Fiscal Year 1997 Appropriation

September 26, 1996

In a White House Rose Garden signing ceremony that took place earlier today, the president signed into law the "Departments of Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development, and Independent Agencies Appropriations Act" for Fiscal Year 1997. The signing ceremony was used largely to highlight a provision in the act that guarantees women a 48-hour hospital stay after childbirth. This particular provision grew out of public complaints about health care plans that forced new mothers to leave the hospital as soon as 10 hours after a normal delivery.

In addition to the "Newborns' and Mothers' Protection Act," this bill also provides full year funding for the Veterans' Department, the Housing and Urban Development Department, NASA, the Environmental Protection Agency, NSF, and a number of other federal agencies.

For NSF, the act appropriates a total of $3.270 billion, an amount that is $50 million, or about 2%, over the FY 1996 level. For Research and Related Activities, the act provides the Senate's recommendation of $2.432 billion, which is $118 million or 5.1% over the FY 1996 level. The appropriation for research and related activities includes $50 million for large-scale academic research instrumentation. Also available in this appropriation account is $1.4 million as a contingency to meet tariff requirements associated with the Gemini telescope project.

The Education and Human Resources activity is funded at $619 million — an amount equal to the budget request. This is $7 million above the House recommendation and $5 million below the Senate's recommendation. Within the agreed upon funding level, House and Senate conferees made the following changes to the education budget request: +$10 million for informal science education to be used in conjunction with overall systemic reform efforts; +$2.5 million for EPSCoR; -$2 million from graduate programs; -$5 million from undergraduate programs; -$2.5 million from precollege curriculum development; and -$3 million from research, evaluation, and communications.

The Major Research Equipment (MRE) activity, which supports the construction of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) and South Pole Station Safety project, is funded at $80 million. The MRE appropriation is sufficient to keep these two important projects on schedule. The conferees agreed to fund NSF's Salaries and Expenses account at the Senate level of $134 million. This amount is equal to the NSF request for FY 1997 and averts the staffing and operational disruptions that could have occurred under the House passed level for this account. The Office of Inspector General is to be funded at $4.69 million, which is identical to the budget request.

The final version of the act does not include a provision which was included in the House bill that would have put restrictions on the use of funds regarding the procurement of a supercomputer.

Please see the table below for details. Numbers are presented in millions of dollars. 

_{*The House bill included a general provision which contained a .4% across-the-board reduction for most accounts on this bill, including the NSF accounts. However, the final bill, as signed into law, did not include such an across-the-board reduction. Totals may not add due to rounding.}

_{**Adjusted for compensation cap.}