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WASHINGTON NEWS FY 2005 BUDGET PROCESS SLOWS, FY 2006 LOOKS GRIM The stated determination of leaders in both houses of Congress to complete appropriations for Fiscal Year 2005 before recessing on July 23 for the political party conventions received blow after blow early in the summer, including the unexpected week off for tributes and services for the late President Ronald Reagan. A post-elections omnibus spending package is now considered inevitable, perhaps broken up into three-bill or four-bill “mini-buses.” Regardless, appropriators are working within a spending cap of $821.4 billion in discretionary spending, $1.6 billion less than the President’s proposal to allow room for supplemental defense appropriations later in the year. Meanwhile, the White House Office of Management and Budget has issued a guidance memo to agencies preparing their FY 2006 budget requests. It directs all R&D funding agencies except the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, the Department of Homeland Security, and NASA to plan for cuts in their portfolios as part of the Administration’s plans to cut federal deficits in half over the next five years. The FY 2006 requests will be hammered out over the next several months, but the OMB memo makes it clear that any increase to a program above the projected FY 2005 level would have to be offset by a cut in another program within the agency. An analysis prepared by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which is available on the AAAS website at http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/proj05u.htm, shows that even in the favored departments, programs important to the materials community would be cut. For example, AAAS reports that “DOD would cut its support of ‘S&T’ (basic and applied research plus technology development) steeply in FY 2005 and by another percentage point in FY 2006, leaving the DOD S&T portfolio 18 percent smaller after inflation than in FY 2004.” Similarly, AAAS says, “DOE’s Office of Science would see its budget fall 2.4 percent or $81 million in FY 2006 following a proposed cut in FY 2005. The Office of Science would see its R&D budget fall 5.4 percent in just two years after adjusting for inflation.” Finally, “NSF would see its proposed gains in FY 2005 reversed the next year with a 2 percent or $85 million cut for its R&D programs in FY 2005, leaving NSF R&D below this year’s funding level after adjusting for inflation.” METALS INITIATIVE RENEWAL MOVING IN HOUSE This summer the House could vote on H.R.3890, a bill introduced by Rep. Melissa Hart (R-PA) that would reauthorize the Metals Initiative, a research and development program at the Department of Energy that supports energy efficiency efforts of the domestic metals industry. It sailed through the House Science Committee, and is unopposed by the Administration. The DOE efficiency R&D program was first authorized by the Steel and Aluminum Energy Conservation and Technology Competitiveness Act of 1988 and was reauthorized in the Energy Policy Act of 1992. The program is closely coordinated with industry through participation in research planning and cost-sharing. This involvement serves as a “market test” of whether industry perceives the activities as important enough to contribute their time and money. In general, the program solicits proposals, which are concurrently reviewed by the industry’s trade organization and DOE to ensure that the projects meet the criteria and objectives of both. The resulting list of qualified proposals is then distributed to the trade group’s member companies, which determine priority projects by identifying projects for which they are willing to cost share. Project awards are made, and the research is generally conducted at universities and national laboratories, although some research may also be carried out onsite at participating companies’ facilities. To ensure that the benefits are realized domestically, the Act limits company participation to those companies “substantially involved in the United States domestic production, processing, or use” of steel, aluminum, or copper. H.R.3890 would add language to the original act specifically authorizing research to target greenhouse gas reductions. SUPERCOMPUTING BILLS ADVANCE Legislation is progressing through both houses to deal with the threatened loss of U.S. supremacy in supercomputing. The House bill, sponsored by Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) and Energy Subcommittee Chair Judy Biggert (R-IL), would update the High Performance Computing Act of 1991 by requiring the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to direct an interagency planning process and develop and maintain a roadmap for the research, development, and deployment of high-performance computing resources. It would require the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy to assure the U.S. research community sustained access to world-class high-performance computing systems. The bill addresses training, product support, and software and standards development. It is endorsed by the Administration. In the Senate, Senators Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN) are sponsoring S.2176, “The High End Computing Revitalization Act of 2004.” It establishes a new, unclassified, bleeding-edge, multi-architecture, multi-facility supercomputer designed to increase computing capability by a factor of 100 and be a test-bed for promising new hardware and software. This is listed as Priority #2 in the Department of Energy’s recently released “Facilities for the Future of Science” Plan. The bill also establishes a high-end software development center, whose location will be determined by a competitive, peer-reviewed technical process. According to the Senators, this addresses widespread concerns that software development is often neglected in favor of hardware acquisition for high-end systems, and is a major component of improved efficiency.
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