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Supporters of science in the US Senate are set to introduce a new, long-term proposal for civilian research funding. They hope the measure will have brighter prospects than an existing plan — the National Research Investment Act, or S1305 — which would double such spending in ten years but has attracted the support of only 17 out of 100 senators.

Rockefeller: ‘viable’ plan for more spending.

Senators Bill Frist (Republican, Tennessee) and Jay Rockefeller (Democrat, West Virginia) may introduce the proposal as early as this week. It will propose that total funding for non-defence science and technology should grow each year by an amount that exceeds the rate of inflation — possibly by two per cent — and will also attempt to set a ‘floor’ below which the level of such spending will not fall.

Speaking at a meeting on Capitol Hill last week, Rockefeller repeated his warning that S1305 could not pass (see Nature 393, 4; 1998). He said that he and Frist would introduce an alternative that “wouldn't double [spending] but would look at a large amount of money”.

The bill would include a basis for spending priorities, and also propose ways of measuring the efficiency of research programmes.

Science lobbyists say that the proposal could double the total annual investment of $34 billion within 12 years, although the figures in it were still being revised late last week. They expect that Senate supporters of the earlier proposal — including Phil Gramm (Republican, Texas), Joseph Lieberman (Democrat, Connecticut), Jeff Bingaman (Democrat, New Mexico) and Pete Domenici (Republican, New Mexico) — will co-sponsor the new proposal.

The new bill will differ from S1305 by giving only one figure for all science agencies, allowing some agencies to fare better than others. It will also include principles outlining how the money should be allocated, based on a document published last year by the Senate Science and Technology Caucus.

Backers of the proposal hope that the inclusion of these principles, together with the pledge to measure efficiency, will help to attract support for a companion measure in the House of Representatives. Frist and Rockefeller hope to get their measure passed quickly by the Senate Commerce Committee, although the prospects for it passing the full Senate this year do not look bright.

Like S1305, the new proposal is an authorization bill which would not assure annual funding for science, even if it is passed. But scientific societies see such a measure as an important means of expressing bipartisan support for science in the Congress, and influencing future years' budgets.

Bingaman, Lieberman and Rick Santorum (Republican, Pennsylvania) have introduced a similar measure that would authorize basic and applied research spending at the Department of Defense at two per cent above the rate of inflation for the next ten years.