But even the programmatic funding increases President Joe Biden is seeking for those agencies and others in fiscal year 2025 fall short of what Congress authorized in the CHIPS and Science Act, highlighting the difficulty to support agencies key to science and technology goals within the confines and partisan tensions of the budget process. 

Biden’s budget, released Monday, came shortly after Congress passed a “minibus” of six bills to fund agencies for the current fiscal year. Under those appropriations, NSF received $9.06 billion, a roughly  8.3% decrease from the previous year, and NIST received $1.46 billion, a nearly 12% decrease. 

“There will be real impacts across the research enterprise with this reduction to the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF),” an agency spokesman said of the minibus funding level in a written statement. “It is difficult to place this in the context of rapid, large-scale science investments by our competitors such as China with the express purpose of outcompeting the United States.”

A NIST spokesperson, meanwhile, noted in a statement that certain CHIPS programs, such as those for manufacturing incentives and R&D, “received full appropriations in the CHIPS and Science Act” but said the agency “will continue to work with Congress to secure funding for initiatives that were authorized but not fully appropriated.”

The CHIPS and Science Act was signed into law in 2022 to boost U.S. production of semiconductors — an important component for technologies from phones to national security systems — and to support scientific research and development in emerging technology areas like artificial intelligence and quantum computing. 

To help achieve those goals, the statute authorized funding targets for key agencies, including NSF, NIST, and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. But in the years since the bill’s passage, budget requests and funding bills haven’t met those marks, and Biden’s new budget and the recent appropriations passed by Congress continue that trend.

Matt Hourihan, associate director of research and development and advanced industry at the Federation of American Scientists, said his bottom line with both the minibus and budget is “that we’re not going nearly far enough in investing [in] U.S. science and engineering, to bolster innovation, bolster competitiveness, bolster domestic talent.”

Minibus tension

The cuts to NIST and NSF were met with disappointment from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Okla., chair of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, said in a statement to FedScoop that he was “disappointed in these funding levels” as a supporter of science and technology.

“Unfortunately, in our current fiscal environment we have to make difficult decisions and that’s reflected in this bipartisan, bicameral agreement. Our challenge is figuring out how to continue advancing American science and technology under these funding constraints,” Lucas said.

But House Democrats, while also unhappy with the funding levels, sharply criticized Republicans for the cuts.

“By forcing us to choose between these cuts or recklessly shutting down the federal government, extreme MAGA Republicans and Speaker [Mike] Johnson have handed our competitive edge to China on a silver platter,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., ranking member of the Committee on Science, Space and Technology, told FedScoop in a statement. Lofgren called the funding cuts “a blow to our economic competitiveness and national security” and said the biggest impact will be to the workforce.

Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich, the ranking member on the House Science Subcommittee on Research and Technology, similarly called the minibus decreases a “self-inflicted wound on American innovation and global leadership” in a comment provided to FedScoop. She also added that the “losses are solely in the hands of Republicans who pushed for these cuts.”

Areas of impact

The minibus included a decrease in the programmatic funding for NIST’s scientific and technical research and services account, from $890 million in fiscal year 2023 to $857 million in the minibus. That’s the first time the account — which funds things like AI, cybersecurity, quantum, and advanced technology research — has been cut, a House Science Committee Democratic staffer told FedScoop. 

A Senate Republican aide noted that NIST received a large funding increase for that account in fiscal year 2023 and said the minibus level is still higher than the funding for that account in fiscal year 2022.

That account also received $223 million in congressionally directed spending, or “earmarks,” which if included, is an increase from the account total with earmarks for the previous year. 

While the minibus did provide NIST with up to $10 million to set up the AI Safety Institute outlined in Biden’s executive order on the technology, the House Science Democratic staffer said other areas of the agency’s research could end up seeing cuts instead. The funding to establish the institute wasn’t the additional $10 million on top of existing appropriations for which a bipartisan group of lawmakers had advocated.

For NSF, the cuts will likely mean fewer opportunities for students and young scientists, as the agency’s work includes things like supporting graduate fellowships, education and training, Hourihan said. “All those programs can be affected by cuts of this magnitude,” he said.

The cuts could also impact NSF’s new Technology Innovations and Partnerships Directorate, which was established under CHIPS and is aimed at boosting U.S. competitiveness in critical and emerging technologies through research.

