FY08 appropriations

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Peter Harsha over at the CRA’s Policy Blog has an update for us on appropriations activity in the House.

They will soon be marking up the Defense Appropriations Bill, and the chairman’s mark looks good for research so far:

We’ve gotten our first look at the funding levels for the Research, Development, Testing and Evaluation title of the bill in the Chairman’s mark, and they look pretty good for most of the accounts the computing research community might care about. In general, defense basic research accounts (6.1) are up vs. the President’s request, as are most of the computing-related applied research accounts (6.2). The remainder are funded at the President’s request.

DARPA is down overall, because they aren’t executing quickly enough and committee staffers are irritated:

DARPA has been slow to execute programs for which it has been appropriated money …As a result the committee reduced funding in the Biological Warfare, Electronics Technology, Advanced Aerospace Systems and Land Warfare Technology program elements. As a result of this spend-it-or-lose-it DC culture, the cuts would cause DARPA to lose $80 million vs. FY 2007, a reduction of 2.6 percent.

Peter also reports that the President has issued a Statement of Administration Policy indicating that he intends to veto the FY 2008 Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations (which we’ve talked about before) when it comes to him. Seems spending increases for NSF, NIST, and others aren’t sufficiently offset to satisfy the President.