Category: Blog Page 13 of 18

In a previous post, we broke down the Obama Administration’s Fiscal Year 2017 (FY17) budget request. This, the second in a series discussing how the federal government funding process works in theory and practice, and why it matters to Duke, we’ll take a closer look at another critical step in the funding process: Congressional appropriations.

Each spring Congress begins the process of fulfilling their most basic duty: funding the federal government. This is appropriations season, when Congress takes the Administration’s budget request and turns that into law, setting the funding amounts for each department and agency that depend upon discretionary funding for the upcoming fiscal year.

For a quick review, the discretionary budget accounts for 30 percent of the federal budget and covers most of the federal programs from which Duke receives money. These include research and student aid, along with most military, workforce training, and other education programs.

To understand what is going on this year and how that will impact funding to Duke, it is important to first know how the appropriations process should work. But first, some context: the first appropriations act, passed by the First Congress in 1789, was 13 lines long and provided $639,000 to fund the government. This years appropriators are working to provide $1.07 trillion for FY17 operations.

At their most basic level, appropriations bills move through the same legislative process as other bills: introduction in subcommittee, amended in committee, debated on the floor and passed by the full chamber.

There are some unique requirements for appropriations bills: first, that the bills must only allocate as much funds as that year’s Budget Resolution authorizes; and second, appropriations bills are strictly funding measures, meaning these bills can’t change existing law or create new programs.

For appropriations bills, of which there are 12, the House and Senate Appropriations Committees are where most of the action takes place. To start the process, the Chairman of each Appropriations Committee provides a top-line number for each bill to the chairman of the subcommittee responsible for that piece of the federal budget.

The twelve subcommittees are then tasked with drafting a bill that includes line-by-line funding numbers for a collection of federal departments or agencies. These numbers are guided by the Administration’s proposals and the previous years funding levels, but subcommittee members also take expert advice, from groups like Duke, and collect input from other members of Congress.

Once the full House and Senate have passed their respective appropriations bills, leadership forms a conference committee with representatives from both chambers that are charged with reconciling the bills — in other words making sure the two bills passed by the chambers are the same.

So that’s it, right? Pretty straight forward. Except it isn’t. Or it hasn’t been since 1996, which was the last year Congress passed all twelve appropriations bills before the start of the new fiscal year (Oct. 1). Since then, figuring out whether or not a program has been funded, and at what level, has gotten more complicated.

Say you have a research grant, funded by the National Science Foundation, which in turn is funded by the Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations bill (don’t ask why these three go together). And this year, Congress hasn’t managed to pass CJS appropriations and it’s getting toward the end of September.

A couple of things can happen: Congress can pass a short-term funding bill, called a continuing resolution (CR), for all departments, including the NSF, they haven’t funded through appropriations bills. These CR’s often continue the funding levels of the previous year (or a percentage thereof), meaning proposed funding increases do not take place.

Or, Congress could decide to pass a bill called an omnibus, which includes several appropriations bills and the kitchen sink, again relying upon previous year’s funding levels to ease negotiations and passage.

Or Congress could fail to pass any appropriations bills by a set deadline, leading to a government shutdown. In that case, the federal government operates only essential services, which typically does not include activities related to the research enterprise.

The dependence on CRs and omnibuses for year-to-year funding has resulted in increased uncertainty in the both timing and availability of federal funding, which can have wide ranging impacts at Duke. Agencies may be forced to delay funding decisions for several months until a final appropriations deal has been signed into law, which can lead to a gap in funding for researchers and labs. During final negotiations, a proposed increase for research program that had been approved earlier in the process could be diverted to another program to help ease passage of the final bill.

For this year, Congress has an even shorter window to pass appropriations bills. The House failed to pass a Budget Resolution, which meant the Appropriations Committee had to wait for the May 15 deadline established in the 1974 Budget Act, to introduce bills on the House floor. And between the Presidential nominating conventions and annual August recess, the House has less than 40 days of votes scheduled between June 1 and Oct. 1 and eleven bills left to pass.

Suffice it to say, it will be an interesting process to watch and the Office of Government Relations will continue to update as the moves forward through the DC Digest.

