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NSF UPDATE
``` [This long message clarifies the situation with NSF, to the extent that it can be clarified. Bottom line: it's a serious situation.]
Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 14:54:49 -0500
From: rholland@nsf.gov
To: Multiple recipients of list
Below please find two recent updates on the NSF situation from the Federation of Behavioral, Psychological and Cognitive Sciences(federation@apa.org). It's about the best discussion of the entire situation and the confusing messages that have been coming out that I've seen. Dave Johnson was once a Congressional Staffer and knows the situation!
Joe
*MAY 17, 1994. MORE INFORMATION ON CUTS PROPOSED BY THE HOUSE BUDGET COMMITTEE
Many of those we have asked to write letters to Congress concerning the proposal by the House Budget Committee to eliminate NSF funding for the social, behavioral, and economic sciences have asked for more information. Here is a very detailed sketch of what is going on. There are three steps that lead to a federal agency like NSF getting its annual budget: The budget process, the authorization process, and the appropriation process. The usual purpose of the Budget Committee is to set overall spending figures for the government. The job of the authorizing committee is to authorize or sanction the agencies and programs that should receive funding. The job of the Appropriations Committee is to determine within the constraints set by the budget committee's overall spending figure how much should go to each agency and, often, the allocations to major divisions within agencies. When things work in an orderly fashion, the authorizing committee acts first because, strictly speaking, unauthorized programs are not supposed to be funded. A key piece of information here is that NSF is proceeding without an authorization. The attempt to authorize it failed last year, meaning the process has to begin again this year, and must be completed before the appropriations process. This is the case because the House leadership has said that the House will not fund unauthorized programs. In theory, therefore, not just social, behavioral, and economic sciences, but NSF itself could be wiped out. I very much doubt that is going to happen. After the agency has an authorization, the budget committee should take all the authorized programs and figure out how much the government should spend altogether. Now, it can't do that without making some decisions about how much each agency and program should get. But it has generally been beyond the purview of the Budget Committee to recommend down to the program level what should be spent. In fact, the Budget Committee gives its figures in large chunks called budget functions. NSF is contained in budget function 250 which also includes NASA and many of the other science-related agencies. (It does not, however, contain NIH.) So even if not given voice, there are spending assumptions on which the budget is based. That is the case this year. What is somewhat different from other years, though, is that the Budget Committee has been attempting to usurp some of the authority of the Appropriations Committee by trying not only to give the overall spending figures but to push for specific program cuts to meet those spending figures. That is what has happened with the social, behavioral, and economic research division of NSF, Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Directorate. The key paragraph in the House Budget Committee's recommendations is contained in a section under function 250 entitled "Discretionary Provisions" in which the budget committee's assumptions for that function are described. It reads as follows: "Emphasize Basic Science within the National Science Foundation (NSF) (D: $502 million [cut] over five years and $655 million [cut] over seven years) This proposal assumes that while science and technology must contribute to the immediate fiscal reality, they must also provide for the opportunities that must be developed in the future. In order for the technological revolution to continue, a strong fundamental science is needed. Therefore, this proposal assumes that basic research should be prioritized. For instance, NSF civilian research and related activities, with the exclusion of social, behavioral and economic studies and the critical technologies institute, can be provided at their current levels plus three percent growth. No reductions are assumed to NSF basic research on the physical sciences. Education and Human Resources can be maintained and Academic Research Infrastructure is assumed at President Clinton's requested level." In other words, the social, behavioral and economic sciences and one other program the Republicans don't like are to bear the brunt of the $655 million cut if the Budget Committee gets its way. It is important for you to understand that as much as it would like to simply impose its assumptions about the budget on the Appropriations Committee, the Budget Committee has, so far, not been able to do so. That is, the Budget Committee's recommended cuts remain just that, recommendations, to the Appropriations Committee. Once the