Fiscal Year 1999 Appropriation

October 2, 1998

On October 1, 1998, U.S. House and Senate conferees met and resolved their differences on the Departments of Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development, and Independent Agencies Appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 1999. This bill contains funding for NSF as well as HUD, the VA, the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and assorted other independent agencies.

For the U.S. National Science Foundation, the conferees have agreed to provide a total appropriation of $3.672 billion for the Fiscal Year. This is $243 million, or 7.1%, more than the FY 1998 level.

For Research and Related activities, the conferees have agreed to provide $2.770 billion — an increase of $224 million or almost 9% above the FY 1998 level. Within the amounts recommended for the research account, the conferees have provided a total of $22 million for Arctic logistics activities and an additional $10 million above the budget request for plant genome research. In lieu of the other set-asides and earmarks that were in the Senate and House reports, the conferees are expected to provide report language calling on the foundation to find ways to improve the participation of institutions who do not normally fall in the top 100 universities in terms of research activity. The conferees have also agreed to provide up to $2 million in funding for NSF's participation in the GLOBE program and $1.5 million for the radius data base project.

For Education and Human Resources, the conferees have agreed to provide $663 million — an increase of about $30 million or about 5% over the FY 1998 appropriation. Within this appropriation, the conferees have made the following changes to the budget request: +$7.5 million for minority graduate activities; +$6 million for undergraduate minority activities (an additional $2 million is to also be provided from the research account for this activity, resulting in a total FY 1999 program level of $8 million); +$10 million for informal science education; and +$10 million for EPSCoR. The conferees have also decided to name the foundation's Alliances for Minority Participation program after retiring congressman Louis Stokes.

For the Major Research Equipment account, the conferees have agreed to provide $90 million. Similar to last year, no funds have been provided for the Polar Cap Observatory. Within the total available to this account, an additional $17 million is provided to the request for South Pole station to accelerate the ongoing modernization activity.

Both the Salaries and Expenses and Inspector General accounts are funded at the request levels of $144 million and $5.2 million, respectively.

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

_{Totals may not add due to rounding.}