The committee was created in reaction to the Soviet Union’s surprise launch of Sputnik, the first manmade satellite, which threatened U.S. preeminence in science generally and aeronautics in particular. Today, again, there is substantial concern that U.S. science is losing its competitive edge. Not least of those concerns is that Russia and China are cultivating robust space programs at a time when the United States is about to retire its shuttle fleet while being years away from having a next-generation means of getting into space.

Fifty years ago, the committee also wrung its hands about the state of science education in this country. Indeed, a first order of business in 1959 was the creation of a provision for granting scholarships and graduate fellowships in math, physics and engineering, among other topics in the sciences. Today, the need to better support so-called STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education is still a top issue for legislators, and promises to be high on the science committee’s list of priorities for the new session.

“Science does not have a left or a right. It only knows a right and a wrong.”

Of course, not everything from 50 years ago remains a high profile today. For better or worse (C-SPAN ratings would certainly go up), the 1959 subcommittee assigned to study Unidentified Flying Objects—and specifically to investigate what the Air Force knew about them and was not telling the public—does not exist today (though the related topic of extraterrestrial life has been on the committee’s agenda on and off for decades).

Last week’s initial gathering for 2009 was largely spent on routine business, confirming chairmen and members of subcommittees and so on. It was also a chance for committee members to congratulate themselves on how well they all get along and how bipartisan a gang the science committee is. “Science does not have a left or a right. It only knows a right and a wrong,” intoned Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-CA), in a no-doubt overstated proclamation of committee-wide unity, but one arguably closer to the truth than for many other committees on Capitol Hill.

So what’s on the agenda?

One leading priority is expected to be electronic waste-a topic close to the heart of the committee’s chairman, Bart Gordon (D-TN). Gordon has railed against this nation’s failure to recycle more than a small percentage of the 2 millions pounds of e-waste it produces every year, from which toxins leach liberally into soil and groundwater. And the problem does not stop at our borders. A Government Accountability Office report released in September was highly critical of the Environmental Protection Agency for doing little to curb the export of hazardous waste from discarded electronics, which pose long-term threats to public health and the environment abroad. Current regulations are under-enforced, and the committee is likely to relaunch legislative efforts to restrict current practices.

The committee will also be one of several looking for ways to accelerate the introduction of new energy technologies (with some emphasis on how to get the most promising ones commercialized quickly). Climate change (including a piece of the cap-and-trade debate); water conservation (a growing concern as climate change wreaks increasing havoc with the nation’s limited fresh water reserves); disaster response; STEM education; and transportation (the highway bill, a predictable political pileup, is coming up for reauthorization) will all be on the agenda—along with one of the most difficult of science topics for the coming year: a multi-year reauthorization of NASA, which will raise all kinds of questions about that beleaguered agency’s capacities and priorities.

“NASA is at a very critical stage,” said Vernon Ehlers (R-MI), one of three physicists in Congress. Added Baron Hill (D-IN): “For too long, NASA’s been asked to do too much with too little funds.”

Among the considerations expected to come up is whether to extend the shuttle program to shrink the gap between its planned retirement next year and the launch of the next-generation space vehicles that will be part of the Constellation program, which is not expected to be ready to transport astronauts to the International Space Station until around 2015. Also open for discussion will be how realistic current plans are to revisit the moon by 2020, and to go on from there to Mars in the relatively near future.

Me, I’m all for exploration, and I’ve been thrilled with the footage from our various Mars rovers. But in these days of budget crises and other problems here at home, the idea of sending people off to the chilly deserts of Mars falls squarely in the category of extraordinary rendition—truly, for now, a bridge too far.

Rick Weiss is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and Science Progress.

Read the full press release from NAS here.

See highlights from Lane’s the keynote at the launch of our first print issue last June:

Read Lane and George Abbey’s recommendations for NASA policy priorities under the new administration: “How to Save the U.S. Space Program”

The Act addresses many of the critical areas that politicians and economists alike have been discussing in recent weeks. It makes investments in clean energy that will form a solid foundation upon which to build a 21st-century low-carbon economy. It addresses the creaking infrastructure needs that are slowing down U.S. business competitiveness. It helps those most hurt by the recession, invests in education, lowers health care costs, and provides necessary funds to save vital public services at the state level.

But as outlined in the Center for American Progress report, “A National Innovation Agenda,” the Act also recognizes the importance of science, technology and innovation, which “have long provided the foundation for America’s prosperity.”

A key part of this agenda is ensuring that the United States has the innovation infrastructure necessary for it to compete on the global stage.

Getting the economy back on track is not enough unless the recovery is sustained and living standards once again rise in line with economic growth and increases in productivity. The steps necessary to achieve this were set out in the CAP report, “Progressive Growth.” A key part of this agenda is ensuring that the United States has the innovation infrastructure necessary for it to compete on the global stage. Although the United States remains the world’s most innovative economy, other countries particularly in East Asia are quickly catching up. Underinvestment in recent years has precipitated this decline.

To address this, the Recovery Act announced several critical investments, including $6 billion for broadband and wireless services, $20 billion for health information technology, $1 billion for technology improvements for a more efficient and secure government, $1 billion for education technology, and $11.7 billion for scientific research.

The stimulus proposal also includes significant funds supporting research and development efforts across the physical, environmental, and life sciences. Despite a modest supplemental boost in June, assistance here comes at a time when total budgetary authority for R&D has been dropping in real dollars; adjusted for inflation, it declined 1.9 percent overall in fiscal year 2007-2008. In biomedical research, the situation is more severe. Continuous flat funding for the National Institutes of Health has dropped its inflation-adjusted research budget to a level 13 percent lower than where it was five years ago.

The Recovery Act would allot $2 billion for NIH, the amount CAP Senior Fellow Rick Weiss recommended last October. This funding can support researchers who are working on cures for a healthier country. It can potentially help the younger generation of scientists who have been squeezed out of the NIH funding process because of the tightening budgets. Some 80 percent of grant requests go unfunded at the agency, and the competitive process favors established researchers—the average age of a scientist winning his or her first NIH grant is 42 years.

Additional funding through the National Science Foundation—$3 billion—will expand opportunities for scientists working on America’s energy and health challenges, while investing in research for the future.