The Duke Margolis Center for Health Policy was established in October 2015 with a $16.5 million gift from Duke medical school alumnus Robert J. Margolis and his wife Lisa, through the Robert and Lisa Margolis Family Foundation. We sat down with DC-based Deputy Director Gregory Daniel, PhD, MPH, to learn more about how the center will connect cutting-edge research with policymakers and policy analysts in DC and beyond.

Duke in DC: What are the primary areas of focus for the Duke-Margolis Center?
Daniel: The center, under the direction of Mark McClellan, MD, focuses on policy that influences healthcare cost, quality, innovation and delivery where desirable outcomes are poorly aligned with healthcare payments and the goals of reform. Everyone agrees that we want measureable higher quality and higher value in healthcare. This requires understanding the incentives embedded in the system, a deep knowledge of how healthcare is delivered across a number of settings, the data systems needed to support high value care, and ensuring that reimbursement supports the policy decisions that will help achieve this larger goal.
Some areas where we think we can provide high-impact policy research include:

• Biomedical innovation and evidence development policies that support the development, regulation, access, and high value uses of drugs, biologics, and medical devices;
• Finance and payment reforms that promote the adoption of value-based payment models, including accountable care organizations (ACOs), bundled payments, performance-based incentives, and shared savings;
• Delivery system reforms that encourage the widespread adoption of practical, evidence-based strategies that improve population health and reduce health care costs;
• International health and payment reform that accelerate the uptake of successful disruptive accountable care payment and delivery reforms.

Influencing policy across these dimensions requires understanding the incentives embedded in the current healthcare system and how they interact with healthcare delivery.

Duke in DC: Given our current political climate, what do you see as the pressing issues in health policy?
Daniel: The immediate challenge is contributing to some of the work that people want to get done before the next election. Timelines right now are changing from aggressive but feasible to impossible.  There is always uncertainty at the end of an administration that’s been in place for two terms.  Healthcare reform has been such a prominent feature of the Obama administration that health policy issues and payment reform (our main disciplines) are in sharp focus.

Duke in DC: Over the next two years, how do you expect to integrate the work that you did at the Brookings Institution with Duke University’s academic and clinical communities?
Daniel: The Margolis Center offers us an important and timely opportunity to transcend customary disciplinary boundaries and connect clinicians, specialists, economists, policy scholars, legal scholars – truly any field that touches how healthcare is delivered and paid for — around the problems facing patients, providers, systems and populations.
This means that the ways we can approach problems is changing dramatically. The work our group did at Brookings demanded solid health policy skills, relationships, and processes to probe and frame questions that were brought to us from stakeholders in government, industry, and healthcare.  We are now part of a continuum that includes computational and social sciences, a world-class academic research organization, a global health institute, one of the nation’s top academic health systems, and schools of medicine, engineering, nursing, business, law, and public policy, and patients. We’re just beginning to explore ways the Duke-Margolis Center can contribute to goals of the Duke community on campus and beyond.
 
Duke in DC: How are you hoping to engage with various scholars, schools, departments and programs at Duke?
Daniel:We have been overwhelmed by the enthusiasm of the Duke community. Across the entire landscape we’ve encountered people who want to be part of the Duke-Margolis Center, and are prepared to pitch in.
We are at the very beginning of a strategic planning process.  It’s hard to say where we’ll end up – because we’re seriously committed to discovering and optimizing connectivity between Duke and Washington, DC.  Suffice it to say we are thinking out-of-the-box to identify real ways to generate new value for the Margolis Center, Duke, and the national and international communities we hope to serve.  We’re small and trying to be intentional about collaboration, growth and deployment of resources.
It is important that we maintain connectivity from between the Durham campus and Washington, DC – with a significant part of our team located in at the Duke in DC office, we can capitalize on proximity to the FDA, to Capitol Hill, and the community of think tanks and consulting organizations that co-exist with policy makers. The Duke-Margolis Center will be a major contributor to Duke’s visibility and engagement here in the future!]]>

While the Washington, D.C., science community was focused Wednesday on the White House Science Fair, another scene was playing out down the road on Capitol Hill. The event was lower-profile than at the White House, but arguably more significant.