authorizing and budget committees have acted, again when things go in an orderly fashion, the Appropriations Committee then takes up the job of actually allocating the dollars. Things are not in order. NSF has no authorization, but the Budget Committee has passed the Budget Resolution out of committee readying it for floor consideration. It is almost a certainty that the House will rubber stamp the Budget Resolution. The House finished its work on the Clean Water Act yesterday (May 16) and so the Budget Resolution can now come to the floor at any time. Once it is passed, the Appropriations Committee will be bound by the overall spending figures agreed to in the budget. They will not be bound to honor the Budget Committee's specific cut recommendations, however. That is why we are urging everyone to write or call their members of Congress now. If there is a perception among members of Congress, especially members of the authorizing and appropriating committees that there is public sentiment against wiping out the behavioral and social sciences, then they are more likely to ignore the Budget Committee recommendation. Here is a tricky part: NSF may well receive the cut recommended by the Budget Committee. But the Appropriations Committee can choose not to tell NSF how to absorb it. So NSF could still wipe out these sciences, or it could spread the pain. In the latter case, the sciences that have so far been protected would also receive cuts. OR, the Appropriations Committee could decide that the other programs within the jurisdiction of the subcommittee that has NSF could absorb some or all of the cuts. In the Appropriations Committee, NSF is lumped together with the Veterans Administration, Housing and Urban Development, NASA, and several other free-standing or "independent" science and non-science agencies. Unfortunately, since the Budget Committee wants to cut NASA by about a third and wipe out Housing and Urban Development entirely, the allocation for the VA, HUD and Independent Agencies Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee is likely to be pretty meager. Once the Budget Resolution has been passed, the Appropriations Committee determines what are called 602 B allocations. This is a process for cutting up the whole budget pie into 13 pieces--a slice for each of the thirteen appropriations subcommittees. All the programs contained in a slice have to be funded from whatever is in that slice. One subcommittee can't go get another subcommittee's slice. One effect of a letter writing and telephone campaign now can be to convince the appropriators that VA, HUD and Independent Agencies should get a bit more generous 602 B allocation than it might have otherwise. The more money the subcommittee has to work with the less pain it is going to have to inflict on the agencies under its jurisdiction. As I mentioned, another effect could be that the Appropriations Committee could decline to instruct NSF about how it would have to absorb whatever cut it finally gives NSF. Both of those outcomes would be wonderful. Achieving the latter, would at least permit survival of the social, behavioral and economic sciences. Another thing that has to be accomplished by this campaign is that the authorizing committee must be convinced not to write the social, behavioral, and economic sciences out of the NSF authorization. If that happens, then the show is over. You can't give money to something that doesn't exist. The authorization bestows (or takes away) official existence. The thing everyone needs to realize as we head into the authorizing process is that the chair of the authorizing committee Robert Walker of Pennsylvania is also the Vice-Chair of the Budget Committee. Since he helped engineer the budget resolution, there is little doubt that he will try to enforce its assumptions through the authorizing process. That is, he is very likely to draft an NSF authorization that does not contain an authorization for the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Directorate. He signaled that this is what he has in mind at a news conference he held last week. He said that this Directorate had been created just because it was politically correct to do so. He implied that the Directorate, and presumably the sciences within it, were Johnny come latelies. And the implication was that he was going to correct the matter. I expect that he will be hard to shake. But his fellow authorizing committee members may not be as firm as he is. That is another reason for the letter writing campaign now. The authorizing committee members have to know that there is opposition among the citizenry to cutting off the social, behavioral, and economic sciences. We have been asking people to write to their member of Congress and to their Senators and to send a copy of the letter to Robert Walker, to Jerry Lewis who is the Chair of the VA, HUD and Independent Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee, and to George Brown, who is the ranking minority member of the authorizing committee. Brown is likely to be helpful in seeing that the SB&E sciences stay in the authorization. Brown needs to know that he has public support for his efforts. Walker