Biophysical Society Newsletter | December 2017

4

2017

BIOPHYSICAL SOCIETY NEWSLETTER

DECEMBER

Public Affairs

NDD United Releases New Report on the Impact of Budget Cuts In an effort to move Congress away from addi- tional cuts to nondefense programs and toward a bipartisan deal to raise the budget caps, NDD United, of which the Biophysical Society is a member, released a report in October entitled, Faces of Austerity 2.0: How Budget Cuts Continue to Make Us Sicker, Poorer, and Less Secure . This report details the impact of sequester-level funding on key non-defense discretionary programs. This online report can be found at www.raisethecaps.org. Representative Lamar Smith Announces Retirement Chairman of the US House Science and Technol- ogy Committee, Lamar Smith (R-TX), announced that he will not seek reelection and will retire from Congress at the end of his term. Smith has served two terms as the Chairman and would not be able to continue to serve in that capacity due to term limits set by members of the Republican Party in the House. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced a bill that would add to federal peer review panels, members of the public and scientists from unrelated disci- plines to the research being reviewed. Paul believes that these additions are necessary to ensure that federally funded research is in the taxpayers’ inter- est; he sees a conflict in interest in having only scientists from the same field review proposals. The bill would also discontinue allowing appli- cants to suggest a review panel for their proposal or to ask that proposals not be reviewed by certain people. It would make changes to the Office of the Inspector General at the National Science Foundation, renaming it the Office of the Inspec- Senator Paul Proposes Changes to Peer Review

US Federal Budget News Funding for US Government Set to Expire December 8 The continuing resolution that is currently fund- ing the US federal government at Fiscal Year (FY) 2017 levels is set to expire on December 8. Congress must either pass another continuing resolution or a budget for FY 2018 to keep the government operating past this date. In early November, the Biophysical Society — along with other biomedical research organiza- tions — sent a letter to the Congressional leader- ship thanking them for “maintaining the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as a key national priority” and urging “enactment of a bicameral, bipartisan budget agreement that raises the spend- ing caps and enables a $36.1 billion investment in NIH in FY 2018, as approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee.” Be sure to check the BPS website for updates on the FY 2018 budget! Congress Passes FY 2019 Budget Resolution that Includes Future Cuts to NDD Programs In order to pave the way for tax reform, Congress passed a budget resolution for FY 2019 in Octo- ber, something they historically have done in the spring (but recently have done in the summer or not at all!). The resolution keeps federal funding for nondefense discretionary (NDD) programs flat for FY 2019, and then reduces funding over the next decade by $600 billion. These cuts would be deeper and last longer than those that were in- cluded in the Budget Control Act of 2013, which put sequestration into play. The “savings” will be used to offset the cost of tax reform measures being considered by Congress. The budget resolu- tion does not require approval of the President; it is a mechanism used by Congress to set its top line spending level for each year.