Congress Advances Budget Resolutions
BU IN DC
Tulika Bose and Kevin Black of the College of Arts & Sciences met with Congressional staff to discuss research funded by the U.S. Department of Energy as part of the U.S. Large Hadron Collider Users Association’s advocacy efforts the week of March 23.
CONGRESS ADVANCES BUDGET RESOLUTIONS
The U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate approved their respective budget resolutions for fiscal year 2016 before adjourning for a two-week recess last week. Both resolutions commit to sharply reducing spending on non-defense programs in order to balance the federal budget by 2025. The two chambers are expected to work out the differences between their bills in the coming weeks, and use the compromise measure as a blueprint for allocating funding to federal agencies in spending bills in the year ahead. The higher education and research communities criticized both proposals due to their impact on federal research funding and student aid.
Read the Association of American Universities statement
PRESIDENT FOCUSES ON ANTIMICROBIAL RESISTANCE
On March 27, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology assembled to discuss the White House’s “National Action Plan for Combating Antibiotic-Resistance Bacteria.” The Council heard presentations about federal efforts to improve surveillance and detection of outbreaks, develop new targets and drugs in conjunction with public and private partners, improve stewardship in hospitals as well as agriculture, and use large-scale, full bacterial genome sequencing to look at transmission between agriculture and humans. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, and other agencies will likely seek university involvement as they create a detection network of regional labs, develop and promote judicious use principals, and take other action to implement the plan.
COMMITTEE EXAMINES DEFENSE RESEARCH
The House Armed Services Committee held a hearing on March 26 to examine the role of science and technology research at the Department of Defense (DOD). The heads of DOD’s research branches testified about the importance of basic research in developing the technologies necessary for the nation’s defense, providing examples of both medical advances that help the warfighter and areas of emerging threats which need technological solutions. They also emphasized the difficulty in maintaining a robust research and development program in the current austere funding environment.
Watch the hearing