Recent Developments
(new to this version of the analysis)
On July 26, shortly before
departing for the August recess, members of the House voted 295 – 132
to approve a bill (H.R. 5005) that would establish the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The vote was a major step toward
implementing the plan outlined by President Bush on June 6 and fleshed
out in June 18 proposed legislation to consolidate elements of several
existing cabinet-level agencies and various independent agencies with
the primary mission of preventing future terrorist attacks within the
United States.
Included under the new DHS umbrella would be such agencies as the Coast
Guard, the Customs Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency,
and the Immigration and Naturalization Service; all told, the DHS would
bring together some 170,000 federal employees and approximately $35
billion in annual budgetary resources. The creation of the DHS is all-but
guaranteed by the end of this year, but the details of this massive
government reorganization must still be worked out this fall.
Prior to
the final vote on the bill, several House floor amendments were approved
to further clarify the role of R&D in the proposed DHS:
Ø
An amendment offered by Representative
Steve Israel (D-NY) to create an Advisory Committee for the Under Secretary
for Science and Technology with the charge of making recommendations
with respect to the activities of the Under Secretary for Science and
Technology, including identifying research areas of potential importance
to the security of the nation.
Ø
An amendment offered by Representative
Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) to create a Homeland Security Institute as a federally
funded research and development center (FFRDC) whose research activities
would include simulation and modeling to determine the vulnerabilities
of the nation ’s critical infrastructures; economic and policy analysis
to assess the distributed costs and benefits of alternative approaches
to enhancing security; and identification of instances when common standards
and protocols could improve the interoperability and effective utilization
of tools developed for first responders.
Ø
An amendment offered by Representative
Richard Armey (R-TX) to, among other things, establish a clearinghouse
for information related to technologies that would further the mission
of the DHS, including information for persons seeking guidance on how
to pursue research proposals to develop or deploy technologies that
would enhance homeland security.
Action on the
bill now moves to the Senate, where complications over the issue of
workers’ rights are sure to arise. Because of workers’ issues, the Senate
was unable to complete floor debate on its version of the bill before
its August recess. The House version of the bill would allow the White
House to create a new civil service system for the DHS, affecting such
areas as pay, job performance and labor-management relations. However,
the draft currently in circulation authored by the Senate Governmental
Affairs Committee would guarantee that all current civil service rights
and protections remain intact and make it more difficult for the president
to remove workers from unions for national security reasons. For his
part, President Bush has threatened to veto such a bill, saying that
it erodes his authority to fight terrorism. Senate action on the bill
will resume when its members return from recess on September 3.
The current Senate
version of the bill contains provisions similar to the House bill creating
the position of an Under Secretary for Science and Technology,
missing from the Administration's proposal, to coordinate the department's
science and technology programs and to oversee its R&D funding.
The Under Secretary would also have broader responsibility for setting
homeland-security R&D goals and priorities, coordinating homeland
security R&D throughout the federal government, facilitating the
transfer and deployment of technologies for homeland security; and advising
the DHS Secretary on all scientific and technical matters. The Senate
would also create a Homeland Security Science and Technology Council
of representatives from all federal agencies involved in counterterrorism
R&D to advise the Under Secretary on S&T issues and to coordinate
government-wide R&D activities. [The Senate bill would allow the
Under Secretary to create an S&T advisory panel composed of representatives
from industry, universities, and other non-federal organizations. The
Senate bill would create a number of offices under the Under Secretary
for S&T, including an Office of National Laboratories, an Office
of Risk Analysis and Assessment, and Office for Technology Evaluation
and Transition, and an Office of Laboratory Research. The Senate bill
would also allow DHS to contract with existing FFRDCs, such as the DOE
national laboratories, or establish a new one, similar to the House's
Homeland Security Institute proposal, to obtain independent scientific
and technical support.]
The DHS R&D Portfolio (updated from earlier analyses)
The proposed
DHS could fold in R&D programs from up to five existing departments
(HHS, DOE, Commerce, USDA, and DOT). Precise R&D funding figures
are not available because of the vague and continually shifting parameters
of the proposal. While the original June 6 announcement suggested that
DHS would have a $3.4 billion R&D portfolio (AAAS estimate) out
of a $37.5 billion budget, making it the sixth-largest R&D funding
agency, the legislation suggests a portfolio of $2.3 billion or less
(AAAS estimate) out of a slightly smaller $35 billion budget, nearly
all from programs currently in the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Both the House and current Senate
versions of the legislation, however, would have even less R&D,
less than $500 million, because
they would keep bioterrorism R&D programs within NIH and CDC instead
of transferring them to DHS. DHS
would be divided into four divisions, corresponding to its four main
missions:
- Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection: Although R&D
would not be a large part of this division, the Administration, House,
and Senate versions of legislation would all transfer the Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis
Center (NISAC) to DHS. NISAC is a partnership between two of DOE’s
national laboratories, Los Alamos and Sandia,
both in New Mexico. NISAC
has a budget of $20 million in FY 2002 and performs R&D to analyze
critical infrastructures and their vulnerabilities, and simulate infrastructure
or biological attack scenarios. The Department of Commerce’s National Institute
of Standards and Technology (NIST) would contribute its Computer
Security Division, part of the NIST laboratories, to DHS. The House
would keep this division within NIST, while the latest Senate legislation
would go along with the Administration proposal.
- Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Countermeasures: This
division would have primary responsibility for setting research priorities
and conducting an integrated R&D program to enable the U.S.
to respond to attacks using weapons of mass destruction. The Senate
legislation would name this division the Directorate of Science and
Technology. This division would contain most of the R&D
proposed for the new department. The original June 6 announcement
proposed that all of DOE’s
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL),
with a proposed budget in FY 2003 of $1.2 billion, would move to DHS
but in the June 18 draft legislation only parts of LLNL such as its
Advanced Scientific Computing Research program and its Intelligence
program and other programs as needed would move to DHS. Among other
DOE programs, the Biological and Environmental Research program’s microbial
pathogens activities, and the national security and nuclear smuggling
and other programs within Nonproliferation & Verification R&D
would move to DHS. Because these programs are embedded within larger
programs, it is unclear how large these transfers would be, but combined
they could total around $100 million. Both the House and current Senate
legislation would follow the Administration proposal for DOE programs.
The House and the Senate would both reject the Administration proposal
to transfer to DHS the civilian biological defense research programs
currently operated by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
The Administration proposal would fund bioterrorism-related R&D
in DHS for work currently funded by the National Institutes of Health
(NIH) along with some R&D at the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC; both are HHS agencies) with a proposed budget of $2.0
billion in FY 2003. But the legislation would not transfer any employees
or laboratories to DHS. Instead, DHS would transfer R&D funds directly
to NIH and CDC for distribution through their existing grant and laboratory
infrastructures. DHS would have the authority to set the bioterrorism
research agenda in consultation with HHS. Nearly all of the NIH R&D
funds would go through the National
Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) except for
funds for construction of biosafety laboratories in Buildings and Facilities.
The House-approved legislation and the latest
Senate version of the legislation would keep bioterrorism R&D funding
and priority-setting in HHS, only specifying that DHS would have
a strong role in setting the research agenda.
The other affected
department under this mission could be the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Its
Plum Island Animal Disease Center off
Long Island, New York,
with a budget of $25 million and 124 federal employees, would be transferred
to DHS. The House legislation would concur with the Administration,
but the Senate legislation is silent on Plum
Island. The House version
of the legislation would also transfer some activities of DOD’s Chemical
and Biological Defense Program to DHS.
[The Senate legislation
would create a new research agency, the Security Advanced Research
Projects Agency (SARPA) to fund high-risk, high-payoff R&D toward
revolutionary homeland security technologies. SARPA would also fund
development work to accelerate homeland-security technology development
and to facilitate the rapid transfer of research and technologies to
the development of working products. SARPA, modeled on DOD's existing
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) would manage a portfolio
of extramural research. SARPA's R&D activities would be funded through
a new Acceleration Fund for Research and Development of Homeland
Security Technologies under SARPA control. The Senate legislation
would authorize the Fund at $200 million in FY 2003, but the funds would
have to be appropriated in other legislation.]
- Border and Transportation Security: This division would be by far
the largest of the four in terms of budget and personnel, and would
integrate federal government operations aimed at securing U.S.
borders and transportation systems. It would fold in the Immigration
and Natural Service, the Customs Service, the Coast Guard, the Animal
and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of USDA, and the recently
created Transportation Security Administration (TSA). This division
would inherit these agencies’ small R&D programs, including the
Coast Guard’s ($24 million in FY 2003), the TSA’s aviation security
R&D (a preliminary estimate of $47 million in FY 2003), and APHIS’s
R&D portfolio ($29 million in FY 2003). The House and Senate would
go along with these Administration proposals.
- Emergency Preparedness and Response: This division would coordinate
all federal assistance in response to disasters (including natural disasters)
and domestic attacks. There would be no R&D programs within this
mission.
Although
the proposed DHS would have enormous impacts on the federal government
and especially on goods and travelers crossing U.S.
borders, the impact on scientists and engineers would be minimal. Few
federal scientists and engineers would be affected except the small
number of USDA, NIST, DOT, and DOE or DOE contractor employees proposed
to be transferred. The new priority-setting powers of DHS, however,
would mean that NIH bioterrorism research priorities would be set with
strong input from DHS.
Next Steps and Possible Impacts
When Congress
returns in September, both the House and the Senate will be on a fast
track to approve DHS legislation. Although the original goal of creating
DHS by September 11 will not be met, the Senate hopes to pass its version
of DHS legislation that week; the House-Senate conference may be delayed
by differences between the House, Senate, and President Bush on key
provisions such as workers’ rights. If the conference proceeds smoothly,
DHS legislation could be signed into law by the end of September.
AAAS will
continue to monitor the DHS proposal and its implications for federal
R&D as it moves through Congress, and will update this analysis
as events warrant. (Further AAAS R&D Funding Updates on the
AAAS R&D Web site will
provide up-to-date information on R&D in FY 2003 appropriations,
including the eventual fate of the Department of Homeland Security proposal.)
-
August 12, 2002 (corrected August 28)
AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program
American Association for the Advancement of Science
1200 New York Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 326-6607
science_policy@aaas.org
http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd
(new URL)
