatened to
attach the stem cell bill to the FY2008 Labor-HHS
appropriations. As mentioned above,
President Bush has already threatened to veto
this and other appropriations bills for
containing higher spending levels than his
proposed budget; attachment of the stem cell
bill would likely only provide additional
incentive.
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CONGRESSIONAL SCHEDULE
The House and Senate are in session.
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WASHINGTON UPDATE |
