The 2nd session of the 111th Congress began on January 5th. In the House, the Committee on Science and Technology came out with a pretty light 2nd session legislative agenda. Maybe Chairman Bart Gordon (D-TN), retiring at the end of this term, is trying to go out peacefully. This new agenda follows a very busy and quite successful 1st session in which the committee held 69 hearings, passed 37 pieces of legislation, and had 2 bills passed into law.
Broadly, the Committee hopes to:
Let’s delve into the biggest legislation that appears ready to come out of the above bullet points. Following that, I’ll briefly mention at least one item that would have been nice to see make the cut.
The biggest news out of the S&T Committee is its aggressive agenda for reauthorization of the America COMPETES Act (ACA). ACA, passed with wide bipartisan support in 2007, was designed to keep the U.S. globally competitive by massively boosting funding for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) research and education. In fact, the act sets us on a path to double the budgets of NSF, NIST, and the DOE Office of Science by 2016. Although it has never been fully funded, ACS has used the original ACA as a benchmark for growth in each year’s budget numbers when writing the ACS Public Policy Priorities. In any case, the current America COMPETES Act will expire at the end of this fiscal year. This is why the Committee plans to hold hearings, write a bill, and get it through the House by Memorial Day. Good Luck!
To match the larger Democratic agenda and its attempts to bring the unemployment rate below 10%, the Committee will also concentrate on job creation by prioritizing the development of new technologies in marine energy and energy efficiency as well as continued research and development in nuclear energy. As an example of what the Committee is thinking about, check out the information on their December 3rd hearing entitled, “Marine and Hydrokinetic Energy Technology: Finding the Path to Commercialization”. I am not quite sure what that means but it sounds very cool.
There is a great deal more, including NASA, commercial space and DHS S&T reauthorization, but nothing too controversial and certainly nothing directly pointed at chemistry. The question to answer is what else could have been on their plate.
I, for one, had really hoped to see the Committee take another stab at the “Green Chemistry Research and Development Act”. My guess is that they are frustrated because they have passed the bill in all three of the previous Congresses only to watch it die in the Senate (sound familiar). Still, green chemistry is critically important to our sustainable future and definitely needs more funding aimed at both education and basic research. Hopefully, the Committee will find some time to pay attention to such an important piece of chemistry’s future.
So that is what the committee has in store for the rest of 2010. We’ll keep you updated as things begin to shake out.
Add Comment
Subscribe to Comments
<div>Thank you for posting this. I wonder if the committees agenda for the 2nd session is limited because of its success in the first session. Usually the 2nd session is less active with members of Congress spending more time back in their districts.</div>
Perhaps the limited number of bullet points will be a good thing. The committee can focus more resources on these issues and achieve them faster than when resources are spread too thin. Either way, I wish them the best of luck!!
Add Comment
Log In 
