Strategy for Commercial Research Sought
The federal government’s $70-billion research budget has become the focus of an intense debate over its potential to help the nation--especially major aerospace centers--better adjust to lower defense spending.
The Bush Administration has rejected calls to formulate a national strategy that would target the spending to benefit U.S. industry by directing more money to commercial projects.
“It is our major weakness--inadequate focus and coordination between major federal programs and between federal programs and private contractors,” said Rep. George E. Brown Jr. (D-Colton), chairman of the House Space, Science and Technology Committee.
Brown said the absence of clear national goals in technology is exacerbating the nation’s competitive slide. At present, about 60% of the research budget is dedicated to the military, leaving the United States behind Japan’s smaller economy in funding commercial research, he said.
“It is my contention that we will continue to be a declining economic basket case until we change,” Brown said.
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy declined repeated requests for interviews. But experts say the Bush Administration is adamantly opposed to setting broad industrial policies, even ones aimed at giving focus to federal spending. The Pentagon, meanwhile, is seeking to keep defense research at historically high levels--about $39 billion in fiscal 1993.
In the aftermath of the Cold War, Brown wants to divert $14 billion from defense research to the civilian sector through grants to industrial consortiums. Such a transfer, he said, would allow the United States to match Japanese civil research spending.
Better targeting of U.S. research efforts has broad support among aerospace executives.
Hughes Aircraft Chairman Malcolm Currie said: “I believe we should have a Cabinet-post department for industry and technology that would be a focus for research advocacy.”