But just as grantmaking agencies can create and sustain good jobs with additional funding, they also have to maintain the facilities where scientists work. Just like the highway system, much of our country’s research infrastructure needs upgrading. Chairman Obey’s bill includes construction funds to renovate existing facilities at universities and institutes and build new ones: $400 million for the National Science Foundation, $1.5 billion for NIH, $462 million for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, $300 million for the National Institutes of Standards and Technology, and $50 million to repair hurricane-damaged NASA facilities.

Support for basic research in the physical sciences will help maintain U.S. competitiveness in the field. While the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland may have blown a gasket before going into operation last September, it nonetheless pulled the gravitational center of particle research away from the United States. The Recovery Act provides $1.9 billion for basic research through the Department of Energy, along with $400 million for the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, which pursues potentially transformative high-risk, high return work—a critical approach that has fallen, all too often, out of federal funding favor.

As a complement to the $73 billion the stimulus package proposes for clean energy projects, the Act provides for Earth sciences research to better understand the state of our planet. This includes $400 million for NASA Earth scientists and $600 million for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite equipment and climate modeling, which will be crucial for global warming mitigation and adaptation policy.

To help translate discoveries from lab to market, there are also funds that can support regional technology-based economic development: $100 million for NIST labs to coordinate manufacturing standards, and another $100 million for the Technology Innovation Program and the Manufacturing Extension Partnership.

As Science Progress contributors explain in several recent features on regional centers of innovation, developing prosperous regional innovation clusters yields dividends to the domestic and world economies—whether it be information technology or life-saving medical advances. Regional centers also benefit local communities by attracting a talented and high-paid workforce, cultural organizations, and start-up businesses that generate tax revenue and support the cycle of growth—all key stepping stones on the path to economic recovery.

Will Straw is the Associate Director for Economic Growth at the Center for American Progress. Andrew Plemmons Pratt is the Assistant Editor for Science Progress.

More recently, the planetary and astronomy missions, such as the Hubble Space Telescope, have completely changed our understanding of the universe in a human lifespan. The International Space Station, or ISS, which involves close partnerships with Russia and several other nations, is an incredible accomplishment. When it is completed, it will represent the largest international cooperative technological project in history.

But the future of the U.S. space program is very much in doubt. In spite of continued great accomplishments, a number of setbacks—including the tragic shuttle accidents—combined with a series of bold pronouncements by the Bush administration followed by inadequate funding, have led to serious questions of the nation’s commitment to space and, consequently, to a steady erosion of NASA and the aerospace industry that supports its missions.

On January 14, 2004, President George W. Bush joined the act, announcing his Vision for Space Exploration, a bold plan for the U.S. space effort to complete the ISS and phase out the space shuttle by 2010. In its place, the president’s VSE program would design and build a replacement shuttle by 2008 and fly it by 2014—returning humans to the moon by 2020 and preparing for missions to Mars. NASA quickly reset its priorities, pushing science further down the list.

Critics of President Bush’s plan expressed a number of concerns, calling the plan bold but incomplete and unrealistic.^[1] First and foremost, the mandate to stop flying the space shuttle in 2010 meant the United States would depend on Russia for human access to space for at least four years, but more realistically a decade. President Bush and NASA also made clear that the president’s VSE would be a U.S.-led effort.

Now that the Europeans and the Japanese finally have their research modules installed on the station, and can gain a return on their substantial investment, it must be galling to be told that Washington will simply cut their lifeline by ending shuttle support (with its critical up-and-down mass capability) and yet not welcome access to the new VSE program. The arbitrary decision to stop flying the shuttle signaled that the United States is no longer interested in the ISS, and that after 2010 other nations are pretty much on their own. NASA plans to buy trips to the ISS on Russian Soyuz and Progress (cargo) spacecraft, but with relations between the United States and Russia at a low point Congress has already questioned this arrangement.

As for space-based science, President Bush’s 2004 speech and NASA press releases signaled that science would not be a priority.

President Bush’s vision, however, was incomplete in other ways. No cost estimates were presented for returning humans to the moon. The commitment by the president was to add $1 billion to the NASA budget each year for five years—far short of what would actually be required to build a new space vehicle and prepare for a return to the moon. The cost of Apollo was approximately $135 billion in 2004 dollars, but the president did not request even these small increases. Former Sen. John Glenn of Ohio has called the Bush VSE program “one of the biggest unfunded mandates that we have had in all of government history.” ^[2]

As for space-based science, President Bush’s 2004 speech and NASA press releases signaled that science would not be a priority. As NASA has scraped to find the money to fund the VSE program, science has paid the price with large cuts in its research programs, space-based science missions, including earth observation satellites, and the aeronautics program. A comprehensive look at President Bush’s budget for research and development in fiscal year 2009 shows the National Aeronautics and Space Administration budget would grow $497 million or 2.9 percent to $17.6 billion, but the science portfolio would be cut by 5.6 percent and aeronautics research would be reduced by 13 percent.

Meanwhile, the VSE program is in trouble. Progress on developing the new “Constellation” space vehicle—the Orion crew exploration vehicle riding on a new Ares I rocket—has been delayed due to a number of significant technical design problems. Even if all these problems can be solved given more time and money, the new system falls far short of the shuttle in many ways. For instance, the Orion capsule, a larger version of the 1960s Apollo capsule, does not allow for extravehicular activity, cannot stay long in orbit, carries no payload up or back, and requires a water landing.

Given budget and manpower shortfalls, NASA is unable to provide firm cost estimates for the projects, while tight White House deadlines continue to put pressure on both the Ares I and Orion projects. Both projects are likely to experience substantial schedule slips and growth in costs. The best advertised estimate of when the Constellation might fly is 2015, though realistically it could be much later. We could be looking at a flight gap as great as eight years, perhaps more. And all the while, science will continue to be held hostage.

