[mmaimcal] HR 4818

[woottenal]

Folks,

HR4818, the omnibus funding bill, has cleared the Senate and the House. 
Congress gave the Administration essentially what it requested for ALMA. 
FY2005 is the seventh year of funding for ALMA, for which funding began 
midway into FY1998. From the text at thomas.loc.gov:
...............
National Science Foundation

The conferees agree that the language included in House Report 108-674 
and Senate Report 108-353 is to be complied with unless specifically 
addressed to the contrary in this conference report and the statement of 
the managers.
...

MAJOR RESEARCH EQUIPMENT AND FACILITIES CONSTRUCTION

Appropriates $175,050,000 for major research equipment and facilities 
construction instead of $208,200,000 as proposed by the House and 
$130,420,000 as proposed by the Senate. Included within the appropriated 
amount is $49,700,000 for construction of the Atacama Large Millimeter 
Array aperture-synthesis radio telescope...

end of text....................
Note among the words in Senate Report 108-353 are found the following:
"The Committee is concerned that NSF continues to underfund the 
operations for radio astronomy. The operations, maintenance, and 
development of new instrumentation at the Very Large Array, the Very 
Long Baseline Array, and the Green Bank Telescope, allows these 
world-class facilities to provide valuable research into the origins of 
the universe. The Committee provides the National Radio Astronomy 
Observatories $55,000,000 for annual operations."

McCain, Kyl, Rockefeller and Byrd were among those opposing the omnibus 
funding bill. Take a look at the special funding provisions during a 
boring meeting.

NASA is funded at $16.2 billion, $822 million above last year and $44 
million below the request. The agreement give NASA almost total funding 
flexibility, but requires NASA to report to the Congress within 60 days 
on how they will adjust program values to cover increased costs 
associated with the Hubble servicing/repair mission and shuttle 
return-to-flight activities. This flexibility is unprecedented and gives 
the Administrator broad latitude to implement the President’s vision for 
Space within the funds provided in the bill.

Al