Will GOP budgetary science reduce research to ruins? As congressional Republicans seek ways to cut spending, funding for science faces an uncertain future. No one opposes research and development, but lawmakers differ of the government's role

0 Comments | Insight on the News, April 24, 1995 | by Russell Shaw

As congressional Republicans seek ways to cut spending, funding for science faces an uncertain future. No one opposes research and development, but lawmakers differ on the government's role.

No one is calling for the abolition of scientific funding - there are few, if any, self-declared enemies of science in Washington - but amid the Republican fervor to cut costs, funding for the sciences will have to take its share of the hit. A major debate is shaping up about how much money the federal government should cut from scientific research and development as Congress struggles to balance the federal budget.

"The new leadership of Congress is extremely cost-conscious" says Roger Herdman, director of the congressional Office of Technology Assessment, a nonpartisan congressional agency that issues recommendations on scientific spending issues. "In previous Congresses a lot of emphasis was placed on how to make government programs run better and improve them. Now, there is more of an emphasis on how to get government out of programs."

But that doesn't mean the Congress is antiscience. "Individual members may comment on individual programs, but from the leadership perspective, Speaker [Newt] Gingrich is pretty keen on science and technology," says Al Teich, director of science policy programs for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, or AAAS. Congress, he says, will be comparing the costs of research with its benefits and will try to steer more of those costs to the private sector.

The Clinton administration's budget for fiscal 1996 proposes $73 billion for scientific research and development. Approximately $60 billion of that is for defense-related research, while $10 billion is destined for National Institutes of Health research. Slightly more than $3 billion is targeted for general scientific research.

In May, the House Budget Committee, headed by Ohio Republican John Kasich, is expected to issue its own proposals. The Kasich blueprint is consistent with a recommendation drafted last fall by Republican members of the Appropriations Committee calling for the abolition of the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Biological Survey, limits on the annual growth of the National Science Foundation to 1 percent less than the yearly inflation rate and a reduction in spending for the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Advanced Technology Program, or ATP.

Although funding for general scientific research is far smaller than for health or defense, its broad applicability across many disciplines has made it the subject of passionate fiscal arguments. "Most Americans understand that science pushes back the frontiers and has led to our post-industrial society," says John Gibbons, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, or OSTP. "If we want to be a leader, our nation depends on scientific knowledge for the frontier of our future. It is the engine that provides for our health, environment and defense."

Gibbons and his superiors say a balance can be struck between fiscal prudence and productive spending on scientific research. In economic terms, he says, spending on science is different from the investing done by private companies. "It is a common investment that has worked very well and has gotten us to the top of the heap. As we get more and more serious about our deficit, everybody has to take more hits, but you can't just climb out of a hole by stopping the digging. You've got to provide the investment."

But where the administration sees "investment," watchdog groups and the congressional leadership often see excess spending. "Certainly we are not antiscience, but as we look at the federal government, every piece of spending needs to be examined," says Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste.

A former high-school teacher with an interest in several scientific disciplines, Rep. Robert Walker of Pennsylvania has long backed basic research in a number of fields. And as a fiscally conservative Republican and chairman of the House Science Committee, he has a strong influence on the debate about what science the federal government should support.

"I think that science budgets, like any other budget, should be looked at to make sure we are wisely spending the money," he tells Insight. "When we find areas where we can do things differently or better, we ought to take that responsibility and reform the process."

Walker says private industry should be encouraged, through government incentives, to take over much of the applied research the government now funds - such as high-density optical disk design, for example. "I believe there are places in which we can render some different judgments than [were] made via past standards," he says. "We ought to put in place an investment strategy that will help spread scientific research deeper into the totality of the nation This could be done by not regarding research as a federal budget item, but [as] a national economic item that would spread the benefits through the entire national economy."