The frustration of NASA’s administrator, Michael Griffin, is clear from his words in a recently published email. “It will appear irrational—heck, it will be irrational—to say we’ve built a Space Station we cannot use, that we’re throwing away a $100 billion investment, when the cost of saving it is merely to continue to flying the Shuttle.”^[3]

NASA is trapped by expectations it cannot meet and promises not kept. Morale at NASA is at a low point, many of the agency’s most experienced workers are retiring, and NASA as well as the aerospace companies face dire manpower challenges. Early decisions need to be made by the new president, and those decisions will determine whether the United States continues to lead in space or cede that position to other nations.

Recommendations

The new president should immediately assign White House coordination of all non-defense space activities to his science adviser, the assistant to the president for science and technology, who will also serve as director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. In the first 100 days, the president, with the advice of his science adviser, should appoint a commission to assess the current status of the U.S. space program and make specific recommendations for necessary actions in both the short term and the long term.

The decision to phase out the shuttle by 2010 should be reconsidered and reversed if possible.

Specifically, the decision to phase out the shuttle by 2010 should be reconsidered and reversed if possible. Talks with our international ISS partners should be held to openly discuss the future of the ISS and commitments by the partner nations. The Vision for Space Exploration should be reevaluated and modified to reflect realistic goals and expectations of future budgets, manpower, national priorities, and opportunities for international cooperation, including access to the program for our space partners. And any future plans by the United States to return women and men to the moon and someday to Mars should involve many U.S. federal agencies, universities, and industry, and should be fully international in scope.

In the meantime, science, including earth observations, should be restated as a top priority for NASA. Wasteful cuts and delays in science missions should be reevaluated and, where warranted, restored. Coordination between NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the U.S. Geological Survey should be strengthened. Consideration also should be given to the suggestion that NOAA and USGS be combined to form a new Earth Systems Science Agency.^[4]

The steady decline in funding for NASA’s aeronautics programs—down 32 percent between FY2004 and 2007—should be reversed. And a group of eminent aeronautical experts from the government, academia, and industry should be constituted and charged with laying out a roadmap for a revitalized NASA aeronautics program, along with supporting test facilities that would provide the research and development to ensure U.S. leadership in this critical discipline.

A key stated objective of all NASA’s research and technology programs should be to excite a new generation of scientists and engineers and rebuild scientific and technical expertise within NASA and across the nation—a critical need highlighted in the National Academy report “Rising above the Gathering Storm.”^[5] NASA’s research center structure should be reestablished with this objective in mind.

A revitalized NASA will be essential to ensure U.S. leadership as a strong international partner in the peaceful uses of space. Over these past eight years, there has been a movement urging U.S domination of space. We should heed instead the words of John F. Kennedy:

“We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man…”

Our civil space activities must continue to play a preeminent role in making President Kennedy’s words a reality.

Neal Lane is the Malcolm Gillis University Professor and Senior Fellow of the James A Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University and served in the Clinton Administration as Science Advisor to the President and Director of the National Science Foundation.

George Abbey is Senior Fellow of the James A Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University and former Director of the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston Texas.

Notes

^[1] George Abbey and Neal Lane, “United States Space Policy: Challenges and Opportunities” (Cambridge, MA: American Academy of Arts & Sciences, June 2005).

^[2] Brian Berger, “John Glenn Calls Bush Space Vision an Unfunded Mandate,” Space News, July 21, 2008, available at http://www.space.com/news/080731-glenn-bush-space-vision.html.

^[3] Robert Block, “Frustrated NASA chief vents about agency’s fate,” Orlando Sentinel, September 6, 2008, available at http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_space_thewritestuff/2008/09/frustrated-nasa.html.

^[4] Mark Schaefer et al, “An Earth Systems Science Agency.” Science, July 4, 2008, pp 44-45.

^[5] “Rising Above the Gathering Storm” (Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, October 2005).

Weiss’s Notebook

CAP Senior Fellow Rick Weiss covered science and medicine for The Washington Post for 15 years, and now he brings his investigative eye to science policy. From cloning and stem cells to agricultural biotechnology and nanotechnology, Weiss examines the issues at the intersection of cutting edge research and public policy.

The presidential transition, begun quietly before the party conventions, now barrels ahead at full speed. And as soon as the transition team has completed its immediate work on the two most pressing issues of the day—national security and the economy—there is good reason to believe that the nation’s science agencies and offices will get fast and close attention.

It is a truism by now that the solutions to many of the major problems facing the United States—climate change, energy, the environment, health care, and food security, among others—have major scientific or technological components. It is also widely recognized that the Bush administration’s almost allergic rejection of scientific evidence and government oversight has badly stalled the development of new approaches to these problems, as well as others in the life sciences and public health. Transition officials clearly plan to act quickly to select new heads for the agencies responsible for these interlinked issues, with an eye toward enabling coordinated efforts.

Already, the Washington rumor mill is buzzing with names of possible science appointees. I have no inside information, but to satisfy the innate human urge to give and receive gossip, I’m happy to highlight some of what I’ve heard from others. For secretary of Health and Human Services, there is talk of former Majority Leader (and CAP senior fellow) Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), who released a book in February on the nation’s healthcare crisis; Nobel laureate and former National Institutes of Health Director Harold Varmus, currently president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center; Howard Dean, the Democratic National Committee chairman and a family physician; and Kathleen Sebelius (D), the governor of Kansas, who made a name for herself when she successfully fought a major battle against BlueCross-BlueShield’s plan to become a for-profit company.

For FDA Commissioner, some have floated the names of Mike Taylor, a former deputy FDA commissioner with particular expertise in food safety; Mary Pendergast, who had a top post in the FDA under President Clinton and has also consulted for the pharmaceutical industry; and even Steven Nissen, the Cleveland Clinic maverick M.D. who has become a chronic thorn in the side of big pharma by repeatedly challenging the data that drug companies have used to back up their claims of safety and efficacy.

It’s been easy for scientists to gripe about their mistreatment during the past eight years. But now is not the time to demand payback.

The parlor game could go on, and it will. But what is more interesting, really, is just how many high-level science openings there are to fill. There are the cabinet-level positions overseeing such science-heavy departments as Agriculture, Energy, and Commerce. There is the surgeon general, the directors of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology; the administrators of NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; and the head of the United States Geological Survey, the all-important research arm of the Interior department.

