Public Health Service Act, section 481 A

This is why government is not so great. We are trying to get a portion of the stimulus. In order to be granted stimulus monies, we need to comply with stimulus demands. Easy, right? But, it’s government, and government has a unique ability to take what should be a carefree process and turn it into an all-day-still-nothing-getting-tired-of-googling-I-would sell-sell-my-soul-for-the-answer-NIGHTMARE. You would think it would be rather simple to ascertain eligibility requirements in order to get our hands (or anybody else’s hands) on 1.5 billion of taxpayer’s money. That’s a lot of money- and as transparent as Obama is trying to be, you would think that the requirements to get this money would be in big, bold, red letters at the top. Guess again.

And that is what I experienced today. I did three hours worth of search engines and nothing, absolutely nothing, to show for it. I have no idea where section 481A of the Public Health and Service Act is. I looked on THOMAS (the library of Congress) on the NIH website, on the NCRR website—looked under various act names that could be related, such as the Animal Welfare Act, and the National Institutes for Health Revitalization Act (maybe it went by a different name? Sometimes Congresses passes an act that stands as an act, in and of itself, but part of the act replaces part of another act). The end result? I found three revisions of PHS Act Section 481 A, one department that was created because of this section, a couple of blogs about how evil the stimulus is, and about 50 million different versions of the stimulus itself referencing this section –BUT NO ACTUAL TEXT. It’s not just me; oh no, about five people in my department have worked on this as well as our inter-governmental relations guy.

NCRR is getting a call in the morning.