Podesta Assails Congressional Cuts in Research Funding : Spending: Proposed reductions of $1.8 billion represent a ‘19th century budget,’ the normally low-key White House chief of staff says in speech.

The White House said Wednesday that efforts in Congress to reduce federal spending on high-technology and other advanced research not only threaten future scientific breakthroughs but jeopardize economic progress in America.

In a sharply honed and unusually public complaint, White House Chief of Staff John Podesta, more often a behind-the-scenes player, said that the Republican-led Congress has produced “a 19th century budget for a 21st century economy.”

“One has to wonder whether the people designing these budgets spent too much time watching Fred Flintstone and not enough time watching the Jetsons,” Podesta said in a speech to the National Press Club.

Podesta’s remarks were aimed at building pressure on Congress by drawing the attention of both the scientific community and the public to what the White House views as the harm of spending reductions in seemingly esoteric research programs. The House and Senate return next week from their August recess to complete work on the fiscal 2000 budget, which takes effect Oct. 1.

Overall, proposed cuts under consideration in the House would total $1.8 billion, or 8% to 10% of the amount Clinton has requested for civilian research and development programs, which exclude military projects.

Specifically, according to the White House, this would result in the elimination of federal funding for 14,000 jobs in research and the teaching of science and mathematics at the university level.

At a time when information technology is responsible for one-third of U.S. economic growth, the White House said, the House budget plans would cut the administration’s long-term Information Technology Initiative by 70%.

In addition, the White House said, pending appropriations bills would threaten 30 planned space missions, $240 million worth of space science grants and $285 million in other science and environmental research programs, such as those intended to improve weather forecasting and to develop renewable energy sources.

Podesta portrayed President Clinton’s efforts to fund research as no less than the equivalent of President Jefferson’s dispatch of the explorers Lewis and Clark to the distant and little-known western reaches of the continent. “One wonders whether this Congress would have zeroed out Jefferson’s request for the Lewis and Clark expedition,” the chief of staff said.

“A passion for discovery and a sense of adventure have always driven our nation forward,” Podesta said. “Continued leadership depends on our enduring commitment to science, to technology, to research and to learning.”

The White House has spent much of the summer looking for ways to undercut Republican pressure to convert the growing federal budget surplus into a large tax reduction.

Before recessing, Congress approved a $792-billion tax cut that Clinton has said he will veto. He has proposed a more modest reduction in taxes, while using the surplus to shore up Social Security and Medicare.

Under the 1997 budget agreement, spending is capped to meet the income available from taxes. Because the government has no discretion in cutting Social Security payments, it must look to other programs--those in the sciences, for instance--to avoid slipping back into deficit spending.

“The Republican-led Congress, to make room for [its] risky tax plan, is playing politics with science and technology funding,” Podesta said.

But Elizabeth Morra, spokeswoman for the House Appropriations Committee, said after Podesta spoke that the House had no choice but to set priorities over how to spend limited funds.

“We’re having to make tough choices,” she said, describing the limits as “unrealistic.”

The National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, she said, are funded in an appropriations bill that includes money for the Veterans Affairs Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“The Republicans decided to increase veterans health programs by $1.7 billion [beyond Clinton’s request of approximately $17.5 billion]. So, you have to adjust the other accounts in the bill accordingly,” Morra said.

According to Podesta, all Congress has to do is adhere to the president’s proposal, which he said stayed within the restrictions imposed by the budget agreement. But Clinton’s proposal, Morra responded, relies on approximately $42 billion in increased taxes and “user fees” that Congress has not approved.