Volume 20, Number 7 Celebrating 20 Years of Advocacy April 9, 2001
Volume 20, Number 7
Celebrating 20 Years of Advocacy
April 9, 2001
Maintaining their commitment to double the National Science Foundation's budget in the next five years, Senators Kit Bond (R-MO) and Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) pushed through an amendment to the Senate Budget Resolution that provides a strong recommendation to keep NSF on the doubling track. They were helped by Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici (R-NM) and Senators Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), and George Allen (R-VA).
Passed on April 6 by a 65-35 vote, the Senate's key decision was to reduce the President?s proposed tax cut by around $400 billion, freeing-up funds for other purposes. The budget resolution is an outline of how Congress would like to spend the federal budget, and recommends funding by budget function. Since this does not correspond to the way the appropriators decide how to actually spend the money, much will change between now and later in the year when the spending decisions are made.
For NSF, however, this is a good start to the FY 2002 Congressional budget process, certainly better than the 1.3 percent increase proposed by President Bush (see related story, next column). The Bond-Mikulski (et al.) amendment provided an increase of $1.44 billion over the President?s budget to Function 250 (which includes NSF, Energy Sciences, and NASA). Compared to FY 2001 enacted levels, this amendment would add $469 million to the Department of Energy's science accounts, $674 million to NSF, and $518 million to NASA. The increase for NSF would be 15.3 percent over last year's enacted appropriations.
Bond told his Senate colleagues that "basic science means applied science, which is the foundation of this economy and will be the booster rocket for the future success of our economy and allow this Nation to lead the world in this century."
He also noted that investments in basic science have "also spawned not only new products, but also entire industries, such as biotechnology, Internet providers, E-commerce, and geographic information systems." Senator Mikulski stressed NSF's role in material science innovations and the promise of nanotech-nology.
The Senate also passed an amendment sponsored by Senators Arlen Specter (R-PA) and Tom Harkin (D-IA) to recommend increasing NIH's funding from the President?s proposed $2.8 billion increase to a $3.4 billion increase. This would keep NIH on the doubling track as defined by Specter and Harkin and the biomedical and behavioral research community.
The Senate and House need to conference their different versions of the resolution. The House version follows the President?s tax and spending proposals more closely and is not as generous to NSF and NIH. The budget resolution does not require any Presidential action as it is only a recommendation and not law.
COSSA now has its own internet domain. Our website is still www.cossa.org, but we now have a new slate of email addresses:
general email cossa@cossa.org
Howard Silver,Executive Director silverhj@cossa.org
Angela Sharpe, Associate Director for Government Affairs alsharpe@cossa.org
Chris Ryan, Associate Director for Public Affairs chrisryan@cossa.org
John Wertman, Assistant Director for Government Affairs wertman@cossa.org
President Bush released the details of his FY 2002 budget first previewed in A Blueprint for New Beginnings: A Responsible Budget for America's Priorities (see Update, March 12, 2001). The $1.94 trillion budget provides funding for all the agencies, and includes provisions for the proposed $1.6 trillion tax cut. Below, COSSA presents some highlights from the President's proposed budget. The next issue of Update will be COSSA's annual in-depth analysis of the President's budget for over 40 agencies that support funding for social and behavioral science research. Look for it the week of May 6.
According to the administration, funding for Research and Development will increase from $90 billion in FY 2001 to over $95 billion in FY 2002. It has reached 2.7 percent of Gross Domestic Product. The proposed R&D budget provides most of its increases in the Development area. Basic research increases by 6 percent, applied research by 4 percent, and development by 8 percent over this year. Defense and health are the winners; energy, agriculture, commerce, interior, and the Environmental Protection Agency receive significant cuts in the proposed budget. The administration is proposing to make the Research and Experimentation Tax Credit permanent.
