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WEEK Of AUGUST 5, 2024

What’s Ahead

Editor’s note: The next edition of FYI This Week will be published in September.

An empty rotunda in a congressional office building.

Architect of the Capitol

Election Looms Over Congressional Calendar

Congress is in recess until September as lawmakers ramp up their campaigning ahead of the November election. Few bills are expected to cross the finish line until after the election, and some may be abandoned until 2025 if either party senses they will have greater advantage under the next Congress or presidential administration.

This dynamic has already contributed to the demise of a bipartisan tax policy bill that included provisions to strengthen the R&D tax credit. Although the House passed the bill by a wide margin in January, Senate Republicans blocked the bill last week, with some pointing out they will have more leverage over tax policy if they prevail in the election.

Congress could also punt negotiations on federal agency budgets into the new year, though there will be less incentive to do so if control of the White House and Congress remains split between the parties. In any event, neither party is likely to win a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, meaning the final spending legislation will need some amount of bipartisan support. Senate appropriators have taken a bipartisan approach to developing their spending legislation for fiscal year 2025, which means their proposals are likely closer to the ultimate outcome than the House’s partisan bills.

Senate appropriators advanced more of their spending proposals last week, including a bill that would increase the DOE Office of Science budget by 4.4% to $8.6 billion , slightly exceeding the Biden administration’s budget request. They also proposed to increase the National Institutes of Health budget by 3.6% to $50.3 billion, though much of the increase relies on “emergency” funding that exceeds the statutory caps on federal spending. House Republicans are likely to insist that Congress adhere to the caps, meaning it will be more difficult to secure spending increases in the final legislation.

National Quantum Initiative Advisors Meet Amid Reauthorization Push

The National Quantum Initiative Advisory Committee will meet on Tuesday to consider approving recommendations concerning quantum networking. The meeting comes as efforts to update the National Quantum Initiative have stalled. The NQI Act of 2018 launched a ten-year interagency effort but the authorization of many of its components expired in 2023 at the halfway mark. Though Congress has continued to fund these components despite the lapse, quantum advocates are seeking to renew Congress’ endorsement of the initiative and expand it into new areas. For instance, the Department of Energy Quantum Leadership Act introduced by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Steve Daines (R-MT) last week would recommend Congress exceed the spending targets for DOE in the original NQI legislation.

What’s on Your Mind as the Election Approaches?

With the November presidential election around the corner, FYI is interested in hearing what science policy issues are on your mind. Email us at fyi@aip.org with your thoughts. We will not publish anything you send without your consent.

Also On Our Radar

The National Academies will release a report assessing the state of high-magnetic-field science in the U.S. on Aug. 13 and a report on expanding defense research at minority-serving institutions on Aug. 20.
The National Science Foundation has just awarded $51 million to five projects that will assess the effectiveness of U.S. R&D efforts and develop tools to inform future spending decisions. The awards are the first made by NSF’s Assessing and Predicting Technology Outcomes program.
The House Science Committee is continuing to press the professional society Optica regarding its interactions with Chinese telecommunications company Huawei. (Optica is an AIP Member Society.)
The Nancy Grace Roman Telescope remains on track to launch by May 2027 within the $4.3 billion budget set by the mission’s 2021 replan, says a new audit from NASA’s Office of Inspector General. The audit did however find there are still “signficant risks” to NASA’s plan for transmitting data from the telescope to Earth.