Last week House Science, Space, and Technology Committee chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) issued a statement regarding the discussion draft bill entitled the High Quality Research Act after news leaked regarding the draft legislation.
In his statement, he emphasized that his hope was to create a bipartisan bill that would help the agency "prioritize research projects." He also emphasized that the goal was to maintain the current peer review process but to add a "layer of accountability."
In a response to the chairman's statement, John Holdren, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), stated at the AAAS Forum on Science and Technology Policy that he had "no objection to looking at the peer-review process to make sure that it is everything it can be." But he also expressed concern that it would be detrimental "to confine taxpayer support to those projects for which a likely direct contribution to the national interest can be identified in advance."