The House Rules will meet today to approve a rule for consideration of the FY2016 CJS Appropriations bill (H.R. 2578). The House will begin consideration of the bill beginning tomorrow at noon and possibly continuing through Thursday.
As has been previously mentioned, the cuts to the measure and the report language accompanying the legislation have raised some concerns. The White House has also expressed concerns on the bill.
Here is a AAAS article on the winners and losers of the House bill.
Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee announced that they will markup the PATENT Act on Thursday. The House Judiciary Committee is still on hold on the Innovation Act.
On Wednesday afternoon, as the House was working on passing its version of America COMPETES, Senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Chris Coons (D-DE), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Corey Gardner (R-CO), Diane Feinstein (D-CA), and Martin Heinrich (D-NM) today introduced the energy portion of America COMPETES. To give some perspective of the heavy hitters sponsoring this legislation, Senator Alexander is the Chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which has jurisdiction over several broader sections of COMPETES, including NSF. Alexander was an active participant in the passage of the original Competes Act that was enacted in 2007 (PL 110-69).
The Senate measure is expected to be taken up by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee (ENR) this summer as part of a broad energy package that the Chairwoman of that Committee, Lisa Murkowski, hopes to advance. The Ranking Member of the Committee, Maria Cantwell, is also a cosponsor of the legislation. Further, Senator Alexander chairs the Energy-Water Appropriations Subcommittee and Senator Feinstein is the ranking Democrat on the panel.
Highlights of the bill include:
After an interesting debate, the House narrowly passed HR 1806 – the America COMPETES Reauthorization of 2016 but a vote of 217-205. The bill was largely along party line vote with all Democrats and 23 Republicans voting against the measure. Earlier this week, the White House issued a veto threat.
As previously discussed, the bill authorizes science programs across the federal government, boosts funding for the National Science Foundation and the Energy Department’s Science office while cutting funds for climate and renewable energy research. It also bars DOE research from being used in any federal regulations. Only six of the twelve amendments stood for floor votes when debate ended and most of the Democratic measures failed. Most amendments passed via voice vote, including a Democratic amendment to reauthorize DOE’s Energy Innovation Hubs. Later, however, efforts to scrap language requiring NSF grants to include a “national interest” justification, and Science Committee ranking member Eddie Bernice Johnson’s attempt to rewrite the bill entirely, failed.
A Democratic amendment that sought to continue allowing DOE to produce drop-in biofuels with the Pentagon failed more narrowly than the overall bill passed: 208-215.
Other amendments that passed included:
Earlier in the day, the House also passed HR 880 – the American Research and Competitiveness Act of 2015, which would permanently extend the R&D tax credit.
Both measures now move to the Senate.
As this process gets ever more interesting, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Sean Donovan sent a letter to House Appropriations Committee’s Chairman Hal Rogers (R-KY) and Ranking Member Nita Lowey (D-NY) about the draft FY16 CJS Appropriations bill. The letter expressed strong concern on the funding levels for science and innovation due to the adherence of the committee to the Sequestration framework levels. The Committee is expected to mark up the bill this morning.
The letter says in part:
“Its shortsighted funding cuts undermine both fiscal responsibility and economic competitiveness, since they would prevent investments that both reduce future costs to taxpayers and inform business decision making, improve weather forecasting, support business expansion into new markets, and spur development of innovative technologies.”