The Cutting Edge: COMPUTING / TECHNOLOGY / INNOVATION : Wary Eyes Cast Toward the Capitol
Kill the U.S. Geological Survey!
That proposal, offered as part of the Republican Party’s “contract with America,” may be the most peculiar idea to come out of the recent political upheavals. It isn’t going to happen, but that such an idea would be floated at all has served as a warning to scientists across the country that they’d better pay attention to the new game in Washington.
Many familiar faces are gone. New ones preside over powerful committees, and mixed signals are coming out of Congress.
Should scientists be worried? Or rather, who among scientists should be worried?
Generally, the new Republican majority in both Houses of Congress has expressed support for science, and a preliminary assessment suggests that most big, high-profile programs are not in serious trouble. The space program and biomedical research are expected to do well, based on comments from new committee chairmen. So are most defense-oriented research programs.
But there are major uncertainties surrounding the Department of Energy’s huge fusion power program, which is popular among among key congressmen but has long drawn fire from other quarters. Research on global warming is expected to come under close scrutiny because not enough political leaders are convinced of the seriousness of the problem.
A broad range of smaller, more obscure research programs, moreover, will get close scrutiny from budget-cutting politicians. And the expanding research partnership between government and industry, which has only recently come into its own in many areas after years of effort, faces an uphill struggle.
The new Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), is a self-described technology buff. He recently suggested that all Americans should have laptop computers so that even the poor could join the “information society.” He later said this had been “a dumb idea,” but his tendency to shoot from the hip unnerves scientists who are more accustomed to thinking through their statements before making them.
It did not ease their concerns to see some very friendly faces lose much of their power. Among them is a Californian, Rep. George E. Brown Jr. (D-Colton). He is a physicist and one of the few leaders in Congress who understands science.
Until the Republican landslide, Brown chaired the House Science Committee, perhaps the most powerful body in Washington when it comes to setting priorities for federal support of research projects. He has been a tireless worker for science, although his district is hardly known as a high-tech center. I asked him once what his constituents thought of the time he spent fighting for science projects that offered little for his district.
“They think I’m crazy,” he said.
He was returned to the House with a slim 51% of the vote, but the chairmanship of his committee has gone to Robert S. Walker (R-Pa.), regarded by many as another friend of science.
Walker wants to see sweeping changes in the government’s role in scientific research, such as more emphasis on basic rather than applied research. In a meeting with science writers in Washington last month, he also said he wants to abandon what he called the government “command and control” approach to science in favor of tax credits that would encourage industry to invest more money in its own research programs.
Walker, like many other Republicans, is not fond of the Commerce Department’s Advanced Technology Program, which backs commercial technology projects that have been too expensive or too uncertain for private pursuit. The coming battle over the ATP and related initiatives could also help determine the future of the federal weapons laboratories, which are desperate for a mission in the post-Cold War era.
Walker has not said which science programs he will try to abolish as part of the Republican cost-cutting effort. The new chairman of the House Budget Committee, Rep. John R. Kasich (R-Ohio), was the author of the startling proposal that the U.S. Geological Survey be wiped out. He argued that $3.2 billion could be saved over the next five years if the nation’s primary research agency for earthquakes and volcanoes were eliminated.
The Geological Survey has broad support in Congress, especially within the delegations from California and other western states.
“I don’t think there’s a one-in-a-million chance it will be abolished,” Brown said recently.
The Republican sweep worked in favor of another Californian, Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands), who now chairs the subcommittee responsible for the National Science Foundation and NASA budgets. The space agency has many friends in Congress--and valuable facilities across the nation--so it is expected to fare well.
The National Science Foundation, however, is a bit more vulnerable. Thousands of scientists are supported by NSF grants, but in most cases their projects are low-profile ones that do not command broad political support.
One wonders just how bold any agency is likely to be in the face of a cost-cutting frenzy. The result could be a more timid NSF that is less likely to support projects outside the mainstream of research. Yet (as Newt the historian could tell you) history books are full of discoveries that altered the course of human destiny because someone succeeded where no one else had dared to tread.
Lewis has been a strong supporter of science and a backer of the NSF, but he has warned that no science agency should consider itself immune to budget cuts.
“There will be no sacred cows,” he said after his elevation to the chairmanship.
That’s not bad, of course, because even scientists sometimes come up with dumb ideas.
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Today marks the debut of Science Watch, a column about science policy issues. It will appear every other week, alternating with the In Development column.
Lee Dye, a former science writer for The Times, has covered a broad range of science subjects for more than two decades. He divides his time between Alaska and the Southwest and writes for several publications. He can be reached via e-mail at 72040.3515@compuserve.com
