Congressional pork-barrel spending for academia will dry up in 2007, but Penn's researchers probably won't feel the pinch.
Both the Senate and the House of Representatives have now passed sweeping ethics reforms mandating that legislators must publicly disclose all earmarks they insert into bills.
In addition, the Democratic leadership enacted a moratorium on all earmarks for fiscal year 2007 in December.
This moratorium will likely have a major effect on academic research; Congress provides over $2 billion a year in funding to academic institutions through such earmarks, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Vanda McMurtry, the University's vice president of government and community affairs, said Penn has pursued earmarks in the past, but that it is "not a big player in that arena."
And according to Vice Provost for Research Steven Fluharty, Penn received only about $1 million in earmarks last year - a drop in the bucket when compared to Penn's overall research budget of $750 million.
Penn relies mostly on competitive grants, which are awarded through an application process in which many different projects and programs compete for money.
Legislative earmarks, on the other hand, are awarded on a noncompetitive basis, slipped by Congress members into must-pass appropriations bills to benefit their home districts.
"There are a number of state institutions that depend heavily on the earmarks," Fluharty said. "We do not because we are so competitive" in the grant application process.
Penn's largest earmark comes through the Department of Defense and helps fund construction of a new proton-beam therapy center, due to open in 2009. This earmark, worth about $1.2 million, makes up a tiny portion of the Center's $144 million budget.
The bulk of the $750 million Penn researchers compete for comes from the National Institute of Health and the National Science Foundation, whose budgets have remained stagnant in recent years.
This is the issue that most concerns McMurtry and Fluharty, since these two organizations provide the bulk of Penn's research funding.
"When you take earmarking and compare it to an issue like the NIH budget, there's just no comparison," McMurtry said.
As a result, Penn spends most of its lobbying effort on trying to influence Congress to increase the organizations' funds, McMurtry said.
Political Science professor John Lapinski added that the new ethics measures would affect nonacademic earmarks much more because most academic earmarks are usually more easily justified.
"Most of the projects associated with universities have a lot of merit," he said. "Would a member of Congress be ashamed of supporting a project that might be funding a major breakthrough?"
