Jerry Brown: “I would not normally belabor this point and delay action on this very meritorious amendment, but I always have the…”

“I would not normally belabor this point and delay action on this very meritorious amendment, but I always have the feeling that we are getting a certain spin attached to these amendments which kind of rankles me a little bit, and so I have to get up and give my own spin although I end up supporting the amendment likewise. As was the case with the authorization bill last year, the same is true this year. Each subcommittee was given a ceiling by the chairman of the full committee which was slavishly adhered to in the subcommittee. The result for NSF for last year, fiscal year 1996, is that the authorization passed last year by the House but not yet enacted into law, of course, is $94 million less than the actual appropriations bill. So now after our committee has reported the bill and following the results of the fiscal year 1996 appropriations process, which was just completed a few weeks ago, we are now adding $40 million to NSF's research accounts that was done in the Committee on Appropriations and we now have an amendment to raise our authorization level by a similar amount. This could have been avoided, of course, if the committee had been allowed to follow its own best judgment last year. This additional funding will provide enough growth to at least offset inflation as opposed to the 1-percent increase provided in the underlying bill as reported by the committee.”