CJS Spending Bill Emerges from House Panel: NSF, BEA Escape Cuts;   Census, NIJ and BJS Do Not

With the talks aimed at raising the debt limit and reducing the long-term deficit stalled, the House of Representatives continued its relentless march toward approving FY 2012 spending bills.  On July 7, the Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations Subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), held its markup and reported its bill to the full House Appropriations Committee.

Faced with an allocation from the full committee that required the Subcommittee to reduce spending by $3.1 billion from FY 2011 levels, the panel protected some agencies in the bill and severely cut some others.

Proclaiming "investments in scientific research are critical to long-term economic growth and job creation," Wolf and the Subcommittee recommended no cuts from FY 2011 for the National Science Foundation (NSF), allocating $6.86 billion for FY 2012.  The Subcommittee also rearranged some of the accounts, recommending $5.607 billion for Research and Related Activities (R&RA), a $43 million boost over FY 2011.  This account funds all the research directorates, including the one for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE).  The Subcommittee did not determine allocations to the directorates, leaving that decision to the NSF leadership.

To offset the R&RA increase, the panel recommended decreases from FY 2011 of $26 million to $835 million for the Education and Human Resources directorate, and $17 million for the Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction account, leaving it at $100 million.  

Although the panel's levels for NSF are considerably below the President's FY 2012 request of $7.767 billion and belie the doubling path enacted in the America COMPETES bill last December, the House has made clear they are ignoring the Administration's numbers and moving their own deficit reduction plan.

The Subcommittee also recommended level funding compared to FY 2011 for the Economic and Statistics Administration (ESA) in the Department of Commerce.  The ESA includes the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).  Although the $97.1 million allocated will preclude the additional improvements in BEA's data collections, surviving the House without reductions in the current budget cutting frenzy is significant.

The Census Bureau was not treated as well.  The Subcommittee recommended funding the Bureau at $855.3 million for FY 2012, a $294.3 million or 25 percent decrease from FY 2011.  The President had asked for $1.024 billion.  Although these reductions follow the historical precedent of decreases in the Bureau's funding in year two of a decade, the cut would make it very difficult for the Bureau to carry out improvements to its surveys and the early planning for the 2020 Census. 

The Subcommittee provided $258.5 million for the Salaries and Expense account and $596.8 million for Periodic Censuses and Programs.  Given that FY 2012 is the year the Bureau conducts the Economic Census, these decreases could lead to the end of the continuous updating of the Master Address Files that would eventually reduce the cost of the 2020 Census.  It also could derail the announced increase of the sample size for the American Community Survey.

In the Justice arena, the core funding for the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) suffered reductions from the House panel.  The Subcommittee allocated $41 million to NIJ and $46.6 million to BJS.  In FY 2011, NIJ's  funding was slightly below $48 million and BJS' funding was sligthly below $60 million.   The Subcommittee provided for the continuation of the one percent set aside of Office of Justice Programs' funding for research, statistics, and evaluation, not the increase to three percent the Administration requested. 

NIJ will also continue to receive additional funding ($3 million) from the allocation to the Office of Violence Against Women and from the appropriation to the Byrne Justice Assistance Grants ($5 million), as well as from the DNA program.  BJS would receive an additional $6 million from the Criminal History Improvement Program and additional funding from the Prison Rape Elimination Act.

Aside from these allocations, the CJS Subcommittee made major cuts to State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance programs, including eliminating funding for the Community Oriented Policing program (COPS).  This has raised the ire of many law enforcement groups, including the International Association of Police Chiefs. 

As the bill moves to the full committee markup on July 13 and then to the House floor, now scheduled for the first week in August, amendments to restore some of this funding are expected.  Under House rules any additions must be offset by reductions in other programs.  In the past the Census Bureau has been the bank for these offsets.  This year NSF, with its non-reduced budget, could become a target.  COSSA and other groups in the science and higher education community are working to sustain the Subcommittee's support for NSF and, in particular, to prevent any damage to the SBE directorate (see next story.)