Within the executive office of the president alone there is the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy and science advisor to the president (a position that many in science hope will be elevated to a cabinet level “assistant to the president” post); four associate directors of the Office of Science and Technology Policy; a gaggle of presidentially appointed members of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology; the chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality; the director and three associate directors of the Office of Management and Budget; and the administrator of OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which has in recent years become an increasingly important venue for scientific review and regulation.

Now feel free to skip this paragraph—and to seek help if in fact you make it to the end—but I would be remiss not to mention as well that within the Agriculture Department alone the president needs to appoint three science-based under secretaries—for research, education, and economics; food safety; and food, nutrition, and consumer services. In Commerce he must choose an under secretary for oceans and atmosphere. In Defense he must find a director of defense research and engineering; an under secretary for acquisition, technology and logistics; a director for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; an assistant secretary for health affairs; an assistant secretary for networks and information integration; a chief information officer; and an assistant to the secretary for nuclear and chemical and biological defense programs. In Education he must pick a director of that department’s Institute of Education Sciences. In Energy there are slots that must be filled for an under secretary of science; an under secretary for energy and environment; an assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy; an assistant secretary for environmental management; an assistant secretary for fossil energy; an assistant secretary of nuclear energy; and an under secretary for nuclear security.

And remember, we’re just talking about the most science-y presidential appointments here. We’ll ignore the nearly 500 others for now (but see below for a more exhaustive list).

Of these myriad positions, the most important will be the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. This is a position that has traditionally been held by a physicist, a holdover from the days when the most important thing to think about in science was the risk of a nuclear attack. Today, as the nation faces a far broader array of scientific threats, including climate change and biological warfare, it will be interesting to see if the new president breaks with tradition and appoints an earth scientist or biologist to that central scientific coordinating position.

The fruits of all these transitional decisions will take time to ripen, but here are a few questions worth asking today:

Will HHS lead a quick and effective charge to focus more on prevention, reduce the cost of healthcare and insurance, and expand coverage to the un- and underinsured?

Will FDA work together with Agriculture to revamp the nation’s food safety system? Will it demand more of pharmaceutical companies, and will it regulate tobacco?

Will EPA get back to the job of using science to calculate honestly the effects of pesticides and other chemicals on the environment and human health? Will it lead the way to dealing with climate change and stand up for endangered species?

Will DOE jump-start the transition to a low-carbon economy by aggressively funding work on alternative energy sources and promulgating strict energy efficiency standards for homes and office buildings? Will it tackle the problem of nuclear waste?

And will Interior manage, in an integrated way, the nation’s precious fresh water resources and protect public lands for we the taxpayers who together own them?

To answer these questions in the affirmative will require a government commitment to data instead of ideology, which alone would constitute a real break from the Bush legacy. But it will also require a huge corps of scientists willing to speak up, and to provide and interpret those much-needed data for the good of the country.

The National Academies put it well in their 2008 report, “Science and Technology For America’s Progress: Ensuring the Best Presidential Appointments in the New Administration”:

The nature of our current national challenges, whether domestic or abroad, demands the best of science, engineering and technology to solve. “More of the same” will not work in the 21st century. Innovative thinking will be needed to a degree unprecedented in American history. Fortunately, large numbers of scientists, engineers, and health professionals have experienced positive change throughout their careers and have been enormously successful as a result. They have much to give back. Government service is an excellent means by which to repay that debt.

It’s been easy for scientists to gripe about their mistreatment during the past eight years. But now is not the time to demand payback. Now is the time for science to put its best foot forward and show the country what it’s been missing.

Rick Weiss is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and Science Progress.

Key Science and Technology Positions

Adapted from the NAS report, “Science and Technology for America’s Progress: Ensuring the Best Presidential Appointments in the New Administration”

PAS = presidential appointment with Senate confirmation

PA = presidential appointment (without Senate confirmation)

NA = noncareer appointment

FT = fixed term appointment, with length of appointment indicated

Examples of Scientific and Technical Federal Advisory Commitees, by Origin and Purpose

While this additional funding represents a step in right direction, the additional $150 million sent to the NIH with the passage of this supplemental bill falls woefully short of the annual 10 percent, or $2.59 billion, increase that is necessary to support critical biomedical and health research. The Bush administration has held the NIH budget flat for five years, and inflation has eroded the agency’s purchasing power. In order to truly bolster work that improves our country’s health, grows our economy, fuels the development of renewable energy technologies, and supports basic research, R&D funding for several key agencies should be set on a 10-year doubling course.

The first validation came with a long awaited report from the NASA Inspector General’s office on the James Hansen affair, in which the agency’s (and the world’s) most famous climate scientist charged that the NASA headquarters public affairs office had blocked his access to the media. The Hansen saga has received much attention; there’s even a book about it. Anyone familiar with the details of the case would already know that untoward behaviors occurred—most notably, a young political appointee named George Deutsch, apparently following orders from his public affairs superiors, blocked Hansen from doing a requested NPR interview. It appears that interfering with climate science amounted to a routine among these folks: A number of NASA climate-related press releases were also either blocked or suspiciously altered so as to minimize their impact or to otherwise align them with administration policies.

Surely these appointees—political appointees—had some idea of what they were doing, why they were doing it, and who might be pleased by their actions.

The Inspector General report comes across as fairly hard-hitting; it says more or less point blank that the complaints leveled by NASA scientists have far more substance than the evasive defenses that have emerged from the agency’s public affairs folks (and that have been parroted by administration defenders). All in all, the Inspector General found that “during the fall of 2004 through early 2006, the NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs managed the topic of climate change in a manner that reduced, marginalized, or mischaracterized climate change science made available to the general public.” So insofar as it’s possible to “prove” that political interference with science occurred, this report does precisely that. And in the process, it vindicates those of us who have been flagging these types of behaviors for years.

One troubling aspect of the Inspector General’s work, however, lies in its suggestion that these abuses don’t go beyond a few bad apples: The report found “no credible evidence suggesting that senior NASA or Administration officials directed the NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs to minimize information relating to climate change.” And again: “The defects we found are associated with the manner of operation of the NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs and are largely due to the actions of a few key senior employees of that office.”