Inside a Senate office building, the Coalition to Promote Research hosted approximately a dozen university faculty members with some unusual sounding research projects. These projects were so unusual, in fact, that they had garnered the attention of members of Congress and the media by being pejoratively featured in “wastebooks.”

Among those presenting their work was Sheila Patek, associate professor of biology at Duke. This past December, Senator Jeff Flake’s (R-AZ) Wastebook, which attempts to highlight “wasteful federal spending,” singled out Patek’s research on mantis shrimp.

 Duke Professor Sheila Patek explains her research on mantis shrimp’s powerful punch to Sen. Jeff Flake. Photo by Alyssa Dack.

At the time, she released a statement defending her work. Her research investigates how a tiny shrimp is also one of nature’s most powerful punchers, capable of using its small appendage to smash with lightning speed a clamshell – something humans need tools to do.
As a result of her willingness to publically support her research, she was invited to present her work at Wednesday’s event, during which she interacted with association members, Hill staffers, and Sen. Flake himself.

Patek discussed the usefulness of her research to the military and other national defense organizations. She also took the opportunity to clarify a portion of her Wastebook entry, which overstated the actual cost of her research.

All of this was well-documented by The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein in his article about the event which features extensive quotes from Patek.

A Look at the Past, Present, and Future of Women’s Political Movements and Groups
 

Kristin Goss, associate professor of public policy

Gun control, philanthropy, and women’s political movements may seem unrelated. However, for Kristin Goss, associate professor of public policy, a historical perspective reveals the truly interconnectedness and current political relevance of these issues.

For Goss, the path to becoming a leading scholar in her research is a personal and professional journey nearly as winding as the reform movements she studies. It started in the 1990s, when as a beat reporter for KUSA, the local CBS affiliate in Denver, CO, she covered Columbine, one of the worst mass shooting in America’s history. “As I was covering these tragedies, I began to wonder if it was possible to have real, meaningful gun reform in America,” Goss wondered. “But that begged the question: if we are going to have this movement, who will lead?'”

For her answer, Goss looked to the history of reform movements and came to the conclusion that women were the ones that tended to lead them. From there, Goss investigated the impact of women’s collective engagement in the political process and the history of the women’s movement. So in honor of Women’s History Month, Duke in DC took a moment to ask Goss her views on the current state of women and politics.

Duke in DC: Can you briefly describe the state of the women’s movement in today’s political culture?

Goss: The women’s movement of today doesn’t have the same capacity for mass organization and turn-out that it did in the 1960s and ’70s. Right now, we’re at a time when the policy legacies that needed to be changed have changed. The policy agenda’s largely been taken care of, and some of the things that are left to deal with — like childcare for heterosexual couples — can’t be taken care of through legislative battles. So you don’t need the same mobilization abilities. The work to be done is in the culture and those issues must be negotiated privately.

Duke in DC: What does research tell us about millennial generation’s relationship to the women’s movement?

Goss: Younger women are feminists, and they’re not afraid of that term. In fact, research shows that these women strongly identify with other women, but that they don’t know what the movement is or how to plug into it. When you ask younger generations to name “women’s groups,” they name some of the legacy groups, like League of Women’s Voters, or Planned Parenthood. But Planned Parenthood isn’t a mass membership organization; it’s a service provider.

Duke in DC: So what changed?

Goss: Mobilization efforts have changed. We now have elite groups with professional staff that work on targeted outreach. We have social media, which I’ve been surprised to see how much it can be used to motivate each to get out, and given groups a chance to communicate with each other. For example, mothers of victims of gun violence have used social media as a platform to connect and to tell their story. But for younger women, it’s become the default way to “get involved” in a movement — to like something on Facebook.

Related Content:
Listen to Professor Goss discuss women in politics on the Ways & Means Podcast from the Sanford School of Public Policy.

Copies of President Obama’s budget sit on a table in the Senate Budget Committee room.