The National Science Foundation, as reported earlier (see Update, March 12, 2001), will increase by $56 million over last year. This slightly more than one percent boost will bring NSF's total budget to $4.47 billion. As previously announced, the administration has included a $200 million Math and Science Partnership Initiative in the NSF budget proposal. Thus, the Education and Human Resources Directorate (EHR) budget would increase from $786 million to $872 million, up 11 percent (some programs such as the Systemic Initiatives obviously suffer reductions).
The increase for EHR leaves little room for increased funding for the other major accounts in NSF's budget. Thus, the Research and Related Activities account has a proposed cut of $116 million to $3.343 billion. With these conditions, the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Directorate also suffers a small reduction from $164.4 million to $163.2 million, slightly less than one percent.
The themes of the proposed budget reflect a continuation of activities from this year - biocomplexity in the environment, nanotechnology, information technology, and learning for the 21st Century. One piece of good news is that stipends for all graduate support programs would increase from $18,000 to $20,500.
For the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the President's budget requests $23.1 billion, an increase of $2.75 billion or 13.5 percent over FY 2001. While this sum is the largest year-to-year dollar increase ever requested for NIH, it is less than the $3.4 billion needed to truly allow the agency to stay on the path to doubling over five years. Health disparities are again included in the NIH's broad research themes. The newly established National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities received a 20 percent increase in its budget to conduct research, support research training, and fund two new loan repayment programs for extramural minority and health disparities researchers.
The President's budget request for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is $4.1 billion, a net decrease of $109 million or 3 percent below FY 2001. The request for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is $306 million, a 13.5 percent increase over FY 2001. Policy Research declines from $17 million to $3 million. This does not include the $18 million provided by the 1 percent set-aside.
For the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, the President proposes $123 million for research and dissemination, an increase of 2.1 percent over this year. The National Center for Education Statistics would receive $85 million, a 6.3 percent increase. Programs supporting International Education and Foreign Language Studies are level-funded at $78 million, as is the Javits Fellowship Program, at $10 million.
For the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), the budget requests $55 million (a decrease of about 21 percent), mostly in an attempt to eliminate earmarks. NIJ will continue to receive funds from other programs such as Violence Against Women and Family Violence. The Bureau of Justice Statistics would receive $30 million, slightly more than this year. Part of the increase will go toward collecting data on police stops in an attempt to measure racial profiling.
Funding for the 2000 decennial census is reduced to $141 million as the Census Bureau completes the project. At the same time initial funding for the 2010 census is proposed at $65 million for FY 2002. Continuous measurement, which encompasses the American Community Survey, would increase to $27 million from about $22 million in FY 2001. As part of its effort to improve economic statistics, the administration requests an $8.5 million increase for the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
At the Department of Agriculture, the Economic Research Service and the National Agricultural Statistics Service would receive slight increases. The latter's boost is to prepare for the upcoming Census of Agriculture. The National Research Initiative would be level-funded at $106 million under the President's proposal, but the Cooperative Research, Education and Extension Service's budget would decline by 19 percent, again largely in an attempt to eliminate earmarks.
At the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Office of Policy Development and Research would decline from $56 million in FY 2001 to $43 million in FY 2002. The Partnership for Advancing Technologies in Housing (PATH) is zeroed-out.
In a two-day hearing held April 4-5 by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, chaired by Senator Fred Thompson (R-TN), several experts and government officials addressed the state of the presidential appointments process. Highlighting the affair was the release of To Form A Government: A Bipartisan Plan to Improve the Presidential Appointments Process. The plan was assembled by the Presidential Appointee Initiative, a project of the Brookings Institution co-chaired by former U.S. Senator Nancy Kassebaum Baker (R-KS) and former Clinton Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Franklin D. Raines.
Many of the witnesses' concerns focused on the average length of the process. Sean O'Keefe, Deputy Director of OMB, commented that he is one of only two confirmed officials currently serving in the OMB, despite the amount of work the Bush Administration has had to do to put a budget in place. Seizing on O'Keefe's remark, Paul Light, Vice President and Director of Governmental Studies at Brookings and Senior Adviser to the Presidential Appointee Initiative, stated that the problem is prevalent throughout the entire government.