I for one find this highly dubious. Are we seriously supposed to believe that this public affairs office was a rogue actor? Surely these appointees—political appointees—had some idea of what they were doing, why they were doing it, and who might be pleased by their actions. Mark Bowen, author of the aforementioned book about the Hansen affair, Censoring Science, finds the NASA Inspector General report wholly unsatisfying on this particular point of ultimate responsibility and agency. Bowen charges that the Inspector General “leaves out any connection” between individuals in the public affairs office and “those who directed the censorship from within the White House.”

And speaking of censorship—Hansen’s story, while perhaps the best known, represents just one climate science abuse narrative that has emerged from this administration. There have been many, many others. Moreover, as I and others have argued, the most important such story is also, perhaps, the least known. It involves the concerted campaign to suppress the Clinton-era “National Assessment” of climate change impacts on the United States–and the subsequent failure, on the part of this administration, to produce a legally required follow up assessment.

You can read about the whole sordid saga here; it’s pretty outrageous stuff. But finally, there’s a mildly happy ending: Thanks to a court order, the Bush administration has at last coughed up an assessment of how global warming will change the lives of all Americans by producing rising sea levels, droughts, and numerous other troublesome outcomes. As Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity, which had sued the administration last year to get the assessment produced, put it, “The tide is finally turning, and the administration has been forced to acknowledge the harsh reality of global warming.” (The original deadline for delivery of the assessment was 2004. It only took until 2008.)

Not surprisingly, not everyone is completely happy with this end product. The World Wildlife Fund, for instance, has charged that the report, hastily put together, isn’t as useful to policymakers and stakeholders as it ought to be. I don’t doubt it—but nevertheless, this really does feel like the end of an era. There’s less and less fighting over climate science, and the Bush administration’s many transgressions keep meeting with slow repudiations and reversals.

All in all, it leaves you feeling a lot like someone who has finally won an eight-year court case, but went through incredible suffering and sacrificed untold resources in the process—it’s hard to really celebrate. You’re glad it’s over, but you still hate and lament what you went through. You mourn the incredible waste—so much time lost, when it didn’t have to be that way. Or to give NASA’s inspector general the last word: “In sum…none of this course of conduct was in the public’s best interest.”

There’s a lot of repair to be done.

Chris Mooney is a contributing editor to Science Progress and the author of two books, The Republican War on Science and Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming. He blogs on The Intersection with Sheril Kirshenbaum.

Here on Earth, though, that five-year gap means that close to 10,000 NASA employees and aerospace workers connected with manned U.S. space operations will have to find other work until the new Constellation system is up and running. Some of the people laid off during the transition will go to work for industries working with the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services programs, which is an effort by NASA to stimulate commercial access to space (manned and unmanned) by providing “seed money” to companies with promising ideas, but most of them will have to hope they will be rehired and/or retrained to work on the Constellation programs’ Ares V and lunar programs—if these programs are eventually funded by Congress.

But even if Congress acts quickly to fund the Constellation program, NASA’s Workforce Transition Study indicates that an estimated 9,000 aerospace jobs may be lost because of this gap, 6,400 from Kennedy Space Center alone. A handful of congressional proposals would boost NASA funding and save some of these jobs. These efforts are worth strong consideration because they would support the high-tech industries powered by these aerospace workers.

These NASA and aerospace workers employ critical skills and engineering know-how vital to keeping the U.S. competitive and at the forefront of cutting-edge technology and innovation. Their expertise is employed in a broad range of high-tech fields, including: robotics, solar energy, life support system research, remote sensing (including environmental applications), ion propulsion, hypersonic flight, composite heat shielding, nano and computer technologies, and biomedical applications.

The economic impact of the Shuttle-Constellation gap cannot be determined from federal statistics—the Bush administration is removing statistics that support the economic benefits of government spending—but there is data at the state level. In 2006, the Kennedy Space Center and other NASA centers injected $1.68 billion into the Florida economy. The total economic impact of NASA in Florida for that year was $3.6 billion in output, $1.8 billion in household income, and 34,000 jobs.

The director of NASA’s Marshall Flight Center, Steven A. Cook, in a column for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, gave some estimates of the economic effects of NASA on the U.S. economy: NASA’s budget ($16.2 billion) in 2006 (compare that with the $2 billion every four days we spend in Iraq), was less than 0.6 percent of the federal budget ($2.568 trillion); NASA invests 85 percent of its budget toward industry for work on missions; an estimated $9 in economic gain is produced from each $1 spent on research and development; and the Federal Aviation Administration estimated NASA procured commercial space services (in 2004) generated over $98 billion in revenues.

What’s more, the coming years will see the rise of new manned space powers: China, India, Japan, and the European Community. Already the European Space Agency is putting forth plans to man-rate their Automated Transfer Vehicle, or ATV, which flew its very successful maiden voyage only weeks ago. The United States may decide not to provide work for our high-tech NASA workers, but these other space powers will be funding their programs and providing high-tech jobs for their aerospace workers.

Congress Poised to Act

There have been a number of bills introduced in Congress to deal with the five-year gap. One is the SPACE Act (H.R. 4837), introduced in December 2007 by Rep. Dave Weldon (R-FL), which would fully restore appropriation shortfalls from NASA’s 2007 and 2008 budgets ($1.6 billion and $1 billion respectively), and includes an additional $1 billion to replace funds used to return the shuttles to flight status after the Columbia tragedy. The bill has not yet been scheduled for a vote, but that may be a good thing as it is flawed in some areas.

Weldon’s legislation is much more interested in making political points and trashing the Russians (who may be providing our only means to access the International Space Station during the Shuttle-Constellation gap) than supporting the U.S. aerospace workforce. For example, in Section 2, paragraph B of the legislation, it states the U.S. should:

not increase its reliance on Russia to transport American astronauts into space, given the increasingly divergent views and posturing from Russia. Russia opposes the United States plan to base an antimissile radar system in the Czech Republic and interceptor missiles in Poland to deal with the threat posed by the Iranian nuclear weapons and missile programs. Russia also suspended its participation in the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty, one of the most significant arms control agreements of the Cold War years. Additionally, Russia continues to arm some of America’s most hostile adversaries, Iran and Venezuela. Despite United States objections, Russia sold billions of dollars worth of weapons to the regime of Hugo Chavez in 2006. Such meddling is a possible violation of the Monroe Doctrine and a throwback to the Cold War era. Even more troublesome is the Russian history of weapons trading with Iran. Russia has supplied advanced conventional arms technology, missile technology, and nuclear technologies to this very anti-American regime.

