WASHINGTON – The Science Coalition (TSC) today issued the following statement after the Senate Committee on Appropriations approved Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 spending measures for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Energy (DOE):
“Our nation will be hard-pressed to adequately address increasingly urgent issues, like protecting crops from invasive species or combating the climate crisis, without the fundamental research supported through USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) or DOE’s Office of Science. Although the committee’s proposed appropriations would allocate slight increases, the funding provided for these agencies maintains an unsustainable pattern of underinvestment in vital research activities, particularly in the agricultural sciences,” said TSC President John Latini. “The American scientific enterprise, backed by research agencies and university partners, must be in full force to stay ahead of our competitors, foster an innovation-based economy, and build tomorrow’s STEM workforce. We urge Senate lawmakers to amend these proposals on the floor so USDA and DOE can meet the challenges and opportunities facing our research ecosystem.”
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About the Science Coalition
Established in 1994, The Science Coalition is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization of more than 50 of the nation’s leading public and private research universities. It is dedicated to sustaining the federal government’s investment in basic scientific research as a means to stimulate the economy, spur innovation, and drive America’s global competitiveness.