Could An Appropriations Reorganization Help U.S. Science?

The Computing Research Policy Blog has a thought-provoking article by Peter Harsha.

"As the FY 05 appropriations process demonstrated, the current organization of congressional appropriations subcommittees (and thus, appropriations bills) is a mess that puts science agencies at a disadvantage in the competition for federal dollars. The current structure is a mish-mash of jurisdictions that forces agencies that have little or nothing to do with each other to compete for the limited funds within each bill -- one bill pits the National Science Foundation and NASA against the Veteran's Administration and federal housing programs, for example, and in another, it's NIST and NOAA against the State Department. More often than not, in that competition the science agencies get the short end of the stick. But there's an interesting proposal floating around DC to recast the appropriations panels to make their jurisdictions more sensible. "