| AAU WASHINGTON REPORT
FEDERAL RELATIONS REPORT OF THE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES January 11, 2002
IN THIS ISSUE:
Congressional Schedule: Congress Adjourns; Will Reconvene Jan. 23 Budget & Appropriations: Overall NIH Increase Tops 14 Percent Other Congressional Developments: Markey Calls For GAO Study Executive Branch: Marburger Says War on Terrorism Won't Harm Science Other Sectors: AAMC Issues Conflict-of-interest Guidelines AAU: AAU, NASULGC Launch Post-September 11 Website CFR: Next Meeting Is Winter Retreat ATTACHMENTS 1. Labor/HHS Appropriations Chart
CONGRESS ADJOURNS; WILL RECONVENE JAN. 23 The House and Senate finally wrapped up their work and adjourned for the year on December 20. Both chambers are scheduled to reconvene on Wednesday, January 23. The President is slated to deliver his State of the Union address to Congress on January 29. Tentative recess schedules for 2002 were included in the last Washington Report.
BUDGET & APPROPRIATIONS: OVERALL NIH INCREASE TOPS 14 PERCENT House and Senate conferees December 18 finalized an agreement on the FY2002 Labor/HHS appropriations bill (H.R. 3061). The House passed the conference report (H. Rept. 107-342) on December 19 by a vote of 393 to 30, and the Senate cleared the measure on December 20 by a vote of 90-7. The President signed the measure on January 10. See Attachment 1 for an AAU chart that details the conference report's appropriations. In summary, the measure provides the following appropriations for programs of interest:
The conference report provides a total of $23.285 billion for the National Institutes of Health, an increase of $2.990 billion, or 15 percent. This figure essentially splits the difference between the House and Senate bills. The figure includes a $100-million transfer to the Global AIDS-Malaria-TB fund and $297 million worth of "evaluation tap" transfers to other agencies. When these transfers are subtracted from the total, the net remaining for NIH programs is $22.888 billion. This figure essentially splits the difference between the House and Senate net figures; it represents an increase of $2.787 billion, or 14 percent, over last year's net NIH increase. However, it should be noted that Labor/HHS bill appropriations for NIH no longer constitute the total appropriation for the agency. Since last year, the NIH also receives a relatively small appropriation through the VA/HUD bill to fund research and training in the national Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). This appropriation will be $70 million in FY2002. In addition, the supplemental appropriations package that was enacted as part of the FY2002 Defense appropriations bill (see below) provides an extra $85 million for the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to support bioterrorism related research and another $70 million for the construction of a level-4 biosafety laboratory at NIAID. And the supplemental package also includes $71 million for improving laboratory security at both the Centers for Disease Control and NIH, of which some as-yet unknown amount will go to NIH. When all of these non-Labor/HHS bill appropriations are taken into account, the total budget authority for NIH in FY2002 is $23.510 billion, which represents a $3.152-billion (or 15.5-percent) increase over FY2002. In program level terms (subtracting the global AIDS transfer and the evaluation taps), this produces a total FY2002 program level of $23.113 billion, which represents an increase of $2.949 billion, or 14.6 percent. See Attachment 2 for an AAU chart that details the appropriations for each NIH institute. Elsewhere within NIH, the Labor/HHS conference report provides $110 million for NIH extramural research facilities grants, a 47-percent increase over the $70 million appropriated in FY2001. The conference report also maintains the NIH salary cap at Executive Level 1, as the Senate had proposed and as the research community had sought. The conferees included some report language clarifying that Senate report language concerning Parkinson's research funding should not be regarded an earmark.