We have a "neckless" government, he said ?? Cabinet members and other top Executive Branch officials have generally been appointed and confirmed, but very few mid-level officials are currently in place. As the Brookings plan contends, it may very well take President Bush his entire first year in office or more to fill the government's top ranks. G. Calvin MacKenzie, Distinguished Presidential Professor of American Government at Colby College and Adviser to the Initiative, remarked that this is a hindrance to the new administration's attempts to govern.
While all of those testifying agreed that the process needs reform, Scott Harshbarger, President and Chief Executive Officer of the interest group Common Cause, cautioned against easing the public disclosure requirements imposed on appointees as they pursue confirmation. He asserted that the checks on appointees are in place for a reason ? the people have a right to an open governmental process, and eliminating possible conflicts of interest before executives take office builds public confidence.
The entire To Form A Government report, which includes 11 detailed recommendations for streamlining the process, is available at www.appointee.brookings.org. The website also features a tracker of nominations and confirmations as they occur.
COSSA board member and Executive Officer for the American Sociological Association (ASA) Felice Levine has been appointed to the National Human Research Protections Advisory Committee (NHRPAC). Levine was recommended by COSSA, which urged the expansion of NHRPAC to include greater representation of social and behavioral scientists. She was appointed by former Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Donna Shalala in January.
Levine is part of the 17-member Committee charged to provide expert advice and recommen-dations to the Secretary of HHS, Assistant Secretary for Health (ASH), Director of the Office of Human Research Protections (OHRP), and other department officials on a broad range of issues and topics pertaining to the protection of human subjects.
Prior to being appointed to the Committee, Levine testified before NHRPAC in December regarding human subjects protections and the problems implementation causes for social sciences. NHRPAC has asked that she serve as co-chair of a new social and behavioral sciences working group of the Committee (see Update, January 29, 2001).
Levine joins the only other social and behavioral scientist on the Committee, Jennie Joe, an anthropologist with public health and nursing training. OHRP Director Greg Koski serves as the Committee's Executive Secretary. For more information see the Committee's website: http://ohrp.osophs.dhhs.gov/nhrpac/nhrpac.htm.
In an effort to promote the application of criminal justice research to sound policy, the Jerry Lee Crime Prevention Program at the University of Maryland sponsored a symposium entitled "Systematic Reviews of Criminological Interventions" April 2 - 3, 2001.
The two-day conference focused on the capability of systematic reviews to inform policy. By evaluating the entirety of research performed on a particular topic, systematic reviews can greatly increase the rigorousness of research, and hence its value to public policy.
The second day of the symposium was held in the U.S. Capitol, demonstrating to Congress, according to Charles Wellford, COSSA board member, that "we want to be your partner in developing a more rational, research-based policy." Recognition of the need for such improvement arises partly out of the disconnect between what we know (through research) and what we do (through policy), according to Wellford.
The day's speakers presented their systematic reviews of six areas of criminal justice research. Lawrence Sherman, Director of the Fels Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, moderated the discussions. One topic was correctional boot camps, a "get tough" method seen by some as a way of reducing recidivism among offenders.
The systematic review of studies on boot camps was performed by Doris Layton MacKenzie, David Wilson, and Suzanne Kider of the University of Maryland. While boot camps can have multiple goals and effects, MacKenzie et al. restricted their review to studies measuring effects on recidivism. After reviewing twenty-eight eligible studies containing 41 samples, the researchers found no significant overall effects of correctional boot camps on recidivism. The implication is that while boot camps may have benefits in other areas, they should not be supported for the purposes of reducing recidivism.
Other presenters conducted systematic reviews on the crime prevention effects of parent support and training during early childhood, improved street lighting, and hot spots policing, and on the intervention effects of restorative justice and cognitive-behavioral programs for offenders.
