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Category: Energy R&D

America COMPETES Reauthorizations Revealed

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The House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith and Ranking Member Eddie Bernice Johnson have released dueling draft bills to reauthorize America COMPETES. The House will begin to work through their differences on these pieces of legislation in the coming months.

Here is the House Democrat’s reauthorization discussion draft bill.

The Committee Republicans have decided to consider COMPETES reauthorization in two smaller bills.  The two bills are the EINSTEIN (Enabling Innovation for Science, Technology and Energy in America) Act which encompasses the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science parts of COMPETES and the FIRST (Frontier in Innovative Research, Science, and Technology) Act which includes reauthorization for the NSF, NIST, OSTP, and STEM education components of COMPETES. Here is a summary of the discussion draft of the EINSTEIN Act. Here is a summary of the House Republicans discussion draft of the FIRST Act.  The full draft will be posted when available.

Continue reading “America COMPETES Reauthorizations Revealed”

House Science Chair: Science vs. Entitlements

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House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-TX, published an op-ed in Politico today. In it, he asserts that federal budget is so taken up with entitlements that the nation’s investment in science is suffering and will continue to suffer as a result. Further, Chairman Smith argues that entitlement reform means more funding for basic science and R&D.

Read the full op-ed here.

July Federal Update

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FY14 APPROPRIATIONS

The path to enacting FY14 appropriations measures is paved with legislative friction as Congress is showing no signs of undoing the sequester and the House and Senate chambers are working on vastly different overall budget numbers. At this point, there are three budgets — House, Senate, and White House — all of which assume no sequestration, but include different ways to account for the cuts in later years.

The House is advancing its FY14 appropriations bills at a $967 billion overall spending cap, while the Senate is working with a $1.058 trillion cap, which does not take into account the sequester. Ironically, both the House and Senate plans would trigger a new round of across-the-board spending reductions under sequestration because they violate the caps set by the 2011 Budget Control Act (PL 111-25). But the House GOP plan busts the caps in defense and other security measures while the Senate is expected to bust the caps in both defense and non-defense (domestic) bills. All of this is leading to a big fight on spending, which will certainly culminate in a continuing resolution (CR) before the federal fiscal year ends September 30th. Continue reading “July Federal Update”

If at first you don’t succeed, the House will try and pass the Farm Bill (again)

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The proverb is clearly something the House lives by. To demonstrate, the House Republican Leadership will attempt to pass the Farm Bill again this week after a disastrous attempt and failure prior to the Fourth of July Recess.

The House is expected to consider a modified version of the bill considered in June. This bill would strip all of the nutrition program portions of the bill, including food stamps, and be straight farm programs. In addition, the new Farm Bill would strip the requirement from the 1949 law that Congress reauthorize or extend the Farm Bill periodically.

Democrats have criticized the measure saying not only is stripping the nutrition programs a nonstarter in the Senate, but such a move would effectively kill the measure in the House if conferenced.

It is unclear if the House Republicans have the 218 votes needed to pass the measure.

Over the July Fourth Recess 532 agriculture-related groups sent a letter to Speaker Boehner opposing any move to strip nutrition programs from the Farm Bill. The coalition letter to Boehner is here.