In the lead up to the release of the Obama Administration’s Fiscal Year 2017 (FY 2017) budget request, rumors were flying that this final budget would once again be a “good one” for federal research programs. But as soon as the budget documents were released the research community found itself scratching its collective head. At first read, the topline budget request for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) was $33.1 billion, the National Science Foundation came in at just under $8 billion – increases over the previous year funding requests. But these totals came with an asterisk: a good chunk of the proposed budget increases are to be provided through mandatory funding. In an effort to stay within the discretionary budget caps set in the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015, the Administration proposed budgetary increases through mandatory spending.

So what is the difference between these two forms of federal spending, and why does it matter as we look at the FY 2017 budget request?

There are three primary components to the federal budget: discretionary spending, direct or mandatory spending, and revenues. Discretionary spending is funding Congress allocates each year through appropriations legislation and accounts for roughly 30 percent of the federal budget.   The discretionary budget covers most of the federal programs of interest to Duke, including research and student aid, but also covers most military, workforce training, and other education program.

Nearly 70 percent of the federal budget is dedicated to mandatory or direct spending, which is spending controlled by laws outside of appropriations acts, often with a specific revenue stream. Examples here include Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Instead of going through an annual Congressional process to determine spending levels, many mandatory programs have statutory eligibility guidelines that Congress can only revisit periodically. There are some instances where a program can be funded through both discretionary and mandatory spending. The Pell Grant program is one such example, where are portion of the budget is determined and approved through the annual appropriations process, but another part is funded through savings derived from legislative changes made to student loan programs (as well as the Pell Grant program).

Getting back to the FY 2017 budget request, the National Science Foundation (NSF) budget is an illustrative example. The Administration has proposed $7.96 billion budget for FY 17. Of this amount, $7.56 billion is discretionary funding and $400 million is mandatory funding. Without the proposed $400 million increase in mandatory funding, which would require new legislation, the NSF FY 17 budget request is only $100 million above the final FY 16 funding level.
We are still early in the congressional budget and appropriations process, but it will be interesting to see how Congress plans to approach this unique budget situation.

The Duke Office of Government Relations will continue to provide updates as the process moves forward through the DC Digest.

Originally posted on the Duke Research Blog:

Duke biologist Sheila Patek explains the big picture behind a recent study on sparring mantis shrimp. Photograph by Roy Caldwell.

Sheep in microgravity. An experiment involving a monkey in a hamster ball on treadmill. These are among more than 100 descriptions of what Senator Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, deems wasteful federal spending in “Wastebook: The Farce Awakens,” to be released on Tuesday, Dec. 8. The latest in a series launched by retired Senator Tom Coburn, each “Wastebook” targets a range of federally-funded projects, many of them science-related, which the authors declare a waste of taxpayers’ money.
But what do the researchers behind these projects have to say? We asked Duke biologist Sheila Patek, whose work on fighting mantis shrimp was singled out in Flake’s latest report, to tell us her side of the story:
“What do we stand to learn from basic research on mantis shrimp? It turns out, a lot,” Patek said.

“First, mantis shrimp strike with weapons operating at the same acceleration as a bullet in the muzzle of a gun, yet they achieve high performance without explosive materials. They use a system based on muscles, springs and latches and neutralize their opponents with impact-resistant armor. This research helps us understand how animals survive when they have lethal weapons at their disposal but do not actually kill the opponent — something that could change the way we look at future defense systems,” Patek said.

“Second, these crustaceans have properties of extreme acceleration that are of great interest to military and manufacturing engineers. Mantis shrimp use a toothpick-sized hammer that can break snail shells in water that humans can only break with a larger hammer in air. Their small, lightweight hammer resists fracture over thousands of uses. Our research has already led to the development of novel engineered materials that resist impact fracture, based directly on mantis shrimp hammers,” Patek said.

“Third, mantis shrimp do something else that humans cannot: strike in water at the speed of cars on a major highway without causing cavitation, a phenomenon that occurs in systems with rapid motion (like propellers) where implosive bubbles emit heat, light and sound with energy sufficient to wear away steel. Naval engineers have been trying to solve this problem since the invention of the submarine. When we understand how mantis shrimp avoid cavitation during the rotation phase of their strikes while effectively using cavitation during their impact phase, the knowledge will undoubtedly improve the capabilities of ships, submarines, torpedoes and other machines,” Patek said.

“Research that helps us understand and apply the mechanics and evolutionary diversity of natural systems to create a better and safer society for all of us is a wise investment for this country.”