Americans are living longer and enjoying greater prosperity than ever before. Yet, despite increased longevity, a significant number of those age 65 and older face chronic health conditions, disability, and economic stress. The Consortium of Social Science Associations (COSSA) will hold a Congressional seminar entitled, Living Longer, Staying Well: Promoting Good Health for Older Americans, on Friday, April 27, 2001 from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. in Room B-369 of the Rayburn House Office Building. RSVP at cossa@cossa.org.
President Bush has announced his intention to nominate Sarah J. Hart to be Director of the National Institute of Justice. Hart currently serves on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's Appellate Procedural Rules Committee, and was the former Vice Chair of the Legal Affairs Committee of the American Correctional Association. She has served as the Chief Counsel for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections since 1995, where she has provided assistance to the Senate and House Judiciary Committees regarding the drafting of prison legislation. Hart previously served for 16 years as a prosecutor in the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office where she acted as lead counsel for nine years in federal litigation involving Philadelphia's prison system. Hart has an undergraduate degree in criminal justice from the University of Delaware and a law degree from Rutgers Camden School of law. She has authored several articles on courts, corrections, and criminal law.
President Bush has announced his intention to nominate Joseph Jen to be Undersecretary of Agriculture for Research, Education, and Economics (REE). Jen is currently the Dean of the College of Agriculture at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, where has been since 1992. He has taught at Clemson and Michigan State Universities and the University of Georgia and worked as a consultant to the United Nations, U.S. food companies, and foreign governments. Born in China and raised in Taiwan, Jen has a B.S. in biochemistry from Taiwan National University, a Masters in Food Science from Washington State University, an MBA from Southern Illinois University, and a Ph.D. in comparative biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley. The REE agencies include: the Economic Research Service, the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service, the Agricultural Research Service, and the National Agricultural Statistics Service.
The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University has appointed Mark Turner as associate director, effective January 1, 2002. Turner is a professor of English Language and Literature and faculty member of the Doctoral Program in Neuroscience and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Maryland. Turner is the author of numerous books and articles in cognitive science, linguistics, rhetoric, poetics, and style.
"As someone whose work runs from the humanities to the hard sciences, Mark is uniquely qualified to speak to the Center's diverse academic constituents and to provide substantive intellectual leadership in shaping various Center initiatives," said director-designate Douglas McAdam.
Now that the turmoil of the disputed Presidential election is over, Washington is turning to the more sober task of reforming the system that allowed last November?s election debacle. To bring the findings and contributions of social science to the policy community, COSSA sponsored a Congressional Briefing, The Mechanics of Election Reform: From Registration to Results March 16 on Capitol Hill.
"It is probably fair to say that most observers of American politics were caught flat-footed by the ballot counting controversy of the Presidential election last November," remarked Catherine Rudder, Executive Director of the American Political Science Association and Moderator for the event. Although elections are complex affairs, ?we can do better," Rudder asserted. "The ultimate goal is to establish the legitimacy of electoral outcomes and hence the acceptance of those outcomes by winners and losers alike."
Election reform is not new; it is a virtually continuous feature of the American political process, noted Michael W. Traugott, Professor of Communication Studies and Political Science at the University of Michigan. Research on the effectiveness of such reforms is also common. The research suggests that the two main goals of reform in election administration -- increasing the level of participation and making the participating electorate more reflective of the population -- have been only modestly successful, at best, said Traugott.
Turning to the research he and his colleagues have conducted, Traugott observed that most reforms seem to do better at retention (keeping people voting in elections) than at mobilization (bringing new voters into the electorate). As a result, reforms do not generally expand the electorate. Similarly, Traugott's research suggests that easing access to the ballot does not favor one party over another, as one common "lay theory" holds.
Although research on election reforms is not new, Traugott suggested some issues that were raised by the events in Florida for which we have little empirical evidence. For instance, we know little about how much confidence voters have that their choices will be registered or how such confidence can affect overall levels of trust in governments. Finally, Traugott observed that there are virtually no educational programs for voters, despite the fact that our society is highly mobile and people move between different voting systems. "What kind of educational programs would best serve election administrators, as well as voters who are interested in having their views represented?" Traugott posited.