The conference report provides for a $4,000 maximum Pell grant, an increase of $250. Both the House and Senate bills had proposed this increase. It is not clear how the conferees expect to pay for this increase, since their total appropriation for the Pell program is only $10.314 billion, which was the Senate proposal. The Office of Management and Budget indicated at the beginning of November that because of unexpected deficits in the Pell program, at least the House proposal of $10.458 billion would be needed just to keep the Pell maximum at its current $3,750 level in FY2002. The President addressed this problem in the statement he issued when he signed the conference report on January 10, saying:
While I am supportive of the overall bill, I have strong concerns that this bill creates a serious fiscal problem for 2002 by underfunding the Pell Grant program, which provides critical financial assistance to low-income students seeking higher education. The bill mandates a Pell Grant maximum award of $4,000, but provides only enough funding to pay for a maximum award of $3,600, creating a shortfall of nearly $1.3 billion. The Congress disregarded my requests to provide resources for the Pell Grant program commensurate with the maximum award. My Administration will ask the Congress to correct this shortfall in the FY 2003 Budget. I am committed to maintaining a strong Pell Grant program that ensures qualified students have access to college, and budgeting responsibly for its full costs. The conference report provides the following appropriations for other student aid programs:
FINAL DEFENSE BILL BOOSTS BASIC RESEARCH BY 5 PERCENT A conference agreement was finally reached December 18 on the FY2002 Defense appropriations bill (H.R. 3338) and the controversial supplemental spending package it contained. In the end, the supplemental package did not exceed the Administration's $20-billion limit but it provided less for military operations than the Administration had wanted, and more for homeland security and recovery efforts. The conference report (H. Rept. 107-350) was passed by the House and Senate on December 20 by votes of 408-6 and 94-2, respectively. The measure was enacted on January 10. See Attachment 3 for an AAU chart that details the conference report's appropriations for basic and applied research. In summary:
The conference report provides a total of $1.389 billion for 6.1 basic research, an increase of $72 million, or 5 percent. The President had proposed a decrease of $13 million, the House had proposed a decrease of $3 million, and the Senate had proposed an increase of $45 million. The appropriations for specific 6.1 accounts are as follows: Army 6.1: $234 million, an increase of $24 million, or 11 percent. The President had proposed a $12-million increase, the House had proposed a $28-million increase, and the Senate had proposed a $14-million increase. Navy 6.1: $408 million, an increase of $14 million, or 4 percent. The President had proposed a $12-million increase, the House had proposed a $5-million increase, and the Senate had proposed a $22-million increase. Air Force 6.1: $228 million, an increase of $15 million, or 7 percent. The President and the Senate had proposed an $8-million increase, and the House had proposed a $14-million increase. Defensewide 6.1: $519 million, an increase of $19 million, or 4 percent. The President had proposed a $45-million decrease, the House had proposed a $50-million decrease, and the Senate had proposed a $1-million increase.
The conference report provides a total of $4.135 billion for 6.2 applied research, an increase of $471 million, or 13 percent. The President had proposed a $5-million decrease, the House had proposed a $342-million decrease, and the Senate had proposed a $251-million increase. The specific 6.2 appropriations are: Army 6.2: $917 million, an increase of $90 million, or 11 percent. The President had proposed a $138-million decrease, the House had proposed a $25-million increase, and the Senate had proposed a freeze. Navy 6.2: $803 million, an increase of $144 million, or 22 percent. The President had proposed a $32-million decrease, the House had proposed a $37-million increase, and the Senate had proposed a $78-million increase. Air Force 6.2: $772 million, an increase of $115 million, or 18 percent. The President had proposed a $42-million increase, the House had proposed a $104-million increase, and the Senate had proposed an $83-million increase. Defensewide 6.2: $1.643 billion, an increase of $110 million, or 7 percent. The President had requested a $106-million increase, the House had requested a $519-million decrease, and the Senate had proposed a $78-million increase. Like the House bill, the conference report establishes a new Title IX entitled "Counter-terrorism and Defense Against Weapons of Mass Destruction." The new title provides funding for programs devoted to protecting the U.S. homeland, deployed American military forces, overseas U.S. interests, and allies from non-traditional threats. But unlike the House bill, the conference report does not transfer funds from Defensewide 6.1 and 6.2 to fund the new Title IX. The House bill would have transferred $39 million from Defensewide 6.1, $561 million from Defensewide 6.2, and $103 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to the new Title IX. The conference report simply transfers $19 million from DARPA to the new Title IX.
As has been noted above, the conference report's emergency supplemental provisions include $85 million for the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases to support bioterrorism related research, $70 million for the construction of a level-4 biosafety laboratory at the NIAID, and $71 million for improving laboratory security at the CDC and NIH. The supplemental provisions also include $36.8 million for the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS).
PRESIDENT'S NEXT BUDGET DUE FEB. 4 The President is scheduled to present his FY2003 budget to Congress on Monday, February 4. Meanwhile, information about the President's proposals remains scarce. Following is a summary of the only reports published and statements made on the subject over the past month. These reports and statements suggest that the President's budget may not be as draconian as Office of Management and Budget director Mitchell Daniels had indicated last fall (WR 12/15/01).
OTHER CONGRESSIONAL DEVELOPMENTS: MARKEY CALLS FOR GAO STUDY Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA), who serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, January 8 asked the General Accounting Office (GAO) to "conduct a study of the manner in which federal agencies administer, use, and benefit from intellectual property created under federally sponsored research programs related to public health, health care, and medical technology." In a letter to GAO, Markey said he was requesting the study because he is "concerned that many important federally funded research discoveries may not end up fully benefiting taxpayers through their incorporation into inexpensive and widely available medical treatments, equipment and diagnostics, or through their widespread availability to other federally funded researchers." In a press release announcing his request for the study, Markey was more blunt: "I've asked [GAO] to undertake this investigation because I want to make sure that the taxpayers are getting their money's worth," he said. Markey asked GAO to determine the answers to three questions: 1) whether federally-funded researchers follow the rules for reporting their discoveries, 2) whether the federal government is generally aware of the intellectual property it should have a royalty-free license to, and 3) whether the federal government uses its royalty-free license to best benefit the taxpayers who paid for the discovery in the first place. See Attachment 4 for Markey's press release and letter. The University Working Group on Technology Transfer will assess this issue.
