When the Senate decided to strip down its 1400-page reconciliation bill that weighed in at 12 lb, 15 oz, to the bare essentials-provisions that either actually raise new revenues for the federal government or reduce federal spending-it may well have sounded the death knell for a number of provisions long sought by the chemical industry and/or endorsed by the American Chemical Society. For example, both industry and ACS have long pursued a permanent extension of the 20% R&D tax credit both for a company's increased spending on research activities and for corporate expenditures for university basic research. That permanent extension was part of the original reconciliation bill, S. 1750, but was thrown out. Also deleted was another industry-backed provision setting out how research and experimentation expenses were to be allocated between domestic and foreign source income, as was a provision sought by ACS that would have allowed employees to continue to exclude from their gross ...