A much smaller section of the legislation (section 5 paragraphs D and F—less than 140 words) discusses the high-tech job losses and their implications.

Fortunately, the NASA Authorization Act of 2008 (H.R. 6063), which was introduced and passed by the House Science and Technology space and aeronautics subcommittee on May 20, will soon go to the full committee for a vote. Introduced by Mark Udall (D-CO), H.R. 6063 is a much better piece of legislation; it includes a $1.9 billion increase over the 2008 budget, while providing an additional $1 billion to accelerate the development of the Orion-Ares system. This additional funding would decrease the Shuttle-Constellation gap from five to three years.

Rather than devoting most of a NASA funding bill to trashing Russia, the NASA Authorization Act is totally dedicated to the educational, economical, technological, and national benefits of a strong NASA and aerospace industry. It promotes the value of retaining the high-tech workforce and the benefits to the future of our country as a whole.

In April, in a letter written to the House leadership of both parties, Rep. Nick Lampson (D-TX) made a passionate plea for help for these highly trained aerospace workers. Signed by 11 fellow House members, the letter asked for a $2 billion increase in NASA’s budget to close the Shuttle-Constellation gap and save over 10,000 Kennedy Space Center and Johnson Space Center jobs. The additional $2 billion would not only help save jobs but also stimulate an economy that may be slipping toward recession.

The FY08 supplemental appropriations bill, which passed the Senate on May 22, gives another $165 billion to fund Iraq and Afghanistan operations. Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), the chairman of the Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations Subcommittee, and a NASA supporter, included $200 million for NASA to help pay for return to flight costs following the loss of the Columbia. Mikulski and other space program supporters have been asking for at least $1 billion to $2 billion to cover these costs, but so far have not been successful. Mikulski has vowed to try again to include the additional money in the FY09 budget. The supplemental appropriations bill now moves to the House for consideration.

Will President Bush Wield His Veto Pen?

None of these pieces of legislation is guaranteed to pass, and they face the prospect of a veto by President Bush. It was the Bush administration, after all, that proposed retiring the Shuttle and building the Constellation architecture in the first place—never mind that the administration promised that funding for NASA would be increased to pay for the transition. Even worse, should funding for NASA remain at the levels the Bush administration has asked for, the Shuttle-Constellation gap could become much wider.

That has prompted a number of famous space pioneers to speak up. The most prominent case in point is former Ohio Sen. John Glenn, the first American and the oldest human to orbit the earth. Speaking on Capitol Hill earlier this month, Glenn spoke of the need to keep American aerospace workers employed rather than shipping the jobs overseas. He asked if contracting with Russia to ferry U.S. astronauts to the International Space Station is “the kind of economy the American people want?” He concluded: “I hardly think so.”

Let’s hope that a sufficient number of members of Congress agree with him to override a Bush veto. The dividends to our nation in high-tech economic activity would more than justify the budget increases.

Patrick R. Stoffel is finishing a Masters Program with the Space Studies Department at the University of North Dakota, Grand Forks.

The Bush Administration’s policies are out of balance, focused on using NASA to support political goals while crippling its ability to do important and fundamental science.

But as far as science is concerned, things could be better at NASA. Both internal NASA policies and external Bush administration policies currently contribute to a steady loss of scientific opportunities and risk the nation’s leadership in science, especially in the physical sciences. If the United States loses this leadership, it loses it for good, and as the American Competitiveness Initiative clearly spells out, the U.S. economy will pay dearly.

The problems are easy to state. First, the Bush administration’s policies are out of balance, focused on using NASA to support political goals while crippling its ability to do important and fundamental science. Second, NASA’s internal policy is designed for a “mission oriented” agency, suitable for much of what NASA does, but old-fashioned and inefficient for playing a role in supporting basic science. The scientific opportunities that NASA is missing are at the core of the important discussion about how to maintain the nation’s economic competitiveness into the future, as that competitiveness directly relates to our leadership in the physical sciences.

The innocent beeping of Sputnik catapulted humans into the Space Age, and the response of the U.S. government to that tiny silver orb paved the way for one of the most significant scientific and technological achievements of the 20th century: human exploration of the moon. NASA, and many important technologies, grew from this original mission, but NASA has abandoned the capabilities that set it apart from other agencies, chiefly among them the ability to use its resources to advance scientific research in a wide variety of fields including Earth science, interplanetary robotic exploration, and cosmology. Without re-orientation of the agency’s priorities, NASA will be unable to provide scientists with the resources that allow them to better understand our fragile planet and our place within the universe. And this loss would be another example of our benign neglect costing the United States its lead in science.

There are no burning scientific questions that scientists around the world are clamoring to know about that can only be answered by sending humans to the moon or Mars.

The solution to the first problem of unbalanced priorities is easy: The administration should stop saddling NASA with its misguided over-emphasis on a return trip to the moon and exploration of Mars. Such an emphasis has no significant basis in science. That is, there are no burning scientific questions that scientists around the world are clamoring to know that can only be answered by sending humans to the moon or Mars. These efforts might support our aerospace industry, and that is arguably a very important role that NASA plays, but that’s not all NASA should be doing. Politics and political gain are colliding with scientific research and opportunity. NASA should stop throwing away precious resources on shuttle launches that have no useful purpose other than political pageantry and public relations.

There are claims that manned exploration of the solar system is an inevitable human destiny, but there are stronger arguments that exploration should not come at the expense of real scientific advancement, especially at a time with so many critical problems in space-based science and so many opportunities to make progress on our understanding of those problems. Our destiny can wait. The administration should make it possible for the agency to support basic science: from fundamental research in astrophysics to the strategic research such as space-based measurements of the Earth and sun—extremely important areas of study in this age of global climate change and the environmental considerations that will accompany the looming energy crisis.