That directorate was funded through a supplemental last year and wasn’t part of the omnibus, a House Science Democratic staffer noted. Now it’s in “starvation mode” and may have to compete with other directorates for funding, the staffer said.

Budget shortfall

Biden’s budget requests increases for both NSF and NIST’s baseline funding. NSF would get $10.18 billion and NIST would receive $1.5 billion. 

Even though there are increases for quite a few agencies in the president’s budget, Hourihan said they’re “not nearly as much” as the Biden administration has proposed in the past and “a far cry from the CHIPS and Science targets.” 

The White House request “is a function of the tight spending caps that are in place under the Fiscal Responsibility Act that Congress reached last year,” Hourihan said. That legislation was a compromise deal that raised the debt limit and placed caps on defense and nondefense discretionary spending for fiscal years 2024 and 2025.

Hourihan estimates the budget, as is, would be an $8.5 billion shortfall from what was authorized for NSF, NIST and the DOE’s Office of Science in the CHIPS Act legislation.

Mark Becker, president of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, also noted the shortfall in a statement on Biden’s budget Monday, calling the request “a retreat from the bold vision outlined in the CHIPS and Science Act.”

“The funding bills Congress passed last week take a significant step backward on these priorities and the administration’s proposal for the next Fiscal Year falls short of addressing the scale of the challenge,” Becker said.

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The 36-0 vote sent the bill (H.R. 6213), co-sponsored by Science Committee Chairman Frank Lucas, R-Okla., and ranking member Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., to the House floor. The National Quantum Initiative, which was aimed at bolstering quantum research, expired Sept. 30. The reauthorization, the sponsors say, would build off the accomplishments of the 2018 law in an effort to ensure U.S. competitiveness against China and Russia.

“As China and Russia are actively making notable investments in quantum systems, we must maintain our momentum to secure our leadership position in this revolutionary field, and this bill does just that,” Lucas said in a statement after the markup.

Despite the 2018 legislation establishing the National Quantum Initiative as a 10-year program, its scientific activities were authorized for only five years, according to a June report from the National Quantum Initiative Advisory Committee. That panel recommended continued and expanded support for the program beyond its original sunset in 2028. 

At a previous markup of the bill in November, the committee adopted 19 amendments, all of which were approved by voice vote. 

Those amendments included one from Rep. Max Miller, R-Ohio, to add language directing agencies to consider the use of AI and machine learning in quantum science, engineering and technology, and how quantum might be used to advance AI and other emerging technologies.

The committee also agreed to adopt an amendment that directs the National Science and Technology Council’s Subcommittee on Quantum Information Science to “identify potential use cases with respect to which quantum computing could advance the missions of participating agencies, including through on-premises, cloud-based, hybrid, or networked approaches.” That amendment was offered by Reps. Deborah Ross, D-N.C., and Jay Obernolte, R-Calif.

Several amendments specifically expanded resources for the National Science Foundation, including two amendments for awards the agency would offer for quantum research. Those amendments were offered by Rep. Stephanie Bice (R-Okla.) and Reps. Andrea Salinas, D-Ore., and Jim Baird, R-Ind., respectively. Another amendment from Reps. Obernolte and Haley Stevens, D-Mich., would strengthen NSF’s quantum testbed activities.

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The introduction of the bill by Science Committee Chairman Frank Lucas, R-Okla., and ranking member Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., comes after the 2018 law expired Sept. 30 and, according to a release from the bill sponsors, builds off those accomplishments in an effort to ensure U.S. competitiveness against China and Russia. 

“There’s no time to lose momentum, and I’m confident this bill will empower the government, private sector, and academia to keep working together to advance leading-edge quantum systems,” Lucas said in the release.

The National Quantum Initiative Reauthorization Act, among other things, includes provisions requiring the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to develop a quantum research strategy with allies to compete with China and Russia, authorizing the National Institute of Standards and Technology to establish three centers for quantum research, and authorizing the creation of a National Science Foundation hub to coordinate workforce pipelines.

It would also authorize the Department of Energy to support quantum foundry development in an effort to meet supply chain needs, and formally authorizes NASA’s quantum research and the creation of its own quantum institute.