needs to know that he does not have public support for his efforts and that his fellow members of Congress are getting inundated with negative mail as a result of what he has in mind. And Jerry Lewis, who is a good deal more moderate Republican than is Walker, needs to know that he can safely ignore the Budget Committee's recommendation when he puts together the NSF budget. We ask people to write to their Senators because the Senate is our firewall, so to speak. The Senate Budget Resolution does not contain a recommendation about getting rid of the social, behavioral, and economic sciences. The overall cut envisioned in the Senate Budget Resolution is smaller than that envisioned in the House Budget Resolution. The Senate is more moderate overall than is the House. So if all our efforts to blunt this attack fail and the House does write off the social, behavioral and economic sciences, we are giving Senators a signal that they can oppose what the House has done and receive public support for their opposition. This will be important at every point in this multi-step process. The House and Senate versions of the Budget Resolution are not identical. This means that after each house passes its version of the bill, there will be a conference committee of House and Senate members selected to work out differences between the two bills. The Senate can insist in conference that any provision indicating to NSF how it must make cuts be dropped. It can argue for a lesser cut as well. The same is the case with the appropriation bill and the authorization bill. The Senate is likely to come out with bills that are more favorable to the social, behavioral, and economic sciences. We have to make the Senators comfortable with opposing what might come from the House. That is the purpose of getting the letters to the Senators.
Dave Johnson Executive Director Federation of Behavioral, Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
*MAY 22 UPDATE FROM DR. DAVID JOHSON REGARDING "ELIMINATION" The following note is a letter from Dr. Johnson to an interested party who wanted to know if Rep. Walker had really called for "elmination" of the social, behavioral and economic sciences at NSF. "I am the author of the action alert. So I wanted to list the items that led to the action alert. And the point I want to make is that the best interpretation that can be put on these items is that the Budget Committee proposes freezing spending for the social and behavioral sciences for the next seven years while allowing all the other sciences to grow at three percent per year. That action alone would make these sciences officially second class citizens in the world of science. But there is a basis for thinking the cut could be much worse than a seven year freeze. The documents released by the Budget Committee on the day the budget was passed out of committee contain, with one important exception, the information that was later published in the Committee report to the House. (The Committee report accompanies a bill and it explains to legislators who are not part of the committee the intentions of the committee drafting the legislation.) The document containing the Committee's recommendations contains a paragraph that begins by listing the expected NSF cut over five years to be $502 million and the seven year cut to be $655 million. (This information was not included in the published committee report.) The rest of the paragraph (which was published in the committee report) goes on to explain that under the Budget Committee's recommendation, all the sciences except the social and behavioral sciences and the critical technologies institute would be allowed to grow at a 3% annual rate. In addition, the Education and Human Resources Directorate would be maintained. The issue that raises the real possibility of elimination is who absorbs the $655 million cut when all the sciences except the behavioral and social sciences can grow at 3% per year with Education and Human Resources held constant? There is no explanation in the budget document. But Robert Walker, who is vice chair of the Budget Committee and is Chair of the Science Committee, on two separate public occasions has hinted that the behavioral and social sciences are in trouble. He spoke before the Council of Scientific Society Presidents on Tuesday May 9th where he told the scientists that the physical sciences were being protected at NSF. He made no reference to the behavioral and social sciences. Then on May 11 he held a news conference where he addressed this key Budget Committee paragraph discussed above. When asked why the social and behavioral sciences were excluded from the 3% increase he said, "In large part, we think that's an area where the National Science Foundation has largely wandered into those areas in recent years, that was a kind of politically correct decision in recent years. And that is a place where the science budgets can be rescoped. We think that the concentration ought to be in those areas of the physical sciences. We also looked at the Critical Technologies account in NSF and believe that to be another one of these areas that is largely a corporate welfare kind of account