Science and Higher Education Community Rally to Support NSF and SBE

Led by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, with significant contributions from COSSA, the science and higher education community has delivered a letter to the House Appropriations Committee signed by 143 groups across the spectrum of scientific disciplines and higher education community that supports the National Science Foundation (NSF) and all the disciplines it funds (emphasis in original).

The letter proclaims the groups' "strong opposition to legislative attempts to reverse the peer review process by seeking to defund research grants that have already been awarded after considerable evaluation by independent scientific review panels."

"Furthermore," it declares, "we strongly oppose attempts to eliminate or substantially reduce funding for specific areas of science such as the NSF Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE)."

The letter provides two examples.  The first notes "the revolution in computer technology and the transformation of analog data into digital records is opening up new opportunities to bridge the biological and social sciences which are leading to new partnerships and collaborations that will improve the interpretation of brain imaging."

The second example discusses how "social scientists, working with computer scientists, have developed Geographical Information Systems (GIS)."  The letter mentions that this tool "has been applied by states, counties, and localities for many purposes, from urban planning to disaster response, evidenced in New York City during the September 11, 2001 attacks and the creation of thousands of maps to assist in the aftermath."

The letter concludes that: "Simply put, we need all scientists and scientific disciplines working - alone and together - to advance our knowledge base."  Therefore, "defunding specific grants or eliminating entire sets of disciplines, such as those represented by the SBE program, sets a dangerous precedent that, in the end, will inhibit scientific progress and our international competitiveness."

For the complete letter and the list of signatories, go to the COSSA Webpage at: www.cossa.org and click on "Protecting the SBE Sciences."  You will also find there other documents related to the current COSSA effort to prevent attacks on these sciences.   

House Passed DHS FY 2012 Funding Bill Slashes S&T Budget

On June 2, the House passed its FY 2012 funding bill, H. 217, for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).  The vote was 231-188 and reflected the partisan divide over federal spending reductions. 

The bill reduces significantly funding for Research, Development, Acquisition and Operations, part of the Science and Technology (S&T) directorate.  The House recommended level for FY 2012 is $398.2 million, down almost $290 million and 43 percent from the FY 2011 level.  The President had requested $1.027 billion for this account in FY 2012. 

The House funded the University Programs, which includes the Centers of Excellence, at the requested level of $36.6 million, a reduction from FY 2011.

In the report from the House Appropriations Committee, the panel noted that this bill "represented a turning point for Science and Technology and for its core research activity."  It went on to declare:  "The Committee believes that S&T must more clearly demonstrate significant contributions to the homeland security mission and should prioritize the development of near-term, operational projects that promise substantive gains to our Nation's security."

The Committee also noted that it faced a dilemma and that the reductions for S&T were forced on it "to keep DHS frontline missions and capabilities robust while taking a harder look at components that have had difficulty demonstrating their immediate contributions to the homeland security enterprise."

Thus, the panel rejected the Directorate's proposal to reorganize its research and development (r&d) funding into a single Research, Development, and Innovation (RD&I) account with FY 2012 spending requested by the Administration of $660 million, calling it "too vague...to permit meaningful oversight."  While rejecting the DHS proposed structure, the Committee provided its own accounts that included Disaster Resilience and Counter Terrorist R&D.  It did not recommend funding for these activities, but asked the Department to include them in the $106.5 million provided for all the RD&I activities.

The Committee also chastised DHS for spending billions of dollars on projects "many of which remain in the development stage" and whose impact "has not been sufficiently demonstrated."  By making the huge cut in funding, "the Committee fully expects [to] force S&T to make more focused, high-return investment decisions."   There was also a warning to S&T to avoid "duplicative research."

Yet in the middle of all this criticism, the Committee noted that "it is a matter of national importance that rural communities recover quickly after both manmade and natural disasters, be able to restore their commerce and re-establish the quality of life."  Thus, the Directorate should ensure that its "Disaster Resilience projects address these requirements of rural communities and include research and outreach efforts on rural resiliency."

The bill now moves on to the Senate.

