A staple since COSSA’s earliest days, the biweekly COSSA Washington Update newsletter provides members and the public with comprehensive coverage of policy developments impacting social and behavioral science research.
COSSA Joins Partners to Urge Senate Support for IES
On July 9, COSSA joined with a number of its member associations and sister coalitions on a letter to the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee expressing concern with the House-passed Strengthening Education through Research Act (H.R. 4366), which is legislation to reauthorize the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) at the Department of Education. As currently written, the bill would “diminish the autonomy, authority, and stature of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)” within IES. The letter urges the Senate to amend the bill “to ensure that NCES data and statistics are objective, independent, and relevant to education…
House Approves Symbolic Attacks on NIH Grants
Note: This article was originally published on September 13, 2004. We’ve reposted it from COSSA’s archives due to its resonance with today’s climate in Congress. When a Federal agency has its budget doubled in five years, its expenditures attract a great deal of attention. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has been a “most favored” agency for many years. In the eyes of many of its supporters on Capitol Hill, the research it funds saves lives, including in some cases, their own. Thus, from 1998 to 2003 NIH’s budget grew from $13 billion to over $27 billion. NIH uses an elaborate system…