BIOTERRORISM LEGISLATION STILL PENDING Although it had seemed likely in early December that the conference report on the FY2002 Defense appropriations bill would include a House-Senate compromise on at least the lab-security provisions of the bioterrorism legislation that had been pending in both chambers (WR 12/15/01), this did not happen. Instead, the Senate passed its bioterrorism bill, S. 1765, by voice vote just before it adjourned on December 20 and called for a speedy conference in 2002 to reconcile that measure with the House-passed bill, H.R. 3488. According to a reliable source, a bioterrorism-bill compromise was not included in the Defense bill because House Energy and Commerce chairman Billy Tauzin (R-LA), the author of H.R. 3488, objected as a matter of principle to using an appropriations bill as a vehicle for implementing authorizing legislation.
STUDENT VISA LEGISLATION ALSO STILL PENDING The last issue of this newsletter noted that legislation to tighten border security and controls on student visas had been introduced with strong bipartisan backing in the Senate (S. 1749). On December 19, with S. 1749 still awaiting Senate floor action, the House quickly took up and passed by voice vote H.R. 3525, a very similar bill that had been introduced the same day by Judiciary Committee chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-WI). The plan, apparently, was for the Senate to forego S. 1749 and adopt the House-passed bill before adjournment. But unanimous consent could not be secured to bring the House-passed bill to the Senate floor, and the bill was referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Therefore, the Senate will have to decide early this year whether simply to adopt the House-passed bill or to pass S. 1749 and seek to resolve the small differences between the two measures in conference. The American Council on Education has stated that both versions of the legislation are acceptable to the higher education community.
GAO RELEASES REPORT ON CONFLICT-OF-INTEREST ISSUES The General Accounting Office December 18 released its long-awaited report on financial conflicts of interest in research. The report, entitled "HHS Direction Needed to Address Financial Conflicts of Interest," is numbered GAO-02-89. It is available on the GAO website at www.gao.gov/new.items/d0289.pdf. The report was requested last year by Senator Bill Frist (R-TN), then the chairman and now the ranking member of the Public Health subcommittee of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. The report is based largely on visits that GAO staff made last spring to five universities: the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Washington at Seattle, Washington University in St. Louis, and Yale University. The visits were aimed at assessing compliance with federal regulations governing human subjects and conflict of interest. GAO found that practices varied on the campuses they visited, and that the regulations and guidance from federal agencies have some limitations. They recommended that the Department of Health and Human Services develop more specific guidance on several topics, including institutional conflict of interest. The Chronicle of Higher Education December 19 quoted Senator Frist as saying the report "clearly indicates that additional measures are needed."
EXECUTIVE BRANCH: MARBURGER SAYS WAR ON TERRORISM WON'T HURT SCIENCE White House science advisor John Marburger December 18 discussed the impact on science of the war on terrorism at a symposium sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). In his remarks, Marburger sought to alleviate concerns that the nation's anti-terrorist efforts might divert science in major ways that would disrupt discovery and impair intellectual life. He cited the President's continued commitment to increased funding for health research and predicted continued "tremendous momentum" for research in information sciences. "I expect that science in America and the world will forge ahead relatively unaffected by the war against terrorism," he said. At the same time, Marburger cautioned against expecting that the war on terrorism would spark a "great windfall" in federal science spending. "Some have spoken of the need for a 'Manhattan Project' to satisfy the needs of homeland security," he said. "The analogy is wrong-headed. Cleverness is needed less now than a national will to use what we have to strengthen the infrastructure of our daily lives, to bolster public health systems, to equip properly our first responders, to use more effectively the information technology, the detection technology, the biotechnology that we already possess to render the way we live less vulnerable to what the military scholars call 'asymmetric threats.' We need to plan, and to carry out our plans." See Attachment 5 for the full text of his remarks.
