ATP Strikes Out in House, Gets On Base with Senate

With Opening Day less than two weeks away, a baseball analogy is only fitting to suggest NIST's Advanced Technology Program (ATP) is in for a long season. Since 1990, ATP has provided early-stage funding for 768 projects to accelerate the development of innovative technologies that promise significant commercial payoffs and widespread benefits. While the program is still engaged with its portfolio of two-year awards from 2004, Congress did not appropriate any funding for a 2005 solicitation cycle for new projects. The Administration's fiscal year 2006 budget request recommended terminating the program altogether.

Last week began with the news that a key House Science subcommittee excluded the program in its approved version of H.R. 250, a NIST authorization bill entitled "the Manufacturing Technology Competitiveness Act of 2005."  The National Journal's Tech Daily reported March 15 that the bill will be considered by the full House Science Committee next month.

Meanwhile, on Thursday, the full Senate passed an amendment to the Senate's version of the budget authorization bill on a 53-46 vote "expressing the sense of the Senate urging the Senate Committee on Appropriations to make efforts to fund the Advanced Technology Program, which supports industry-led research and development of cutting-edge technologies with broad commercial potential and societal benefits." Senate Amendment 238 to S. Concurrent Resolution 18 was introduced by Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) and co-sponsored by senators Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Mike DeWine (R-OH), John Kerry (D-MA), Leiberman (D-CT) and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI).

The fate of H.R. 250 remains to be seen, as a similar measure passed the full House last year but did not survive the Senate. More critical, perhaps, is what weight the Levin Amendment to the Budget Resolution will carry through the budget process as significant differences in the House and Senate versions of the FY06 budget authorization levels remain to be reconciled.