Senate Appropriations Committee Moves Its First FY 2012 Spending Bill

On June 30, the Senate Appropriations Committee, chaired by Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI), unanimously approved its first bill for FY 2012, the funding for Military Construction and the Department of Veterans' Affairs.  This action comes despite the fact that the Senate Budget Committee has not passed a FY 2012 budget resolution. 

The popularity of the MilCon-VA spending bill among legislators made it an obvious first choice for the Senate committee.  The House version passed 411-5 (see Update, Jun 27, 2011).

The Senate Committee provided $3 million less than the measure that passed the House, however.  Included in House's version of the bill was a $72.2 million cut for VA research from the 2011 enacted level of $581 million.  This number, while lower than the amount provided in the previous year, matched the President's request.  The Senate Committee, however, recommended restoration of the research funding to the $581 million FY 2011 level.

The bill now waits to reach the Senate floor for a vote.  

HHS Seeks to Improve Data Collection in Public Health Surveys

On June 29, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebeilus announced new draft standards for collecting and reporting on race, ethnicity, sex, primary language and disability data.  The Secretary also announced that the administration would begin collecting health data on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) populations.  The aim of these efforts is to help researchers, policy makers, health providers and advocates to identify and address health disparities.  The agency is seeking comments for the draft minority data collection standards.  The deadline for submitting comments is August 1, 2011, at www.regulations.gov.

According to Sebelius, the Department intends to integrate questions on sexual orientation into national data collections by 2013 and begin a process to collect information on gender identity.  The plan includes testing to incorporate the question on sexual orientation in the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS).  The Department also intends to convene a series of meetings to determine the best way to help the agency collect data specific to gender identity. 

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) contains provisions (Section 4302) to strengthen federal data collection efforts by requiring that all national federal data collections efforts collect information on race, ethnicity, sex, primary language and disability status.  ACA also provides HHS the opportunity to collect additional demographic data to further improve the understanding of healthcare disparities.  Identifying disparities and monitoring efforts to reduce them has been limited in the past by a lack of specificity, uniformity, and quality in data collection and reporting procedures.   Consistent methods for collecting and reporting health data would allow for better characterization of the nature of health problems in underserved populations.

Health Disparities Data    

For race and ethnicity, the proposed standard builds upon the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) standard, "adding the type of granularity for Asian and Latino populations that is used in the American Community Survey (ACS) and was used in the 2000 and 2010 Decennial Census."  The proposed data standard for sex is male and female.   English proficiency is the minimum data standard proposed for the primary language data standard.  The recommended question is one used in the ACS.   Agencies would have the option of collecting data on the specific language spoken using the questions from the ACS.  For disability status, a six-item set of questions used on the ACS and other federal surveys to characterize functional disability is proposed as the minimum standard for collecting population survey data.  A federal interagency committee developed the question set which reflects how disability is conceptualized consistent with the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health.  The question set has been adopted in most federal data collections.

LGBT Data

HHS points out that it has collected LGBT-related data in several surveys in the past and notes that there are a number of challenges.  The efforts of the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) to improve comprehension and response rates are recognized.  Nevertheless, for certain population subgroups missing date remains a problem.  To enhance the quality of the data, the HHS Data Council, NCHS and other federal agencies across the federal government are testing ways to reduce bias in the estimates.   The Department plans to hold two roundtables to review existing literature, discuss proposed questions, and develop a progression plan for gender identity data testing.   The first roundtable is scheduled for summer 2011 and will focus on gender identity data collection and completion of the development of the sexual orientation data collection questionnaire.   A second roundtable will occur in winter 2012.  In spring 2012, HHS intends to conduct and complete initial field testing of the sexual orientation data collection.  In addition, the HHS Data Council intends to present a strategy to include gender identity data collection in HHS surveys.  HHS will carry out and complete the initial field testing in the winter 2012 followed by implementation of new data collection on sexual orientation into the full NHIS data collection, if the field test is successful.

For more information on improving data collection to reduce health disparities see:  http://www.healthcare.gov/news/factsheets/disparities06292011a.html

For more information on improving data collection within the LGBT community visit http://www.healthcare.gov/news/factsheets/lgbt06292011a.html