Despite the National Quantum Initiative being set up as a 10-year effort, the 2018 bill authorized the centers for only five years, according to a June report from the National Quantum Initiative Advisory Committee. That panel recommended support beyond the original sunset in 2028 and an expansion of the program, such as authorization of additional quantum-focused research centers.

“The 2018 National Quantum Initiative Act enabled the U.S. science and technology enterprise to progress tremendously in this critical technology,” Lofgren said in the release. “We must now build upon these original investments to ensure the United States can remain the world leader in quantum — this bill will do that and more.”

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Officials from the Justice Department, National Security Agency, Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the FBI repeatedly defended the programs as well within the bounds of congressional law and under strict oversight from all three branches of government during Wednesday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing.

But members of the committee weren’t having it.

“Wait a minute, we’re handling this discussion,” Conyers interrupted.

“Oh, come on,” said Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., cutting off an answer.

“At the risk of piling on… ” began Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis.

The basic dispute between the two sides boiled down to whether NSA’s program to gather phone records metadata — the time, duration and number dialed (but not content) of millions of phone calls — truly meets the “relevancy” standard set in Section 215 of the Patriot Act. The section — updated in the Patriot Act’s 2005 reauthorization — gives the government authority to collect phone records if they are “relevant” to terrorism investigations.

DOJ’s Deputy Attorney General James Cole said his department will not look at a single phone number’s records, unless it has a “reasonable, articulable suspicion that a phone number is involved with one of these specified terrorist organizations,” he said. “Then and only then … can you query this database to find out what other phone numbers that specific phone number has been in contact with.”

NSA will also conduct what’s called a “three-hop analysis,” admitted NSA Deputy Director John Inglis for the first time. If the agency has the phone record of a suspected terrorist, it will then look at the phone data of all of that person’s contacts, then all of those people’s contacts, and then all of those people’s contacts.

The metadata is kept for five years before being destroyed.

But it was the mere existence of the database with which the lawmakers took issue. The dragnet of millions of phone records is a Fourth Amendment violation, Conyers argued.

“I maintain the Fourth Amendment — to be free from unreasonable search and seizure — means the metadata collected in this fashion can amount to a Fourth Amendment violation before you do anything with it,” he said.

Cole later countered: “If you’re looking for a needle in the haystack, you have to have the haystack,” he said.

The officials outlined the restrictions on the program — NSA gives ongoing briefings to select members of Congress, the executive branch regularly reviews the program and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court must renew all information gathering orders every 90 days. The Supreme Court also established in a 1979 case, Smith v. Maryland, that there was no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding the numbers dialed for a phone call.

“The extent to which this nation involves the courts in foreign intelligence surveillance goes well beyond what is required by the Fourth Amendment, and, I think, beyond what other countries require of their intelligence services,” said Robert Litt, ODNI’s general counsel.

But Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., derided an annual “report” given to Congress on the programs authorized by Section 215. It was shorter than a single page, she said, and had fewer than eight sentences. And the number of applications submitted to the FISA court does not reflect the number of phone records gathered.

The intelligence agencies have taken the “relevant” clause — meant to restrict information gathering — and instead expanded information gathering, Sensenbrenner said.

“Section 215 expires at the end of 2015, and unless you realize you’ve got a problem, it’s not going to be renewed,” he said. “There are not the votes in the House. It’s got to be changed, and you’ve got to change how you operate section 215.”

After nearly 45 minutes of battering from the pulpit, the witnesses finally got a reprieve from Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Ala.

“I’m satisfied at least from what limited knowledge I have that the motivation behind this was legitimate and necessary for our national security,” he began.

But even he couldn’t summon complete faith in the program.

“The Star Chamber in England started out as very good, and was very popular with the people,” he said, referencing the 17^th-century English court now used as a stand-in term for any court with secretive proceedings and arbitrary rulings. “It evolved over time into a powerful weapon for political retribution from the king.”

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“The vast majority of the men and women working in the Patent and Trademark Office are honest, hard-working examiners that are in fact willing to spend more than what is required to do the job,” Commissioner Margaret Focarino said.

She made the remarks in the midst a fiery three-hourlong hearing Tuesday held by the House Judiciary and Oversight & Government Reform committees, during which lawmakers hammered the patent office about a report that found instances of fraud within a once-acclaimed teleworking program.

