Legislation News
Washington Update
July 16, 2007
The House and Senate recessed for the July 4th holiday, leaving fiscal year 2008 (FY08) appropriations bills at different stages of completion. The House and Senate also passed the FY08 Budget Resolution, which serves as a guide for congressional spending, and a $120 billion FY07 emergency supplemental bill to fund the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition, the Senate abandoned work on the contentious immigration reform bill.
The House has passed six of the 12 appropriations bills with another four awaiting full committee or floor consideration. House leadership has indicated that the Defense spending bill will come to the floor in mid or late July, and will serve as another means for debate on the war in Iraq. The full Senate has yet to consider any of the spending bills, but 10 of the 12 bills have been approved at the committee level.
The following report is a wrap-up of recent activities in Washington. We will continue to monitor developments on Capitol Hill and around Washington , and will provide you with periodic updates.
APPROPRIATIONS UPDATE
The House and Senate Appropriations Committees have allocated their FY08 discretionary spending total of $953 billion among their 12 subcommittees, with significant increases for the four subcommittees of greatest interest to the higher education and research communities: Commerce, Justice, Science (CJS); Energy & Water; Interior-Environment; and Labor-HHS-Education (LHHS). House and Senate appropriators plan to take up the FY08 Defense spending bill, which also contains significant funding for basic research, later this month.
Details from the committee markups of the CJS, Energy & Water, Interior and LHHS bills are as follows:
Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies (CJS)
The House CJS bill would provide $6.5 billion and the Senate would provide $6.553 billion for the National Science Foundation (NSF), which is nearly 11 percent above FY07 and would continue the doubling of the NSF budget over ten years.
Specifically, the NSF Research and Related Activities (R&RA) account would receive $5.1 billion in the House bill and $5.156 in the Senate. This total reflects the Administration's plan, endorsed by both House and Senate appropriators, to move the $100-million Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) out of the Education and Human Resources Directorate into R&RA. Under the House bill, the Education and Human Resources account would receive $822 million, and $850 million under the Senate bill, which would be an increase of $100 million over the Administration's request and $152 million over the FY07 level. These increases would be dedicated to K-12 math and science programs.
For NASA, the House CJS bill would provide $290 million more than the Administration's FY08 request “to restore cuts made by the Administration in the science, aeronautics and education portfolios.” Specifically, NASA Science programs would receive $6 billion, about $40 million more than the Senate level and about $180 million above the Administration's request for FY08. NASA Aeronautics would receive $704 million in the House CJS bill and $554 million in the Senate version. NASA Education programs, which were cut or flat-funded in the Administration's request, would receive about $64 million above the FY08 request.
The CJS bill also includes just over $4 billion for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), approximately $200 million over the President's request. And, it includes $500 million for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which is critical to the national innovation agenda – an increase of $137 million over the President's FY08 request.
Energy and Water
The House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee would provide the Department of Energy's Office of Science with $4.5 billion, which is $118 million above the President's FY08 request and $17 million more than the Senate level. Specific funding in the House bill includes nearly $1.9 billion for climate-change research and technologies, a 30 percent increase over FY07; $235 million for vehicle technologies, up from $176 million in FY07; $250 million for biofuel programs, up from $179 million in FY07; and $1.9 billion for renewable energy programs, up from $1.5 billion in FY07.
Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies
The House approved the FY08 Interior appropriations bill, which funds the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) with a budget of $160 million, which is $19 million above FY07 funding and the FY08 request, and $14 million above the Senate bill. The House bill would allocate the extra funding as follows: $1.4 million for core research and education programs, $5 million for state humanities councils, $3.8 million for the We the People initiative, $3 million for digital humanities, and $4 million in undistributed funds.
Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies (Labor-HHS)
The House's Labor-HHS spending bill includes increases for both student aid programs in the Department of Education and biomedical research supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
The Senate bill would retain the Pell Grant maximum award at $ 4,310. All other student aid programs would be funded at their FY07 levels, except for the TRIO and GEAR UP programs, which would receive increases of $30 million and $10 million, respectively.
The House bill would raise the Pell Grant maximum to $4,700 and provide an additional $40 million for TRIO, $20 million for GEAR UP, and nearly $10 million for international education programs. As with the Senate bill, the remaining student aid and graduate education programs would be funded at their FY07 levels.
Both bills retain the Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant (SEOG), Federal Work Study, and Perkins Loans programs, which had been slated for elimination under the Administration's budget proposal.