Here’s a tidbit for all the history buffs out there: today marks the 50^th anniversary of the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities Act, an act that created the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), considered the first “grand investment in American culture.” In the five decades since its creation, the NEH has made more than 63,000 grants totaling $5.3 billion, including leveraging an additional $2.5 billion in matching grants to bring the best humanities research, public programs, education, and preservation projects to the American people.

Last Friday, the NEH kicked off a year-long celebration of its 50^th anniversary with a symposium at Loyola University in Baltimore, where Duke University President Richard Brodhead delivered the keynote address. Brodhead, a co-chair of the Commission on Humanities and Social Sciences, who’s appeared on The Colbert Report and Capitol Hill to talk about the importance of the humanities, reflected on the changes in American society in the 50 years since the NEH was created and how advocates for the humanities can continue to talk about the need for strong support for the humanities from local to national organizations.
Click here for the full text of Brodhead’s keynote address.

Graduate student Victoria Nneji has been trained in the universal nature of the scientific method; but, during a recent visit to Washington, D.C., the first-year Masters of Engineering Management candidate learned another universal truth: all politics is local.
Nneji gained insight into this widely-held adage firsthand when she visited the nation’s capital earlier this month as one of two Duke students participating in the CASE Workship – Catalyzing Advocacy in Science and Engineering.  The program, hosted by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), aims to teach graduate students in STEM fields about the science and engineering policymaking that takes place across the federal government.
After meetings with White House officials, mock appropriations negotiations, and some lasting advice from seasoned lobbyists, the students were given the ultimate exam: meeting with Members of Congress to make the case for investments in research.
How did it go? To learn more about the trip – and about Victoria herself – Duke in Washington went straight to the source:

Name: Victoria Chibuogu Nneji
Program: First-year candidate, Master of Engineering Management
Undergraduate Degree: Columbia University – School of Engineering; B.S. in Applied Mathematics, minor in Entrepreneurship & Innovation
Hometown: Durham, NC

DIW:Tell us about your research – what are you focusing on?
VN: My research explores how to better design technology to meet how different people understand information so we achieve our full potential in performance when working with digital machines and other people. This summer, I’ll be at Stanford University working on the design, implementation, and evaluation of robots that encourage social, emotional, and cognitive growth in children, including those with developmental deficits.  When I return to Duke in the fall, I will be conducting computational research on human-robot interaction in Dr. Missy Cummings’ Humans & Autonomy Lab.

DIW:Why did you choose Duke?:
VN: I am blessed to be back home after growing so much in my four years away in New York City. People at Duke are passionate, innovative, and… nice!  We have a strong alumni base that contributes to the resources available for students like me to pursue great ideas and there is also a beautiful campus spirit where we all feel part of the winning team.

DIW: What were the biggest differences between Washington and academia that you discovered? Any similarities?
VN:As many speakers on the Hill reiterated, “all politics is local.”  I would say that this may be a key differentiating factor with academic research– the goal of consistently using the scientific method is to prove that a phenomenon we discover in one lab can be repeated in another lab, anywhere in the world.

However, as I have been learning in my Engineering Management curriculum, there is no exact science with one human globally, each human has a unique set of needs and desires. So, we can learn something from the long tradition of both spheres about order and adaptability.

DIW: Did you learn anything new or surprising during your meetings with Congressional and executive
 agency staff members?
VN: Our team from UNC and Duke had the opportunity to meet the Senior Legislative Assistant to Congressman David Price.  Having lived in Price’s district for many years before college, I was pleasantly surprised that he is a major advocate not just for the meaningful K-12 STEM education legislation that impacted me early on, but also very much invested in moving our nation forward with university research funding. Before becoming a Representative, he was an academic and taught here at Duke!

An unfortunate surprise was that there are unrelated things and at times, unreasonable causes, that are holding back the budget for scientific research in our nation from growing to meet our future requirements.