The Washington Post reported this summer that a preliminary investigation into the program found that some patent examiners lied about their hours while some top officials declined to take action in light of suspected abuse. But in a final report submitted to the OIG’s office, investigators softened their position.

Before the Post report, the patent office’s telework program was heralded as a model system.

Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., came down hard on the patent office. Brandishing his own intellectual property credentials — committee staff displayed a picture of his own patents on the television screens of the hearing room — the lawmaker said the problem hurts innovators.

“We pay for the applications. We pay the salaries for every employee at the PTO because in fact we pay all the costs of the PTO,” said Issa, who claimed he has held 37 patents. And yet, he said every day that a patent isn’t approved is a day investors can’t monetize their inventions.

While Focarino said “no program is perfect,” she said the teleworking program has been “critical” in improving the agency’s operations. She also said the abuse has been isolated and that the agency has taken steps to strengthen the program, including requiring the use of electronic collaboration tools for full-time teleworking and standardizing the process for accessing relevant electronic records.

About 5,000 of the office’s 8,000 examiners telework full time.

Several lawmakers made the link between the alleged telework abuse and the agency’s backlog of 600,000 patent applications. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat representing Silicon Valley, said she’s heard from many patent applicants unhappy with the delay time. But she voiced concerns about Inspector General Todd Zinser, saying he had “a very troubled relationship” with whistleblowers in the past.

“How can your office continue to function effectively when you have such a blemished history in your treatment of whistleblowers, and how can we trust that you’ve stopped what appears to be a 20-year pattern of retaliation against whistleblowers?” she asked.

However, Zinser defended his office’s treatment of whistleblowers: “I think our office has no problem receiving and investigating whistleblower complaints,” he said. “In fact, I think one of the problems that exists in the Department of Commerce is that the management of the Department of Commerce has not taken ownership of the problems that are reported over our hotline.”

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Though several important backers of the USA Freedom Act pulled their support, the House passed the Freedom Act, 303-121. The bill now faces the Senate, where some lawmakers have expressed concern about the removal of certain reforms in the final House version.

While some privacy advocates and lawmakers argue the bill does not go far enough to curtail mass surveillance, the Freedom Act still prohibits bulk collection of telephone metadata and requires the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to approve any requests for phone records from telecommunications firms.

“What is being considered is not the bill that was marked up by the House Judiciary Committee,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., speaking on the House floor. “Certain key elements of this bill were changed. I think it’s ironic that a bill that was intended to increase transparency was secretly changed between the Committee markup and floor consideration.”

Among the most controversial changes to the bill’s language was a broadening of the definition of who or what NSA is allowed to monitor. The original version of the bill said the government could force telecommunications companies to hand over records based on search terms that “uniquely describe a person, entity or account.” But that language was changed to include the phrase “such as” — expanding NSA’s search authority to “a discrete term, such as a term specifically identifying a person, entity, account, address, or device.”

The Reform Government Surveillance coalition — a group of powerhouse tech companies, including Facebook, Google and Apple — pulled its support for the bill, citing in a statement that the House changes have moved it “in the wrong direction.”

“While it makes important progress, we cannot support this bill as currently drafted and urge Congress to close this loophole to ensure meaningful reform,” the group said.

The Electric Frontier Foundation said the House “gutted” the bill.

“Earlier today, House Leadership reached an agreement to amend the bipartisan USA FREEDOM Act in ways that severely weaken the bill, potentially allowing bulk surveillance of records to continue,” EFF wrote in a blog post Tuesday. “The Electronic Frontier Foundation cannot support a bill that doesn’t achieve the goal of ending mass spying. We urge Congress to support uncompromising NSA reform and we look forward to working on the Senate’s bipartisan version of the USA FREEDOM Act.”

Disapproval for the bill is far from universal, though, made obvious by its huge margin of victory Thursday and more than 150 co-sponsors.

The White House gave its approval of the current bill Wednesday, which could have something to do with its changes. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., the sponsor of the bill, said it took intense negotiations to get the president and the administration on board, but eventually they compromised. Should the bill pass the Senate, President Obama is likely to sign it into law.

But the bill faces challenges in the Senate.

Thursday before House voting, even Sensenbrenner said it wasn’t perfect, but that shouldn’t be reason for killing it.

