Gore Touts Hike in Science Spending

Putting the width of the country between himself and the furor that has enveloped the White House, Vice President Al Gore delved Thursday into his signature high-tech agenda and said the Clinton administration was proposing a $31-billion increase--the largest ever--in funding for three key federal science agencies.

“In a world where imagination is only one small step ahead of reality, a relentless focus on the future--and targeted investments in research and development--are the best ways for America to succeed,” he said.

Another administration proposal, to extend by one year a $2.2-billion tax credit for scientific research and experimentation, would translate into “more high-wage jobs for the 21st century,” Gore said.

The vice president spoke at the headquarters of Genentech Inc., where he toured a facility that makes synthetic proteins used in cancer drugs and growth hormones. Before leaving Washington for California, Gore announced two cancer-related proposals: an additional $4.7 billion--a 65% increase--over five years in funding for cancer research at the National Institutes of Health; and the expansion of Medicare benefits for cancer patients.

Medicare would pay for the costs of beneficiaries who participate in clinical trials for cancer treatments as part of a demonstration project. The $750-million cost of the program would be funded by money from the proposed settlement with tobacco companies and would be kept separate from the regular Medicare program.

Medicare pays only for treatments considered standard medicine by a board of advisors. It took a number of years before Medicare began covering the expenses of heart and kidney transplant operations.

Under the demonstration program, beneficiaries accepted for inclusion in clinical trials sponsored by the National Institutes of Health would have all associated medical and hospital bills paid by Medicare.

In keeping with his practice over the past week, the vice president made no public reference to the firestorm of controversy raging over allegations--which President Clinton has denied--that the president had a sexual relationship with former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky and encouraged her to lie about it.

Instead, at the start of a three-day California visit that will bring him to Los Angeles tonight, Gore’s public agenda is focused entirely on such government initiatives as expanding technological research, increasing the access of schools to the Internet, bringing jobs to impoverished communities through tax breaks to employers and advances in airplane security programs.

He said the $31-billion increase in federal science financing “will help us to cure deadly diseases, find new sources of clean energy . . . and also to build the next generation of the Internet,” capable of moving information at speeds 1,000 times faster than current systems.

But such projects face inevitable battles in Congress, where they will become part of the mix as a debate grows over how to realign federal spending priorities from a three-decade-long focus on deficit reduction to the looming shift to surplus allocation.

Genentech CEO Art Levinson said the most recent research tax credit allowed him to hire an additional 150 researchers.

With an expanded tax credit, “we will directly translate that into more jobs,” Levinson said. “For every dollar that the government might not get [in near-term tax collections], the longer-term return is $1.75.”

Times staff writer Robert A. Rosenblatt in Washington contributed to this story.