Committee Marks Up Dyslexia Research and NSF Grant Review Process Bills
(Washington, DC) – Today the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology held a markup of H.R. 3033, the Research Excellence and Advancements for Dyslexia (READ) Act, and H.R. 3293, the Scientific Research in the National Interest Act.
H.R. 3033 would require a line item in the annual Congressional budget request to Congress for the Research in Disabilities Education program at NSF. Additionally, the bill would require NSF to devote at least $5 million a year to dyslexia research, including in the areas of early identification; professional development for teachers and administrators; and curricula development and educational tools for students with dyslexia. The bill was negotiated in a bipartisan manner and passed out of Committee by a bipartisan voice vote.
Ranking Member Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) said, “Through its support for fields as diverse as behavioral and social science, neuroscience, and learning science, NSF has made important contributions to knowledge about, and interventions for dyslexia and other learning disorders. H.R. 3033 would ensure that NSF continues to fund important research in these areas.”
H.R. 3293 was handled very differently by the Majority. Variations of this bill have come before the Committee, and have been opposed by the Ranking Member and other Democratic Members, several times over the past three years.
Ranking Member Johnson said of the legislation, “This bill continues the Majority’s efforts to impose a layer of political review on NSF’s gold-standard merit-review system. Chairman Smith has been clear in his own belief that many grants that have successfully passed merit-review are not worthy of federal funding, according to his own subjective definition of “worthy.” And that determination seems to be almost entirely based on how silly the title of a research grant seems to the Chairman, who we all know, does not claim to be a scientist.”
She continued, “If we do not trust the Nation’s scientific experts to make that judgment on whether a scientific grant is worthy of funding or not, then who are we to trust? Right-wing blogs? The Heritage Action Fund? The lawyers and businessmen and other non-scientists who populate this Committee? The clear intent of this bill is to change how NSF makes funding decisions, according to what Chairman Smith thinks should be or shouldn’t be funded.
“I might add that the Majority is pushing this agenda in the complete absence of any actual problem being identified with NSF’s current policy that this bill is supposedly aligned with. If the existing policy is working, why move forward with this bill that the entire community views as politicizing science?
“Yet again, the Science Committee under Republican leadership is ignoring the scientific community we are supposedly here to support.
“This Committee has a legitimate oversight role, and we have a responsibility to write smart legislation that strengthens the U.S. scientific enterprise while holding the funding agencies accountable. But this bill, and the witch hunt for NSF grants that this Committee has engaged in for the past 2 ½ years are far from legitimate exercises.”
Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) said, “The Ranking Member made every effort to make slight changes that would make this bill more tolerable, but those changes were rejected. It is very telling that the majority rejected those few words to clarify that this legislation should not impose political review on a scientific review process. The Ranking Member’s proposal sought to reassure the scientific community that the expertise and wisdom of scientists will prevail at the NSF – not politics. The fact that we could not agree on this compromise only creates further concerns and suspicions about the true purpose of this legislation.”
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