OMB PUBLISHES FINAL DATA QUALITY GUIDELINES The Office of Management and Budget January 3 published in the Federal Register (Vol. 2, No. 67, pages 369-378) final guidelines implementing Section 515 of Public Law 106-554, the FY 2001 Treasury and General Government Appropriations Act. The final guidelines are available online at http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgibin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=2002_register&docid=02-59-filed.pdf. Section 515 of Public Law 106-554 required OMB to issue government-wide guidelines to ensure the "quality, objectivity, utility and integrity" of information disseminated by the government. OMB first published proposed guidelines on June 28, 2001 (WR 7/13/01). Academic and scientific representatives expressed concern that the proposed guidelines might provide opportunities for interested parties to harass scientists involved in controversial areas of research. Concerns were also expressed that the guidelines might impose new obstacles to the publication of research results. The AAU commented on the proposed guidelines in an August 13, 2001, letter to OMB; this letter is available on the AAU web site at www.aau.edu/research/OMBLtr8.13.01.html. In response to the various concerns that had been raised, OMB published a revised version of its proposed guidelines on September 28, 2001. The final guidelines include certain protections sought by AAU and other academic and scientific organizations, although it also appears that the guidelines still would provide an avenue to challenge research results underlying government findings. Supplementary information included with the guidelines acknowledges that concerns were raised "about the applicability of these guidelines, particularly in the context of scientific research conducted by Federally employed scientists or Federal grantees who publish and communicate their research findings in the same manner as their academic colleagues." The supplementary information then states: "OMB believes that information generated and disseminated in these contexts is not covered by these guidelines unless the agency represents the information as, or uses the information in support of, an official position of the agency." The guidelines also explicitly state that "If data and analytic results have been subjected to formal, independent, external peer review, the information may generally be presumed to be of acceptable objectivity." The guidelines go on to say, however, that "this presumption is rebuttable based on a persuasive showing by the petitioner in a particular instance." The supplementary information clarifies that "[F]or information likely to have an important public policy or private sector impact, OMB believes that additional quality checks beyond peer review are appropriate," citing a case of falsified research results that were published in Science magazine. The final guidelines are effective as of January 3. The next step in the process will be for each federal agency to issue its own implementing guidelines, which is to be accomplished by October 1, 2002.
STATE DEPT. TO PROPOSE ITAR REVISIONS Space News reported in its December 17 issue that the State Department intends to propose arms control regulation revisions that will exempt unclassified university-based research projects from export licensing requirements. The newspaper's report was based on remarks that Lincoln Bloomfield, assistant secretary of state for political and military affairs, made to an industry group on December 10, and on a subsequent interview with an unnamed Department official. The Department had not previously been on the record as intending to propose revisions. The newspaper said the proposed revisions would be published in the Federal Register at some unspecified future date.
NASA, NEH NOMINEES CONFIRMED The Senate December 20 confirmed the nominations of Sean O'Keefe as NASA administrator and Michael Hammond as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.
ADMINISTRATION WON'T CHANGE DRUG REGS The Chronicle of Higher Education December 20 reported that the Department of Education has concluded it does not have legal authority to relax its interpretation of 1998 Higher Education Act provisions that prohibit student aid to anyone convicted of possessing or selling illegal drugs, and that Congress must amend the Act. The department has interpreted the aid-ban provisions to apply to students convicted before they went to college, as well as those convicted while enrolled. The author of the provisions, Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN), has maintained that he intended the ban to apply only to students convicted while enrolled, and he has been pressuring the department to change its interpretation.
OTHER SECTORS: AAMC ISSUES CONFLICT-OF-INTEREST GUIDELINES The Association of American Medical Colleges December 17 released a new set of conflict-of-interest guidelines for individual researchers working with human subjects. The guidelines, which were developed by an AAMC Task Force on Financial Conflicts of Interest in Clinical Research, were approved by the AAMC Executive Council on December 14. They are similar to the conflict-of-interest guidelines the AAU released in October (WR 10/12/01). The full text of the AAMC guideline document is available on the association's website at www.aamc.org/members/coitf/firstreport.pdf. The AAMC Task Force plans to develop separate guidelines this year on institutional conflicts of interest.
GATES TO DELIVER 2002 JEFFERSON LECTURE The National Endowment for the Humanities has announced that Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who chairs Harvard University's Afro-American Studies Department, will be this year's Jefferson Lecturer. As was noted in the December 15 Washington Report, the date for the lecture has been shifted to Friday, March 22.
AAU: AAU, NASULGC LAUNCH POST-SEPTEMBER 11 WEBSITE AAU and NASULGC have jointly created a website that is intended to serve as a resource for research universities on post-September 11 issues. The site can be accessed at www.aau.edu/resources/resources.html. The site features information on federal and state legislation dealing with post-September 11 issues, as well as links to information on campus lab security, international students and faculty, campus safety and preparedness, electronic surveillance and privacy issues, and media statements and op-eds by university leaders and others. The site also includes links to post-September 11 webpages of several universities. This effort to create this website has been guided by an informal group of university federal relations officers which is now organizing formally as the AAU/NASULGC Working Group on Post September 11 University Responses. The working group is being cochaired by Nan Nixon, of Duke University, and Bob Samors, of the University of North Carolina.
CFR: NEXT MEETING IS WINTER RETREAT The next meeting of the CFR will be the annual winter retreat, which is being held in Tucson, AZ, January 12-15. The February CFR meeting will be held from 9:30-11:30 a.m. Wednesday, February 6, in the second floor conference rooms at 1200 New York Avenue NW.
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