DIW: What do you hope Congressional aides learned from their meetings with you?
VN: I hope that our Representatives were reinvigorated for the good cause we represent as academics, researchers, scientists. I first learned about computational science when I was 11-years-old because of a National Science Foundation-funded program, and that experience made me want to pursue a career of creative thinking and thoughtful creation — something our nation critically needs today and tomorrow.  I applaud the hard work of our government leaders, but I also encourage them to continue supporting the needs of our classrooms and laboratories, so that stories like mine can proliferate.

DIW: Will your trip impact your own research or career path?
VN: This trip inspired me to consider myself a true advocate for wise engineering policy. I am just starting out in my career, and I want to contribute to research of advanced technologies that can change what society considers to be possible in different realms of our lives, from education to transportation.  My voice and actions in my time as a Duke student matter for the decisions that will be made on how to manage this [technological] growth for our nation’s future and global opportunity.

DIW:Given your experience, do you have any advice for your fellow graduate students who are considering engaging in policy?
VN:You can start right at home.  Anywhere you live or work in the United States, there are local and federal representatives who are there to serve you, the public.  So, consider what matters to you and your community, use your graduate research skills to discover what your officials are up to in that area, and take up courage to speak with those that represent you in policymaking.  We should push past barriers and fears that hold us back from sharing our talents and fully contributing to the betterment of society through our vocation.

Duke and UNC graduate students meet with James Hunter, senior legislative assistant to Rep. David Price, to discuss their research and the importance of federal investments in science. L-R: David Winski (Duke), Ross Beattie (UNC), Leah Heist (UNC), James Hunter, Victoria Nneji (Duke).

As the waning seconds ticked off the clock in last night’s NCAA Men’s Basketball National Championship game, we — like any tech-savvy Duke fans — took to Twitter to watch the praise (and a little criticism) pour in from around the globe. Clearly we were not alone, as ‘Duke’ was still trending world-wide as of lunchtime Tuesday. Former players, celebrities, ecstatic alumni, and – yes – even federal officials chimed in with commentary on the night’s game. ICYMI, don’t worry, here’s a cheat sheet of how lawmakers said congratulations to the Duke University men’s basketball team — the 2015 NCAA Men’s Basketball National Champions.

Representative G.K. Butterfield (D-NC), Duke’s representative in Congress, tweeted a quick congrats to the team:

Congratulations to both teams on an extraordinary game! #GoDuke pic.twitter.com/YsOHrpo7aX
— G. K. Butterfield (@GKButterfield) April 7, 2015

Then sent a friendly reminder to Representative Mark Pocan (R-WI), who represents Wisconsin’s campus, of their Monday afternoon wager.

.@repmarkpocan #GoDuke #NCAAChampions #NC01 pic.twitter.com/OqN04wfcOJ — G. K. Butterfield (@GKButterfield) April 7, 2015

Duke faculty member Rep. David E. Price (D-NC) gave a nod to the three weeks of outstanding basketball:

Congrats to @DukeU for winning its fifth Men’s Basketball National Championship – a fitting end to a thrilling tournament! #MarchMadness — David E. Price (@RepDavidEPrice) April 7, 2015

Both Senators Richard Burr (R-NC) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) pointed out that, contrary to some rumors, Duke really does lie in North Carolina (not New Jersey):

Proud that this year’s #NCAATournament Champs call North Carolina home – great work last night @dukeblueplanet #MarchMadness
— Richard Burr (@SenatorBurr) April 7, 2015

Congrats to Coach K and the Blue Devils! The #NCAAChampionship is heading back to North Carolina! #MarchMadness
— Senator Thom Tillis (@SenThomTillis) April 7, 2015

Then there are those members of Congress who are also members of the Duke alumni family, Rep. Scott Peters (D-CA, T ’80) and Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-AL, T ’77):

Congrats to NCAA men’s basketball champions @Duke_MBB!
— Rep. Scott Peters (@RepScottPeters) April 7, 2015

So proud of my alma mater, @DukeU, on winning the 2015 National Championship! Great job by Coach K and the whole team!
— Rep. Bradley Byrne (@RepByrne) April 7, 2015

And while the Blue Devils busted President Obama’s bracket, his former opponent Mitt Romney (who will visit Duke later this week) wished he would have bet bigger on the team:

Should have put $10,000 on my bracket. Congrats, Coach K and @DukeU.

— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) April 7, 2015