The Senate bill would fund the NIH at $29.9 billion, an increase of $1 billion, or 3.5 percent, over the FY07 level of $28.9 billion. The Senate total is about $250 million more than the House FY08 level of $29.65 billion, and $1.2 billion more than the Administration's FY08 request. Of the total, $300 million would be allocated to the Global AIDS fund, which is the same as the Administration's request – leaving a disappointing real increase of less than two percent.
SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS
In May, the House and Senate passed the FY07 emergency supplemental funding bill sending the $120 billion measure to the President for his signature. Congressional approval of the package ended a standoff with the President over a proposed timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq . President Bush had vetoed a previous version of the package over that provision and had threatened to do so again.
Along with funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan , the measure contains about $17 billion in spending not requested by the Administration for such items as the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), Gulf Coast recovery, agricultural disaster relief, and wildfire suppression. It also includes compromise legislation to increase the federal minimum wage and provide tax cuts to small business.
LEGISLATIVE UPDATE
Immigration Reform
The Senate abandoned action on comprehensive immigration reform after failing to secure the necessary 60 votes to suspend debate and proceed to a final vote. The 46-53 vote to invoke cloture was the second attempt in as many weeks to cut off debate on the contentious piece of legislation. As a result, the bill was pulled from further consideration.
Although Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) could bring back the bill at a later date, it is unlikely. Without a Senate bill, the House is not expected to move forward with its own version, effectively ending any chance of immigration reform in the 110 th Congress.
Several provisions in the bill had raised serious concerns for the higher education community. Most troublesome to higher education was a provision to replace the existing employer-sponsored and visa preference system with a merit-based evaluation system. Applicants would receive points for such attributes as their education level, English proficiency, and occupation. Applicants receiving the most points would not necessarily have the skill sets or training needed by U.S. employers—including university employers. The bill would have eliminated the university exemption from the annual employment visa caps that affect industry.
The bill would have also eliminated the “dual intent” exception for H-1B applicants requiring foreign nationals applying for an H-1B visa to prove to U.S. officials they do not intend to immigrate or stay in the country permanently. UCLA and the higher education associations worked with key members of Congress to communicate our concerns.
Higher Education Act (HEA)
The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee passed legislation to renew the Higher Education Act (HEA). Following multiple attempts to reauthorize the HEA, Congress has passed several extensions to keep the Department of Education's higher education programs funded at the current levels until both houses approve a five-year authorization bill.
The bipartisan Senate bill, introduced by Senators Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and Mike Enzi (R-WY), would set the Pell Grant authorization level at $6,300. The legislation would provide no funds to assure an actual Pell Grant increase; any such increase could occur only through the appropriations process.
The bill would significantly increase college reporting requirements about their costs and fees, and create a “Higher Education Price Increase Watch List” to rank institutions with tuition and fees that “outpace the applicable price index” for its type of institution. It would institute broad restrictions on relationships between lenders and colleges and universities consistent with the changes included in the Student Loan Sunshine Act. Among other changes, the Senate bill would phase out the “School as Lender” program by 2012. UCLA participates in School as Lender through the Law School .
The Senate HEA bill would open the Academic Competitiveness Grant program (ACG) to students attending college at least half time and to those in certificate programs, instead of the current requirement to attend a degree-granting institution. Lifting this restriction would benefit community college students. The bill would also lift a restriction that limited the ACG and the parallel Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent (SMART) Grants, to American-born citizens.
In addition, the bill would require federally-funded international studies programs to explain how they “will reflect diverse perspectives and a wide range of views.” Finally, the bill would greatly expand the information that colleges must report to the government and to students, including their policies on illegal file sharing, the racial and ethnic diversity of their financial aid recipients, and fire safety.
The Senate's actions are the first in a long process, and more changes are expected as consideration of the bill progresses in the Senate and the House.
Student Loan Sunshine Act
The House approved the “Student Loan Sunshine Act”, a bill aimed at giving students better information about their student loan borrowing rights and creating new rules to prevent conflicts of interest in the student loan process.
The bill requires institutions to develop their own codes of conduct for student financial aid employees, which must include a ban on gifts and other types of payments from student loan providers. The bill also bans such employees from consulting or serving on advisory councils for lenders, and prohibits revenue-sharing agreements between institutions and lenders. Institutions could retain preferred lender lists, but would have to provide information to the public on how those venders were selected and ensure that students have access to all lenders of their choice. Institutions also have to disclose a variety of information about loan interest rates, fees, and repayment terms.