The second problem, NASA’s narrow “mission-focused” operations, involves a fundamental difference between how NASA and other important players in science funding—like the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and the National Institutes of Standards and Technology—support science. To illustrate the problem here, consider the juxtaposition between the phenomenal recent discovery by U.S. scientists of the accelerating universe and “dark energy,” and how little progress has been made in capitalizing on this discovery with a space-based mission.

The discovery relied upon observations of particular kinds of stellar explosions called supernovae. The physics of these explosions is so well understood that they can serve as “standard candles”—they have a known intrinsic brightness. By measuring the amount of their light that reaches Earth, we can calculate the supernova’s distance, and hence how far back in time the explosion occurred. By measuring the change in the spectral colors from elements ejected by the supernova, we can measure the relative velocity of the distant star. Using both measurements together tells us the velocity of these exploding stars at different times in the 14 billion-year-old expansion of the universe, mapping out the history of the expansion.

There is no question in the scientific community at this point about whether “dark energy” is worth investigating.

Until the late 1990s, observations, coupled with our understanding of the theory of gravity, painted a definite picture of how this expansion changes over billions of years as the gravitational force from the collective mass of the cosmos retarded the expansion. Beginning in the late 1980s, a project led by a team of scientists from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory made it possible to actually measure this expansion directly. In the mid-1990s, a simultaneous effort led by a team of scientists at the Mount Stromlo Observatory in Australia mounted a similar effort. Both teams of talented scientists were attempting to measure the expansion rate directly, hoping to verify expectations.

In early 1998, both teams announced their results, and what they found has turned out to be one of the most significant scientific discoveries of all time: The expansion of the universe is actually accelerating, driven by an unexpected and completely unknown opposing force. While it is still true that gravity is acting to impede expansion, as the universe gets bigger the gravitational force of attraction gets smaller, and this new force—christened “dark energy,” since it cannot be detected directly like other mass-energy forms—is beginning to have a larger and larger cosmological effect. Eventually, the “dark energy” will dominate over gravitational attraction, ultimately leading to a universe devoid of stars and empty of energy in any usable form.

Moreover, the new supernova observations—when combined with other cosmological efforts such as properties of the radiation left by the echo of the Big Bang, and as measured by Mather and Smoot in the Nobel Prize-winning work —tell us that this “dark energy” accounts for fully 70 to 75 percent of the total mass-energy content of the universe. And we have no understanding of the nature of this dark energy. We don’t even know whether it has properties that change or are constant in time and space. It’s one of the best scientific mysteries of all time.

The Tycho Supernova pictured here was first observed in the 16th century. Observations of Type 1A supernova, a variant of all supernovae, led to the discovery of the mysterious “dark energy” driving galaxies apart.

This discovery has not only shocked the scientific community—it has energized it. Significant scientific interest has been focused on the discovery, and what to do next in trying to understand the nature of this expansion, anti-gravity, etc. For the past nine years, a collaboration of scientists headed by a group from the Berkeley Lab has been working diligently to prepare a space-based experiment on a satellite in high orbit—that is, outside the lunar orbit—called SNAP, for SuperNova Acceleration Probe. Such an orbit would put the satellite far outside the Earth’s atmosphere, which limits the ability to measure those “standard-candle” supernovae that are the furthest away from Earth. Moreover, an orbit outside the Earth’s shadow would avoid the large temperature swings that accompany going in and out of sunlight, an effect that bedeviled the Hubble Space Telescope. A satellite experiment would generate an extremely precise measurement of the universe’s acceleration, and tell us a great deal about the “dark energy.”

Eventually, the “dark energy” will dominate over gravitational attraction, ultimately leading to a universe devoid of stars and empty of energy in any usable form. Gross characteristics of the fate of the universe depend heavily on properties of the dark energy. In one such scenario, referred to as the “Big Rip,” the acceleration overwhelms all known forces of nature and rips everything apart. Without space-based research, we cannot hope to fully understand this phenomenon.

The Berkeley Lab has put considerable internal resources into supporting a SNAP proposal to both the DOE—which has given support for this effort as a development project—and NASA. Other teams at other universities and national labs are also interested in this kind of science, although “interested” is an understatement. Students are ecstatic about doing research in this area, and funding agencies such as DOE and NSF recognize the significance. There is no question in the scientific community at this point about whether “dark energy” is worth investigating. In fact, the discovery of dark-energy effects is one of the most exciting events in the history of human investigation of nature. Everybody has a stake in the outcome because the future of civilization depends directly on our ability to comprehend and exploit physical principles.

This exciting research is a part of a larger field that includes the NASA-funded Cosmic Background Explorer and Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe missions, NSF’s Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, and both the NSF and DOE investment in high-energy physics efforts at Fermilab, SLAC, and CERN, just to name a few. We have a tremendous prior investment in these fields. People want to work on this research. It’s a great place to train future scientists, and the discovery potential is huge. How can we lose?

The answer is distressingly simple. We can lose by continually delaying the opportunity to take advantage of unique and important scientific discoveries such as dark energy. And that is precisely what we are doing.

While there are some proposals for ground-based efforts to learn about the dark energy, the space-based SNAP, or a mission like it, would enable significant strides toward a definitive understanding of this phenomenon. And as the nation’s steward of space-based science, NASA must drive and support that research. But NASA is “mission oriented,” and as such has a very different approach to science from that of “program oriented” non-defense funding agencies such as NIH, NSF, NIST, and the DOE. The difference is extremely important and worth understanding.

These other agencies use variations on a merit-review system. They are always prepared to consider proposals from scientists—both young and old, both individually and as part of collaborations—as part of a program of research established in the agency, usually in close collaboration with the scientific community. For instance, the NSF is funding a neutrino telescope dubbed “IceCube” at the South Pole, and the LIGO gravity wave observatory, two extremely large projects consisting of a diverse group of international scientists from many different institutions working together in collaboration. Scientists working in collaboration make the proposals, and the funding agencies assemble objective reviewers to assess each proposal’s relative merit, consider the scientific objectives, and whether the proposal can or should be funded. And these agencies try to be flexible in how they define the program so that it can evolve coherently with the scientific progress.

NASA, on the other hand, works in a way more suited to an agency that in the 1960s was singular in its ability to support space research, and very concerned with missions—and NASA has not changed. A proposal to NASA for a specific piece of research, in an area that NASA might not already be involved in, will trigger consideration of whether or not NASA should have such a mission, and this takes considerable time.