“Perfect is rarely possible in politics, and this bill is no exception,” he said. “Let me be clear, I wish this bill did more. To my colleagues who lament changes, I agree with you. To privacy groups who are upset about lost provisions, I share your disappointment. But this bill still deserves support. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”

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More often than not, in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields, there is a shocking lack of female representation.

Women hold just about 32 percent of IT-related positions in the federal workforce, account for just 14.6 percent of Fortune 500 company CEOs, make up 17 percent of Congress, and compose 10 percent of information security professionals. The U.S. is ranked 90th in terms of female representation in the national legislature — behind Iraq, Afghanistan and Cuba.

In “Tenacity,” we dive into the root cause for this disparity. Why women, a demographic that brings so much value and so many skills to the workplace, are still woefully underrepresented, particularly in STEM fields. Through the eyes of these women, we begin to understand what their early careers looked like, how the field has changed since they started and the obstacles that remain in today’s work environment.

The federal IT space has a proven track record of women in leadership roles. There is an increasingly growing number of female chief information officers in the federal government and in industry leadership positions. The message: When you put women in leadership roles, good things happen.

What follows is the full 15-minute documentary webcast, plus extended interviews with each of the women who appear in the film.

TENACITY: women redefining leadership

Written, produced and edited by Colby Hochmuth & Dan Verton

TENACITY: The extended interviews.

In order of appearance:

Ellen McCarthy, chief operating officer, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency

Alec Ross, former senior adviser for innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

Stephanie Hill, vice president and general manager, Lockheed Martin Information Systems and Global Solutions – Civil

Maria Horton, former CIO, National Naval Medical Center, and CEO of EmeSec.

Marisa Raether, senior principal consultant, Intuitive.IT

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In light of National Women’s History Month, FedScoop is highlighting the vibrant, talented and forward-thinking women who shape the conversation on technology in D.C. These 50 women are movers and shakers, all with diverse backgrounds, representing government, Congress, the commercial sector, defense and academia. What they all have in common is their passion for using tech as a force multiplier to push government and industry to the next level by leveraging and improving information technology services in unprecedented ways.

Our selection process took various forms: We did Twitter campaigns, asking for suggestions on extraordinary women in the technology field. We also received recommendations from the community, and conducted our own research. In addition, we asked the women themselves whom they would recommend for this honor. And thus, the list was born and then completed over several months.

We know by limiting our list to 50, we are going to miss other terrific women in the field and we commend those who may not have been selected this year. The list of these 50 women is in no particular order, without any rankings. These 50 innovators, every one unique in her own way, all deserve to be considered #1 — there are no runners-up here.

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Senator Joseph Lieberman (Photo: U.S Embassy Kabul Afghanistan)

In anticipation of the expected cybersecurity executive order to soon be released by the White House, Members of Congress are now weighing in on what it should encompass.

Representative Zoe Lofgren of California said Monday that social networks, search engines and e-commerce networks should be exempt from any security standards included in the executive order.

On the other side of the fence, Senator Joseph Lieberman, the author of the failed cybersecurity bill which the executive order is expected to be based on, wrote a letter to the White House calling on President Obama to direct the Department of Homeland Security to identify security vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure and create voluntary cybersecurity standards for companies operating this infrastructure to follow.

He wrote:

Even though [the Cybersecurity Act], in the interest of finding compromise, did not contain new authority for existing regulators to require the implementation of cybersecurity standards, I have long believed that such requirements are reasonable and warranted in light of the urgent and grave nature of the threat. I urge you to explore any means at your disposal that would encourage regulators to make mandatory the standards developed by [DHS] pursuant to your executive order so we can guarantee that our most critical infrastructure will be defended against attacks from our adversaries.

For Lofgren, she argued the standards in the cyber executive order should only apply to companies that operate critical infrastructure and not the Internet as a whole.

“Imposing cybersecurity standards on non-critical systems can divert attention away from actions that are central to the functioning of American society and public safety while posing a negative impact on free expression, privacy, business operating costs, and innovation in digital services,” Lofgren wrote in a letter to White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Michael Daniel.

She continued, “Cybersecurity standards for non-critical systems is better addressed through a transparent legislative process that affords technical experts and the public adequate opportunity for input.”

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