Mr. TRAXLER. Do you believe that SEA-CR should be doing more to assist these institutions in upgrading their equipment?

Dr. THOMAS. The Hatch Act, the McIntire-Stennis Act, and Section 1445, Public Law 95-113 for the Colleges of 1890 and Tuskegee Institute funds can be utilized for the purchase of necessary equipment to conduct the highest quality research. Due to both federal and state constrained budgets, coupled with the rapid rise in inflation, some institutions have been able only to maintain their current program operations and have not been able to update essential equipment. Within these times of constrained budgets, SEACooperative Research must take its share of the budget constraints. While we are fully cognizant of equipment requirements identified in the study, we are aware of the need for federal budget restraint which we all must share.

Mr. TRAXLER. Have you, in your original budget submissions to OMB, had requests in this area?

Dr. THOMAS. Not this year; no, sir. We have requested funds for expanded formula programs and these funds can be used to meet the most extreme needs.

I know of one institution, for instance, just a year or two ago, which, when they received their allocation of federal funding, purchased an expensive electron microscope because they felt this was something needed to serve a wide array of research. [Additional information follows:]

We requested funds in support of the authorized research programs. Since the authorizing legislation permits the use of the federal funds allocated to the states to be used to purchase equipment, we believe that the Director of the agriculture experiment station, the Administrative-Technical Representative for the McIntireStennis Cooperative Forestry Program or the Research Director of the College of 1890 are in the best position to assess the needs of their institution and determine the most effective utilization of available resources. We have not specifically requested funds for equipment upgrading.

COOPERATIVE RESEARCH BUDGET

Mr. TRAXLER. Dr. Thomas, I am almost as thrilled as you are to see the substantial increase in the bulk of the Cooperative Research budget for fiscal year 1982. The money will certainly be well spent and will be of great benefit to our farmers. Can you detail for the record how much of this money will stay in Washington, and then present a table comparing the amount of funds available to each state under the Hatch Act funding for fiscal years 1980, 1981 and 1982?

Dr. THOMAS. The Cooperative Research budget for fiscal year 1982 includes a net increase of $33,291,000 over fiscal year 1981. Of this amount, there is a net increase of $969,620 for federal administration in Washington, D.C. For the Cooperative Research programs funded in fiscal year 1982, under statutory provisions three percent is retained for program administration.

I will supply the Hatch Act information for the record. [The information follows:]

Distribution of Funds to State Agricultural Experiment Stations
Under the Hatch Act

1/ Tentative, pending final adjustments for American Samoa and Micronesia. 2/ Regional Research funds not yet identified by State. Allocation of these funds on a project basis is based on needs within each region. These projects are recommended to Cooperative Research by the Committee of Nine, a statutory committee under the Hatch Act composed of Experiment Station Directors.

COMPETITIVE GRANTS

Mr. TRAXLER. I see that the only revision on the competitive grants program in the revised budget was to reduce $3 million in the area of human nutrition research. You know that I have been a critic of the competitive grant program. I understand that the research being done is valid and important and I do not critize that aspect of the program. However, I have been critical of the administrative nature of the competitive grant program. Yesterday Dr. Bertrand, I believe, said that the program operated using a peer review system just like the one normally used by the Department in approving contract grants. If this is the case, why do we need to have an outside peer review panel?

Dr. THOMAS. By contract grants I assume you are referring to the grants made on a discretionary basis in the Special Research Grants program. In this case, a high priority research area has been identified and a specific institution or institutions having recognized expertise in the area are identified as recipients of the grants. When a discretionary proposal is received, one or more federal scientists having expertise in this area will review the proposal to assure that the design of the research will achieve the objectives of the project, that the proposal includes input from scientists from the appropriate disciplines and that the support staff, equipment and operational funds are appropriate to carry out the planned research.

In contrast under the competitive process, which is utilized for the Special Research Grants program and the Competitive Research Grants program, it is necessary to select the small number of proposals that can be funded within available funds from the hundreds of proposals received. In this case it is necessary to make a judgment on which approach to achieve the objectives is the better approach, to evaluate the scientific expertise of the scientists on one proposal in comparison with other scientists on other proposals, to determine if the equipment to be used is adequate to the needs of the project and so on. To obtain recommendations that take into consideration all of these factors and end up with selecting those proposals to be funded from the highest rated proposals recommended by a panel of outstanding scientists active in the area under review, is the reason for utilizing both nonfederal and federal scientists on a peer panel.

Mr. TRAXLER. Have any of the recommendations of the peer review panels been overruled by others in CR during fiscal year 1981?

Dr. THOMAS. The fiscal year 1981 proposals have just been received and they are undergoing the peer review process. In fiscal year 1980 Cooperative Research has carefully reviewed all the recommendations of the peer panels and has agreed with all of them. Mr. TRAXLER. What is the difference in cost in operating a peer review panel under the competitive grant program, given the cost of transportation, lodging and the like for panel members, versus the cost of a peer review panel of USDA personnel used in the regular contract program?

Dr. THOMAS. The most time consuming item of reviewing research proposals by the federal or nonfederal scientists serving on a peer panel is the review and evaluations they make on the

proposals that are sent to them for review prior to attending the three-day meeting of the peer panel. The institution is not reimbursed for the salary of the scientists for devoting time to the review of the proposals and for attending the peer panel meeting. Since there are usually eight nonfederal scientists and one federal scientist on a panel you can readily see that there is a large salary savings to the government with this ratio than with using all federal scientists.

To get the necessary scientific expertise for a panel consisting of all federal scientists instead of having both federal and nonfederal scientists, it would require bringing in a number of federal scientists from their research locations throughout the United States. There may be very little difference in travel and subsistence costs while attending the peer panel meeting in either case. The nonfederal scientists receive $100 per day honorarium while attending the peer panel meeting. Therefore, the major difference in the cost of the peer panel procedure for grants awarded competitively and federal scientist review for those special research grants which are to be awarded to a designated institution is the honorarium. Since the salary costs of the nonfederal scientists serving on the peer panel are borne by the state institution, in contrast to the cost of the salary of the federal scientists which is borne by the government, if the same number of federal scientists were used to review the discretionary awarded special research grant as there are on the peer panel evaluating proposals under the competitive process, the federal costs would be greater for the discretionary awarded grant.

HIGH PRIORITY AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH GRANTS

Mr. TRAXLER. Dr. Thomas, we discussed at some length the concept of the high priority agricultural research grant program when you were before us last year. During the course of the past year, have you at any point tried to establish such a program or requested funding for such a program?

Dr. THOMAS. No, in anticipation of severely constrained budgets for fiscal year 1982, we did not. However, each year before the SEA budget process starts, Cooperative Research meets with the members of the Legislative Subcommittee of the Experiment Station Committee on Organization and Policy-ESCOP-to jointly identify state, regional and national research priorities considered for support in the Science and Education Administration's budget. In their fiscal year 1982 proposal, the ESCOP Legislative Subcommittee recommended that the Special Research Grants include funding for high priority regional research grants.

COMPETITIVE RESEARCH GRANTS FUNDED

Mr. TRAXLER. Could you provide to the Committee a list of all of the competitive grant projects that were funded in fiscal 1980, and provide for the record a list showing a breakdown of how many grants and the total dollar amount for such grants were given to each approved research institution?

[CLERK'S NOTE.-The list of competitive grants awarded in fiscal year 1980 appears on pages 418 through 446.]

[The information follows:]