Subcommittees vote 'big science' veto - U.S. House appropriations subcommittees cut spending for the space station and the Superconducting Super Collider

Science News, May 25, 1991 by Janet Raloff

A House appropriations subcommittee voted last week to kill funding for the planned U.S. space station. At the same time, it left intact most other science programs within NASA and the National Science Foundation, and boosted research funding for the EPA.

The subcommittee has jurisdiction over the budgets of all independent federal agencies. Its vote, which shocked NASA officials and aerospace contractors, holds strong symbolic value, reflecting the willingness of Congress to reevaluate its commitment to politically popular "big science" projects.

The full appropriations committee could overturn the decision in the next few weeks. Or House members could reject this appropriations bill and restore space station funds when the bill comes to a vote on the floor. However, several knowledgeable insiders suspect the subcommittee's verdict will stand. Just one day after the vote, Rep. George E. Brown Jr. (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, said the space station "looks like it's defunct."

During the same week, a second appropriations subcommittee voted to sharply reduce spending on another controversial megaproject: the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC).

Many science policy analysts and lawmakers on Capitol Hill read last week's balloting not just as votes against the space station and SSC, but as watershed challenges to the multibillion-dollar "big science" projects that dominate the budgets of major research agencies.

Daniel Sarewitz, a staff member of the House science committee, says the first appropriations subcommittee essentially offered "either to cut out the space station and leave funding for basic science at NASA, EPA and NSF intact, or to fund the space station and cut severely basic science." This tradeoff, "driven solely by fiscal constraints," does not reflect any particular philosophy of science policy or what's best for the research and development community, Sarewitz maintains.

The cost of Space Station Freedom, originally estimated in 1984 at about $8 billion, may approach $40 billion, according to the most recent projections. Congress has so far spent $4 billion on it.

"We simply can no longer afford huge new projects, with huge price tags, while trying to maintain services that the American people expect," says Rep. Bob Traxler (D-Mich.), chairman of the subcommittee that voted to terminate the program.

The space station has suffered considerable criticism recently. In March, for example, the Washington Post and the Springfield, Va.-based Space News, respectively, published leaked evaluations of the program by a National Research Council committee and by the President's Office of Science and Technology Policy. Both articles questioned the space station's scientific value in light of newly proposed cost-cutting changes. "Federally Funded Research," a report released last week by the congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), also concludes that "the space station has little justification on scientific grounds."

However, the OTA report cites a general, tacit expectation that once "the 'go/no-go' decision has been made at the national level," funding to complete a science megaproject will "be honored, no matter how much the cost estimates or timetables for completion change." Last week's votes appear to signal a change in this implied contract -- a change portended by recent budget limitations, the OTA report maintains.

"I foresee a message coming out of the appropriations committee that we are not going to be able to fund the big projects--the megaprojects," says Rep. Ron Packard (R-Calif.), a House science committee member. "If we can't provide the research that will stimulate and motivate the private sector to do some of those [megaprojects], they probably won't get done."

The new subcommittee decisions have also reignited debate over how Congress sets its funding priorities. What these votes "bring to light is that we don't have a mechanism in Congress yet for studying [research] priorities," Brown maintains. "We need a system that can set priorities -- as, say, between the space station and the SSC, or between the civilian space program and the military space program."

The OTA report reaches a similar conclusion: "There are few mechanisms and no tradition [within the federal funding system] of ranking research topics across fi lds and subfields of inquiry."

Because the science community "has long declined to engage in priority setting," Congress has been forced to do so, the report contends. Moreover, the report argues that Congress' efforts have fallen short in three ways:

* "Criteria used in selecting areas of research and megaprojects are not made explicit, and appear to vary widely."

* "There is currently no formal or explicit mechanism for evaluating the total research portfolio of the federal government in terms of progress toward national objectives," such as increasing national security, health, economic activity or educational resources.