Friday, 25 March 1988
1.
THE HOUSE APPROVED AN FY 89 BUDGET RESOLUTION
Wednesday. It
accepted the Budget Committee's recommendation to increase the
science and technology part of the budget, Function 250, by 17%
over FY 88 to $12.2B. That is less than the $13.1B the President
requested, but more than most observers thought he would get.
Included in Function 250 are three big ticket items: the Space
Station, the Supercollider and the plan to double the budget of
the NSF. Although the resolution specifies a funding level for
each of these, it is only a guide for the Appropriations
Committees. What really matters is the size of the melon. How
to slice it will be fought out all over again later. Although it
is still early in the budget process, the breakdown does provide
some indication of the thinking of Congress at this point.
2
. THE NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION WOULD GET AN INCREASE OF $300M
under the House resolution, or about 17%. As usual, not all
parts of NSF can expect to prosper equally. Engineering is
slated to go up almost 14%. The Materials Research Division, in
which NSF acknowledges serious management problems
(WN 4 Mar 88),
would increase only about 7%. That won't begin to solve the
problems created by years of underfunding. Despite the
demoralized climate of the Materials Research Division, Al
Schindler, Dean of the Materials Research Laboratory at Purdue
and for many years a research director of the Naval Research
Laboratory, has agreed to take over as head of the Division at
the end of year. He will replace Adriaan de Graff, who has been
acting director. Schindler is a Fellow of the APS and a
distinguished solid state physicist. He must relish a challenge.
3. THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY FARED BADLY
in the House
resolution. Both the High Energy Physics program and Basic
Energy Sciences would get no increase at all over FY 88. The
House did approve $100M for the Supercollider, but that is
considerably less than the $363M requested by the President. It
would have been even lower had it not been for the intervention
of a powerful lobby, which urged Rep. Gray (D-PA), chairman of
the Budget Committee, to support the project. What lobby is
concerned with learning the fundamental constituents of matter?
Labor! Meanwhile, in Illinois and Texas, two states that are
high on the short list for the SSC site, citizens groups have
organized to fight the project in court.
4. THE MILITARIZATION OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
is also a
concern of some members of Congress. Activities in support of
the Department of Defense represent $8.2B of the budget request
for FY 89. That is 61% of the total DOE request. In the first
year of the Reagan Administration, it was only 38% according to a
report from the House Energy and Power subcommittee. Rep. Markey
(D-MA) says this represents a shift of $4B to the military from
civilian energy programs.
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