COMPETES bill defeated again

Supporters of legislation that would extend the 1997 law that codified a doubling of the budgets for key federal basic physical sciences research programs over 10 years were mulling how to gain House passage of a bill after Republicans succeeded in defeating two versions of the measure in as many weeks.

Back to the drawing board

The bills would reauthorize the America COMPETES Act , which expires on 30 September. Their lead sponsor, Science and Technology Committee chairman Bart Gordon (D-TN), has been keen to see the bill enacted before he retires this fall. But the committee’s ranking GOP member, Ralph Hall of Texas , has led the opposition, arguing that the spending levels it authorizes are too big.

On Friday, a spokeswoman for the committee said that Gordon had not determined his plans for reconsideration of the bill by the full House. Although a modified version of the COMPETES bill gained the approval of members by a lopsided 261–148 vote, it failed to achieve the two-thirds margin required for passage under an expedited procedure by which lawmakers suspend the usual House rules.

The vote on the scaled-back, 274-page bill (H.R. 5325 ) would have cut by nearly half the $86 billion authorized in the original bill over the next five years, and limited the extension to a three-year period. The first bill (H.R. 5116 ) was defeated on 13 May, when, by a commanding 292–126 margin, the House approved Hall’s motion to send the bill back to committee with instructions to cut its cost.

Hall’s motion also included a provision to prohibit federal research-sponsoring agencies from paying the salaries of employees who view internet pornography on the job—a reaction to revelations that a number of NSF employees had been caught doing so.

Gordon expressed frustration at Hall’s success in using the issue of pornography to help defeat higher spending levels for scientific research. “Nobody seriously thinks that we don’t want to deal with pornography here, for God sakes,” Gordon said. “If you vote for this,” he said of Mr. Hall’s amendment, “you should be embarrassed.”

A long-term vision derailed

The 1997 COMPETES act was prompted by the influential 2005 Gathering Storm report issued by a National Research Council committee that was chaired by retired aerospace executive Norman Augustine . In addition to doubling the budgets of NSF, the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, and NIST’s core research programs, the Augustine panel urged creation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA–E) to select and fund high-risk research projects that could result in breakthrough clean-energy technologies. Though he signed COMPETES into law, President George W. Bush did not request funding for ARPA–E, and the new office only became a reality last year.

Numerous industry and academic organizations have stressed the importance of gaining passage. “COMPETES has provided a terrific framework for arguing on behalf of investments in research,” said Barry Toiv of the Association of American Universities. “It has been a bipartisan foundation and strategy for year-to-year appropriations, and by and large, appropriators have paid close attention to it.”

But the impacts of a failure to extend the act are likely to be limited. Most importantly, COMPETES only authorizes spending levels, and appropriators frequently ignore the numbers that are set in authorization bills as they seek to balance competing demands falling within their jurisdictions. Appropriators have so far adhered to the doubling trajectories that the law set for DOE, NIST, and NSF, and, notes Toiv, they won’t be prevented from sticking to those funding profiles in the absence of COMPETES. Continued increases in the years ahead are likely to hinge at least as much, if not more so, on the Obama administration’s continued support. By that measure, President Obama’s budget request for the fiscal year that begins 1 October, and his oft-stated support for the doubling, are positive signs. On the other hand, enormous federal deficits and a freeze on discretionary spending that Obama has proposed to begin in FY 2012 could result in a stretching out of the 10-year doubling timetable.

David Kramer

Related links from FYI

Selected quotes from the House Floor debate of the COMPETES Legislation House consideration of COMPETES bill highlights party differences