QuickClicks

Renew or Join Now

What's New at MPSA

Give to MPSA Award & Scholarship Funds

On December 18, the Congress passed the Consolidated Appropriation Act, which provided FY 2008 funding for agencies and programs across the government except in the Department of Defense. (The DOD spending bill was approved earlier.) On December 26, President Bush signed the consolidated bill and thus the long and arduous FY 2008 appropriations process came to an end.

With his earlier veto of the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education spending bill and his threat to veto many of the others, the President made it clear he was not going to back off his position that total discretionary spending not exceed the number proposed in his February budget. Faced with this intransigence, the Democratically controlled Congress met the President’s demand. In doing so, Congress was forced to reduce some of its earlier, more promising FY 2008 funding decisions. The chart below illustrates the final FY 2008 numbers.

National Science Foundation
The endgame significantly affected the National Science Foundation (NSF), which came out of the House and Senate committee process with increases around 10%. Despite its inclusion as part of the President’s American Competitiveness Initiative and a reauthorization in the American COMPETES Act that promised to double its funding in 7 years and much rhetoric about the importance of basic research to innovation and competitiveness, in the end NSF wound up with a 2.5% boost. The Research and Related Activities account received a 1.2% increase, while [funding for] the Education and Human Resources directorate went up 4%. Congress did finally buy NSF’s pleas for increases for its administration and management account, raising it by 14.2%.

Census
Congress provided the Census Bureau its full funding to continue the ramp-up to the 2010 count and the 2007 Economic Census. Unlike the President’s proposed budget, the final bill included funding at $9.1 million for the partnership program that promotes outreach to many different communities to help encourage participation in the Census. The Salaries and Expenses account included $24 million to continue the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), although at the cost of an $8 million reduction for surveys of the service sector of the economy.

National Institute of Justice and Bureau of Justice Statistics
Again caught up in the Congress’s need to correct the President’s proposed funding for state and local law enforcement programs, including COPS, both the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) and Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) saw its hopes for attaining the increases proposed in the President’s budget fall by the wayside. NIJ saw its base funding reduced to $37 million, with $19 million designated for the National Law Enforcement Technology Centers. NIJ will also receive funding from the Violence Against Women appropriation, Byrne funding, and the DNA initiative, although at reduced levels from previous years. BJS received essentially level-funding from FY 2007, with the report language again stressing the importance of the National Crime Victimization Survey.

Final FY 2008 Appropriations
(Numbers in Thousands)

Note: MPSA is a governing member of COSSA, which monitors all federal agencies that provide support for social and behavioral research and advocates for a non-politicized research agenda. This article appeared in the January 14, 2008, issue of COSSA Washington UPDATE. For more information about COSSA, visit their website at http://www.cossa.org/.