Friday, 5 June 1987 Washington, DC
1.
EXTENSION OF THE SOCIAL SECURITY TAX TO STUDENT EMPLOYEES
at colleges and universities is being urged by the Administration.
The university employer and the student employee would have to
contribute over 7% of a student's wages to Social Security (FICA)
under the proposed change. Teaching and research assistants,
already bloodied by changes in the income tax
laws (WN 15 May 87), would
find their meager living standards further eroded. In
fact, in the cold logic of the government bureaucracy, ending the
FICA exception for student employees is a natural consequence of
having included them in the income tax. The historic rationale
for the exception, which has been in the law since 1939, was that
the bookkeeping would be a burden on the schools. However, since
they are now required to withhold income taxes from student
earnings anyway, it is argued that the additional burden of FICA
will not be unreasonable. Congress must now decide whether to
include the administration proposal in its revenue bill.
2
. THE FY 88 UNIVERSITY RESEARCH INITIATIVE OF THE DOD
was set
at $142M in the DoD authorization bill reported out of the Senate
Armed Services Committee. As we reported
earlier (WN 17 Apr 87),
the House Armed Services Committee called for $200M. The House
also moved the funds to a separate line item in the Office of the
Secretary of Defense, rather than continuing to divide them among
the three services and DARPA. The more cautious Senate version
would put just $50M in a new OSD line and divide the rest. Aside
from an expression of pique at the conduct of the URI by the
services, it is not clear that moving funds to OSD will have any
real effect anyway. OSD has no machinery to administer the URI
and may delegate the responsibility back to the services.
3. THE UNIVERSITY ROLE IN DEFENSE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
is discussed in a DoD report prepared for the Committees on
Appropriations of the Congress. DoD basic research funding
(category 6.1), which was 0.053% of the GNP in FY 63, is now only
0.023%. However, the university share of 6.1 funds has gone up
from 34.2% to 54.5% in the last decade. The result, according to
the report, is that DoD funding of basic research at universities
today is comparable in real terms to that in the mid-60's.
"Basic," however, seems to have undergone substantial
redefinition in the intervening years, as indicated by the four
areas of future defense research opportunities identified in the
report: materials engineering, sensors, data and signal
processing, and ocean science and engineering.
4. MERIT REVIEW AND GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF DOD UNIVERSITY
RESEARCH
is dealt with in a separate companion report. The
report argues that the goal should be expansion of national
research capacity and not simply redistribution. It indicates
that DoD support for basic research could be doubled without
compromising quality.
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