created in recent years, and decided that was not high priority. So any reductions in spending that you see for NSF reflect those two policy decisions." As the action alert mentions, the Budget Committee recommendations are recommendations. It is the Appropriations Committee that actually appropriates. One of the lobbyists in the coalition of groups working on this problem met last week with Congressman Jerry Lewis's main staff person for science. Lewis is the Chair of the VA, HUD and Independent Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee. That Subcommittee is the one that will make the appropriation recommendation for NSF. The lobbyist was told that the staffer's interpretation of the Budget Committee recommendation taken in the context of Mr. Walker's comments is that the Budget Committee would like to eliminate the behavioral and social sciences at NSF. He added that Jerry Lewis wants to bring a bill to the floor that can pass with a minimum of controversy, and Lewis is nervous that if the appropriations bill he produces does not contain the cuts recommended by the Budget Committee, there will be a floor fight over the bill. That key people associated with the appropriation interpret the Budget Committee language to mean elimination is a serious matter. Nevertheless, I have been told that several people calling Mr. Walker's office last week were told by a staffer that Walker did not intend to eliminate the behavioral and social sciences but rather to freeze their funding. Also Steven Schiff, who is the Chair of the Basic Research Subcommittee of the Science Committee, has said he has no intention to write the behavioral and social sciences out of the authorization. Schiff is Chair of the Subcommittee responsible for NSF's authorization. Walker is the Chair of the full Science Committee of which the Basic Research Subcommittee is a part. So, what we have is Mr. Walker hinting that the behavioral and social sciences are to be eliminated by saying publicly that they and the critical technologies institute are to absorb the cuts. (Here is why it doesn't look like freezing funding would accomplish the Budget Committee's intended cut to NSF: In the current fiscal year (FY95), the Behavioral, Social and Economic Research Division has an appropriation of $84,900,000. In his news conference, Walker said cuts are to be taken from FY95 funding levels. The Critical Technologies Institute is funded at $2 million in fiscal year 1995. Multiplying those two out over seven years gives $608,300,000. So eliminating the behavioral and social sciences and the critical technologies institute would get the Budget Committee most of the way to its goal of cutting $655 million over seven years. The freeze on Education and Human Resources could make up the difference. It is hard to see how else $655 million could be cut given that the other sciences would receive annual 3% increases.) Yet we have Walker's staffer, without explaining where the $655 million cut is to be made, saying that elimination is not what Walker meant. To add to the mix, I have been told that people at the White House have looked at the Budget Committee figures and interpret them to mean elimination of the behavioral and social sciences. Moreover, we have the staffer for the chair of the relevant appropriations subcommittee saying their interpretation is that these sciences are to be eliminated, and they feel some pressure to comply with that interpretation. Then we have the chair of the authorizing subcommittee saying he has no plan to write out the behavioral and social sciences. But we don't know what constraints Mr. Walker as chair of the full committee might place on Mr. Schiff when the authorization finally is drafted. Far from crying wolf, given this mix of events, interpretations, and players, I am firmly convinced that the letter writing campaign now underway in response to the action alert is exactly the right thing to do right now. It tells Mr. Walker that there is an aware, concerned constituency out there and that every step he might take with respect to the behavioral and social sciences is being followed. It tells Jerry Lewis that eliminating the behavioral and social sciences is a very unpopular move. And it shores up Mr. Schiff's resolve to keep the behavioral and social sciences in the authorization. It also tells people in the Senate that there is support for the approach they have taken which is to not specify any particular sciences as being the ones to bear the brunt of cuts. I don't think there should be any fall off at all in the pace of letter writing. At best, what the Budget Committee has in mind is devastating for the behavioral and social sciences. At worst, it is catastrophic. If anything better than those two choices is to be achieved, it will require the whole-hearted effort of the affected scientific communities as well as allies outside those communities. This is just the opening move in a multi-step process where there will be many opportunities for the behavioral and social sciences to be in peril. David Johnson Federation of Behavioral, Psychological and Cognitive Sciences"
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