NSF Reauthorization
The House overwhelmingly passed legislation to reauthorize the National Science Foundation (NSF), while voting down several amendments that the research and higher education communities had mobilized to oppose.
Overall, the bill provides a three-year authorization that keeps the agency on track to double its budget over 10 years, as recommended in the President's American Competitiveness Initiative; encourages greater funding opportunities for young investigators and high-risk research projects; and expands NSF programs to improve science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education (STEM).
Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act
The House passed “The Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act” by a vote of 247-176.
The Senate had passed this same legislation in April by a vote of 63-34. This bill, which is strongly supported by the research community, would authorize federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research conducted on cell lines derived from embryos left over from in-vitro fertilization that otherwise would be discarded. Under current law, federal funding may be used only on a limited number of human embryonic stem cell lines derived before the President's policy was announced in August 2001.
President Bush vetoed the bill on June 12. Senate Majority Leader Reid has indicated he may call for a vote to override the veto, but it is uncertain whether he can secure the needed 2/3 votes.
Innovation Agenda
House and Senate Leaders have indicated their plan to enact a comprehensive competitiveness and innovation package before the August recess. The House has approved several bills that comprise key components of the Democrats' Innovation Agenda aimed at strengthening U.S. basic research and improving and supporting the national corps of math and science teachers. In April, the House passed the “10,000 Teachers, 10 Million Minds” Science and Math Scholarship Act and the Sowing the Seeds through Science and Engineering Research Act, both of which are based on recommendations of the National Academies' “Rising Above the Gathering Storm” report, which found that the U.S. stands to lose its competitive edge in the international economy unless immediate action is taken.
Specifically, the “10,000 Teachers” bill establishes programs at universities to recruit students majoring in science, mathematics, and engineering (STEM fields) into careers in teaching. In addition to providing annual scholarships to program participants, this bill provides in-service training to current math and science teachers to improve content knowledge and teaching skills via specially tailored master's degree programs and summer institutes. An amendment offered by Science Committee Chairman Bart Gordon (D-TN) was passed with the bill that also establishes public-private partnerships to entice current STEM professionals to enter teaching as a second career by offering stipends to obtain teaching certification and salary supplements provided by the private sector partners for their first four years in teaching.
The “Sowing the Seeds” bill provides new grant awards through the National Science Foundation and Department of Energy to support outstanding early-career researchers in academia and nonprofit research organizations. The bill also creates a national coordination office to identify and prioritize research infrastructure needs at universities and national laboratories. An amendment offered by Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), a UCLA Law School alumna, creates 2,500 full-tuition scholarships for undergraduate students at 4-year public institutions majoring in STEM fields
The Senate passed the bipartisan “America COMPETES Act” by a vote of 88-8. This legislation packages together several provisions similar to the House-passed bills, and generally focuses on increasing basic research investment; strengthening educational opportunities in STEM fields from elementary through graduate school; and developing an infrastructure that will enhance innovation and competitiveness in the United States.
The Senate bill also creates a new agency within the Department of Energy to dramatically decrease U.S. dependence on oil through the development of clean energy technologies. Based on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) model at the Department of Defense, the DOE Advanced Research Projects Agency, also known as ARPA-E, would provide aggressive funding for innovative, out-of-the-box research projects carried out by industry, universities and consortia of groups, including federal laboratories. Chairman Gordon has also introduced a bill in the House to create ARPA-E, though the details vary significantly from the Senate version.
Congress must now appoint a Conference Committee to reconcile the differences between the House and Senate versions of the competitiveness legislation. Conferees are expected to meet sometime this month with the goal of sending a full innovation package to the President before the August recess.
Follow-On Biologics
The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee approved legislation to allow the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to approve generic versions of complex biotechnology drugs, called follow-on biologics (FOBs). While the bill's authors have made changes of importance to research universities, such as providing original developers of biotech drugs a window of 12 years of market exclusivity, it remains unclear if the bill approved by the HELP Committee addresses concerns that the measure would deprive patent owners, such as universities, of fundamental patent rights without an opportunity to be heard. UCLA will be working with its peer institutions via the Association of American Universities to express lingering concerns about the FOBs bill to key members of the Senate and House.
ADVOCACY
UCLA's Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM) participated in the annual Coalition for National Science Funding Day. The advocacy activities included visits with Hill staff and Members of Congress and a reception featuring a display of IPAM's work with undergraduate students. NSF Director Arden Bement and Assistant Director for Mathematical and Physical Sciences Tony Chan visited with IPAM Director Mark Green, Associate Director Christian Ratsch and graduate student Yana Landa during the reception.
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