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The Frist-Rockefeller Scenario

Science headlined an article in News Focus by David Malakoff, “Community divides over push for bigger budget,” “A plan to double federal civilian research spending over a decade is surprisingly contentious because it could cramp biomedicine's push for even faster growth” (28 May, p. [1452][1]). Nothing could be further from the truth. The doubling measure proposed by U. S. senators Bill Frist (R-TN) and Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), to which the article refers, was amended during its Senate Commerce Committee mark-up specifically to meet that concern and its corollary that other science agencies could be hurt by rapid growth of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The amendment is simple—not complex, as the article reports: If any agency exceeds an 8% growth rate, it is removed from the base calculation of the bill, which treats civilian research in the aggregate. Therefore, NIH or, for that matter, any other agency that develops political steam, can grow much more rapidly than the annual 5.6% aggregate called out in the bill without harming other accounts.

In addressing the NIH issue, the bill's Senate sponsors worked closely with a number of science, math, and engineering organizations to prevent any disciplinary rifts from developing. They succeeded admirably. Moreover, inspired, in part by intersociety cooperation on the Frist-Rockefeller bill, the presidents of the American Chemical Society, the American Mathematical Society, the American Physical Society, and the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology recently presented joint testimony before the House Veterans' Administration-Department of Housing and Urban Development appropriations subcommittee.

The article also states that backers of the Frist-Rockefeller bill were attempting to do an “end run” around House Science Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), who has shown “distaste” for the bill, by having the Commerce Committee take the lead. The truth is that last year U.S. Representative Heather Wilson (R-NM) submitted the bill in the House, and she is a member of the Commerce Committee. This year, the science and engineering communities have been working with both House committees, since both lay jurisdictional claim to the proposed legislation.

Finally, the article presents pie charts projecting how NIH and other civilian research agencies would fare proportionately in the year 2003 under the Frist-Rockefeller scenario. The charts are now moot, because the amended Frist-Rockefeller bill establishes no constraint on the growth of any agency and no penalty for the remaining ones, if appropriators or authorizers see fit to exceed the 8% threshold established in the legislation. Therefore, no projections can be made, absent assumptions not present in the legislation.

 [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.284.5419.1452