David Woods, Professor in the Institute for Ergonomics at the Ohio State University, approached issues of the confusing butterfly ballot and the problematic punch cards from a human factors perspective. Rejecting the "blame game of either dumb users or poor design," Woods said "we have to look at the integrated system of people interacting with a device to . . . [register] their desires for how our political system should be governed."
Woods also rejected the tendency to portray such problems as the Florida count as unique and anomalous. "You learn from these things and you must set up systems to monitor and pick up the early warning signs where inaccuracies and impressions or systematic errors are creeping into our voting system," Woods advised.
Rather than seeing a solution in simply replacing antiquated technology, Woods emphasized the human-machine interactions. Two things are critical here, he said: "Give people feedback . . . so they can see the results of their actions,? and create a "visible audit trail," so that feedback is available from the entire voting and tallying process.
The morning?s third speaker was Charles H. Stewart, III, Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Stewart echoed Woods in observing that the problems in Florida were perceived by most as simple failures of technology. When they realized that designing "the perfect voting machine" was silly, Stewart and his colleagues at MIT and Cal-Tech focused on two basic goals: assessing where we stand right now in terms of voting technology and election administration and articulating a set of principles to guide the design of voting and administrative systems, "so that everybody?s vote will count and everybody?s vote will count equally."
Their preliminary studies indicate that traditional voting technologies are associated with the lowest overall level of error; those associated with the highest degree of inaccuracies are the punch cards and, surprisingly to many, the new digital direct devices ? the ones that "around November, a lot of people . . . were rushing to adopt." This suggests not the move away from technology but the attention to human factors. "What we want to be able to do is articulate more precisely what it is about these electronic technologies that seem to lead voters astray," Stewart concluded.
Stewart and his colleagues hope to deliver by the end of the summer "the best thinking within various professions so that industry and policy makers and the like can make the sorts of decisions they need to make."
The final speaker was Rodolfo O. de la Garza, Professor of Community Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and Vice President for Research at the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute. De la Garza turned away from human-machine perspective of the other speakers to focus solely on the human side of the equation.
"The objective of a democratic electoral system," he began, "is to keep expanding the electorate until it really looks like the people." While the obstacles to voter registration prior to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 are effectively gone, he said, the fundamental issues affecting access today are issues of class. De la Garza identified citizenship laws and felony laws as disenfranchising poor people disproportionately. For example, affluent people, he said, are less likely to go to prison for drug-related felonies than the poor.
Also having class impact, according to de la Garza, are the new campaign techniques, in which candidates target those who are most likely to vote anyway, who tend to be older, better educated, and more affluent. Such strategies are not likely to expand the electorate, he argued.
De la Garza also drew a distinction between registration and voting. Looking at Harris County in Texas (which contains Houston), he observed an explosion in registrants among Latinos, but a much less remarkable increase in actual voters. They are registered, but not mobilized ? "They don't feel connected in any way, shape, or form to the process," he lamented. De la Garza suggested adopting mobilizing techniques that the U.S. uses when it sponsors democracy abroad, such as voter celebrations that bring people together to vote in areas of low turnout.
The briefing was part of the Decade of Behavior (see Update, October 9, 2000) and was co-sponsored by the American Political Science Association and the American Psychological Association. An edited transcript will be available mid-May.
COSSA provides this information as a service and encourages readers to contact the sponsoring agency for further information. Additional application guidelines and restrictions may apply.
Supplements to Promote Reentry Into Biomedical, Behavioral, Clinical, and Social Science Research Careers
The Institutes and Centers, along with the Office of Research on Women's Health, invite applications to a continuing program for administrative supplements to research grants. The grants are for support of individuals with high potential to renter an active research career after taking time off to care for children or attend to other family responsibilities. The program will provide administrative supplements to existing NIH research grants for the purpose of supporting full-time or part-time research. Full details are available at http://gants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-01-081.html.
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