New Mexico's high-tech future is at risk

New Mexico Business Journal, August, 1995 by Jeff Bingaman

While I commend the new Republican majority in Congress for focusing the country's attention on the need to balance the federal budget, the specifics of the Republican budget plans would have a devastating impact on the future economic competitiveness of our nation as a whole and of New Mexico in particular.

These budgets would slash federal civilian research and development programs by 30 to 40 percent in real terms by 2002. No agency is spared. The Department of Energy, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Department of Agriculture all face deep reductions in their research programs. At the same time the Pentagon's research budget will also continue to plummet under Republican defense plans that emphasize short-term readiness and large standing forces at the expense of long-term investments in our security. Indeed, some Republican members have gone so far as to declare that the entire Pentagon $4 billion investment in basic and applied research is a "non-defense item" that can be jettisoned to pay for additional troop training.

This could generate grim prospects for New Mexico. We receive more federal research spending per capita than any other state by a large margin and this could bode poorly for our nation as a whole as it prepares for the challenges of the 21st century.

What has our research community done to deserve such treatment? They won the Cold War, revolutionized medicine, invented computers, pioneered electronics and semiconductor devices and invented a myriad of new materials that have fundamentally changed our lives.

This is just as Vannevar Bush, one of the giants of the post-World War II generation, predicted half a century ago in his report, "Science: the Endless Frontier." Bush had the wisdom to know that new scientific fields would emerge that he could not yet imagine: semiconductor electronics, high-temperature superconductivity, molecular biology, materials science, and optoelectronics to name a few in which New Mexico's laboratories, universities and private sector firms are leaders. Bush had the vision to see that federal investments in science and technology could transform our lives and contribute to our health, standard of living and security.

The research community in our universities, laboratories, and private sector finns did not cause our federal deficit. Quite the opposite is true. In 1969 when the federal budget was last balanced, federal civilian research spending was .76 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Today it is .46 percent of GDP, and in 2002 it will be about .26 percent under the Republican budgets.

More important, there is almost universal recognition that our federal civilian research investments have paid for themselves many times over by the growth they contribute to our economy. These are truly investments in our nation's future, and it is folly to cut them disproportionately over the next seven years to get our nation's fiscal house in order.

The cuts in federal support of civilian research will not be made up by the private sector. The Wall Street Journal on May 22 reported on the deep cuts being made by AT&T, General Electric, IBM, Kodak, Texaco and Xerox in their research budgets. The reason: they have an ever narrower focus and an ever greater unwillingness to invest in long-term research projects, the benefits of which are uncertain and can't usually be capitalized on by their firm alone.

The governments of our major economic rivals, Japan and Germany, recognize the importance of civilian research investments. Each of those governments invests about .6 percent of their national incomes in civilian research directly (and larger amounts indirectly). They show no sign that they will join us in slashing research spending. Quite the opposite. They and other industrialized countries around the world are seeking to emulate the successful American model of the last half century, just as we seem bent on wrecking it.

GOVERNMENT SPENDING ON CIVILIAN RESEARCH(*)