Lawmakers lament lack of funding for science agency

[The Straight Story]

Lawmakers lament lack of funding for science agency

By Chloe Albanesius, National Journal's Technology Daily
A House lawmaker Thursday urged experts in the nanotechnology field to push members of Congress to increase funding for the National Science Foundation.

Actual NSF funding is nowhere near authorization levels while money for the National Institutes of Health has doubled, Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., said at a Capitol Hill meeting on nanomaterials sponsored by the Federation of Materials Societies. NSF is the lead agency involved in the federal government's multi-agency nanotechnology research initiative.

Holt, a physicist, acknowledged that NIH produces key technologies, but he said "for us to use the NIH funding ... we've got to look at our base. The instrumentations and the technologies and the methodologies" that help with many agency programs "in many cases come from NSF."

Holt, House Science Energy Subcommittee Chairwoman Judy Biggert, R-Ill., and House Science Technology Subcommittee Chairman Vernon Ehlers, R-Mich., have been circulating a letter among members that calls for $6.1 billion in NSF funding for fiscal 2006 instead of the $5.75 billion proposed by President Bush.

http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0505/051205tdpm1.htm