Such is the nature of science: you have to run fast to keep from standing still, and that is precisely what we are not doing with respect to a dark energy space-based mission.

If NASA decides to fund the mission, it will request mission proposals from competing teams, and this process takes years to come to completion before NASA can decide on whether it wants to support such a mission. During that time, the scientists who could otherwise be collaborating are pitted against each other, an unhealthy situation in the scientific community. If NASA doesn’t feel it has enough competition, it will pull teams apart or perhaps invent new teams in an attempt to create more competition. The agency wants to control not only the mission, but the team involved, and ultimately own the entire effort. The agency sees the scientists as vendors—NASA decides all aspects of the mission and builds the scientific team to get the science done. This takes a great deal of time, is inefficient, and goes against the grain of how researchers do science. This structure was arguably well suited to an earlier era, before satellite technology became a commodity now ubiquitous in both government and private industry, and when the main purpose of NASA as an organization was to help develop advanced aeronautics. But times have changed, and basic science, along with satellite and rocket technology, has advanced far beyond where it was at NASA’s founding. The scientific program relevant to NASA has incredible breadth and complexity. Research proposals are now extremely complex in their details and scientific goals, and experiments move faster than they did previously. Acknowledging the complexity and speed of space-based research is especially important given that the European and Asian scientific communities are not only not standing still but are arguably gaining on us in expertise and resources.

For the past nine years, NASA’s mission orientation has made it difficult to work with the DOE and the scientific community to find a way to move forward on a space-based dark energy mission in any reasonably timely fashion, and this is out of place in the modern era. The very slow and clumsy effort to date is ineffective, an example of a lack of flexibility. And because of this, we are running the risk of losing our leadership. Enough time has gone by that now the Europeans, via the European Space Agency, are beginning their own studies of dark energy, and they may very well pick up this ball and run with it if we continually fail to do so. Such is the nature of science: You have to run fast to keep from standing still, and that is precisely what we are not doing with respect to a dark energy space-based mission.

NASA is a marvelous organization, with a collection of resources and expertise that we should be proud of. But NASA in the 21st century has the wrong balance: It should be a tool for promoting and executing scientific research like the NIH, NSF, NIST, and DOE, working in concert within the larger scientific program. The agency should not be a tool for promoting administration claims of having had an impact on science. And NASA should shift its focus precisely because of the importance to our nation and the world of space-based science. If we let NASA do what it does best—push the boundaries of aeronautics technology and use its resources to learn as much about our universe, from both under and above our thin atmosphere, as it possibly can—we will strengthen our industrial economy and our world leadership in the physical sciences.

Drew Baden is a professor of physics and chair of the physics department at the University of Maryland, where his research focuses on high-energy physics.

Tuesday

House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, and the Global Environment: “Renewable Energy and the Global Environment.” 2 p.m.

House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property: “Stifling or Stimulating – The Role of Gene Patents in Research and Genetic Testing.” 2 p.m.

House Science and Technology Subcommittee on Energy and Environment: “Research to Improve Water-Use Efficiency and Conservation: Technologies and Practices.” 2 p.m.

Wednesday

House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Internet: “The Status of the Digital Television Transition – Part 3.” 9:30 a.m.

House Science and Technology Subcommittee on Research and Science Education: “Research on Environmental and Safety Impacts of Nanotechnology: Current Status of Planning and Implementation under the National Nanotechnology Initiative.” 10 a.m.

House Science and Technology Committee: “Aviation Safety: Can NASA Do More to Protect the Public?” 1 p.m.

Thursday

House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Government Management, Organization, and Procurement: “Too Many Cooks” Coordinating Federal and State Health IT.” 2 p.m.

Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee: “Protecting the U.S. From Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis: Reinvesting in Control and New Tools Research.” 10 a.m.

MSNBC’s Cosmic Log reports that NASA has disowned Rocketplane Kistler, the private company that, along with SpaceX, was the co-winner of NASA’s rocket competition in August of 2006. The effort was part of NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation System program. COTS was designed to encourage private companies to devise low-cost ways of resupplying the international space station. Rocketplane Kistler was eligible for up to $500 million dollars, to be handed over in increments as they met certain financial and technical benchmarks. They fell short of fund raising goals and NASA put them on notice a month ago. As of now, $174.4 million of the prize is still up for grabs and Kistler is still allowed to re-enter the competition.

Comcast, the nation’s largest cable TV operator and second-largest Internet provider, has been intentionally and covertly slowing down traffic on P2P file-sharing services such as BitTorrent and Gnutella, as confirmed by the AP through nationwide tests. The AP reports that P2P file-sharing takes up anywhere from 50 to 90 percent of overall internet traffic. The bandwidth control raises the issue of how to balance the need for Net Neutrality with the right of companies to manage traffic for their customers. Much of the content consumers exchange using these services, and BitTorrent in particular, is is legal and does not violate copyright law.

Science Progress blogged yesterday on the damage of James Watson’s inaccurate and inflammatory remarks about race and intelligence. He has since been suspended by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Long Island, NY, “pending further deliberation by the board.” Watson “apologize[d] unreservedly,” maintaining that the Times, which published his remarks, did not report them in a way that accurately conveyed his position. J. Craig Venter weighed in on the issue with the BBC.

This week, the Senate resumes consideration of the Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations bill (HR 3093, summary [pdf]), which funds science education ($28 billion, $2 billion more than 2007), global climate change initiatives ($1.85 billion for a program that has not existed previously), NASA ($10.5 billion, $1.01 billion more than 2007), NOAA ($4.0 billion, $56.9 million above 2007), NSF ($5.96 billion, $500 million more than 2007), and the National Institute of Standards and Technology ($831.2 million, $154.3 million above 2007 ).

Also in the Senate this week: the Labor-Health-Education appropriations bill (HR 3043, summary [pdf]), which funds the Department of Health and Human Services, including the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In its current form, the bill provides $29.4 billion total for NIH ($549 million, or 3 percent, more than the current level) and $6.5 billion for the CDC ($192 million, or 8 percent, more than the current level).