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Science Technology and the Economic Future edited by Susan Raymond
Robert S. Walker
Chair, Science Committee, U.S. House of Representatives
Based on remarks delivered at the New York Academy of Sciences, June 2, 1995. Since January 1997, Mr. Walker has served as president of the Wexler Group in Washington D.C.
Science and technology provide an essential foundation for the future of this nation. Just as constraints on resources require choices to be made in virtually every other area of public life, choices must also be made in our allocation of government resources to science and technology programs. Because cleverness, which in this case means the ability to manipulate information, will create the wealth of the future, we must carefully determine those priorities in science that will lead to the development of new knowledge.
S&T Policy within Four Revolutions
The science policy decisions that are now being made in the 104th Congress exist within the context of an era that is revolutionary in four respects. In terms of political organization, the United States, like many other nations around the globe, is moving away from centralized bureaucracy and toward smaller and more local government. In terms of economics, the revolution is being defined within a framework of the evolution of highly industrialized economies into knowledge-based economies, and the transformation of national centers of economic power into global ones. As a consequence, culture, too, is undergoing change and analysis. Finally, science and technology are affecting every facet of life, with scientific research and technological innovation changing how we communicate, learn, travel, and even, given the ever-present fax and e-mail systems, how we make policy.
Within this revolutionary context, three general principles underlie current congressional decisions about the substance of S&T policy. First, government must be transformed to fit modern realities and future opportunities. As it is presently constituted, government has been defined by an age that is disappearing in the face of global economic and political change. But since change also brings new opportunities, government must adapt, not only to shed the old, but also to take advantage of the new. Second, the nation cannot spend money that belongs to future generations. Living today on the money that will be earned tomorrow by our children and grandchildren is both morally and economically wrong. Third, what worked in the past is not necessarily adequate for the future. The performance record of a program in an industrial economy does not necessarily argue for its continuation in a knowledge-based economy.
Looking Inside the National Budget
The budget offered by Congress is premised on re-evaluation, restructuring, and reform. The budget is not simply about cutting programs; it is also about dramatically restructuring government. Indeed, while balancing the budget over the next seven years, the congressional proposal would spend 11.7 trillion dollars in federal programs, 2.2 trillion dollars more than has been spent in the last seven years. Congress believes, therefore, that it is possible both to balance the budget and to have more spending.
To do so, however, requires restructuring. As a result, proposals are under consideration to eliminate three cabinet departments, 283 separate programs, 14 federal agencies, and 68 federal commissions. This is the beginning of the process of rethinking government and reforming outmoded institutions and programs.
Science and Technology Budget Proposals
Over the next five years, the congressional proposal is to spend 111 billion dollars in civilian research and development. While the fiscal 1996 budget is smaller than that of fiscal 1995, it is still 18 percent higher than that at the beginning of the 1 980s, before the dramatic budget increases of the late 1 980s and early 1 990s.
If 1995 is taken as the base line, congressional proposals for budget allocations to basic research show, in fact, a nominal increase. This reflects a conscious decision on the part of Congress to reduce prior emphasis on corporate technology-support programs and to increase investments in basic research. While, of course, the line between basic research and technological applications is not always broad and clear, basic research has clearly been chosen as a priority because it is truly an investment in the future. Basic research is the one place government can allocate money without depending on an end product in the marketplace, thereby beginning to build the essential foundations for future discoveries and development.
A second priority that has underpinned science and technology budget decisions has resulted from the belief that federal science policy over the last twenty years has been increasingly jeopardized by political considerations. Rather than allowing peer review science to exercise basic judgments about resource allocations, the political process has been used to determine which programs live and which do not. In essence, then, the Budget Committee's structural priority is to restore the independence of such fundamental institutions as the National Science Foundation and to make them more immune from the programming pressure originating on Capitol Hill.
A Case in Point: NASA and the Space Station
Our approach to structuring the budget for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) illustrates these several points. Funding for the space station has been preserved, a controversial decision that nevertheless served to re-establish the two priorities just discussed. First, Congress recognized that the space station is an essential part of human endeavor in space, which itself is critical to basic research. The space shuttle system will require a space station sometime in the next century. Second, and perhaps more importantly, space station funding turns not only on science and technology issues, but also on the geopolitical and economic revolutions mentioned earlier. Congress and President Clinton agree that continuation of our commitment to the space station is an extremely important part of a very complex relationship between the United States and Russia. Discontinuation of the program would have endangered this country and the government of Russian President Boris Yeltsin.
Because resources are limited, however, this choice required other sacrifices. Preserving the space station will require reducing other areas within the space budget and extracting considerable savings from management reforms within NASA itself.
The Controversy Over Support for Advanced Technology
Perhaps the greatest controversy between the President and Congress has been over congressional decisions to reduce or eliminate the Advanced Technology Program (ATP) of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The ATP is intended to provide grants to private corporations for technology development. The problem is that the ATP has begun to eat away at the core mission of the NIST, which is to set scientific and technological standards; thus, one of the nation's most valuable assets is endangered. There appears to be a connection between the recipients of ATP grants and donations to political accounts in Washington, a state of affairs which, in my view, hampers reasonable choices among science priorities.
Similarly, the Department of Energy carries out a variety of high-cost research projects in technology which have led to few commercial applications. Government programs that try to use public funds to pick commercial technology winners and losers do not have an impressive record of success. The process of government grant-making is simply too If removed from the ultimate marketplace to be sensitive to whether one particular innovation is better than another and deserving of public subsidy. There is nothing particularly new about these observations, either. Recently, a constituent sent a letter that he had found in his attic written to his father in 1917 from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. In part, the letter read:
There seem to be two fairly distinct questions with regard to the value of any parachute device. First, whether it might be developed to the point of usefulness for aviators under normal conditions, and second, whether, under any conditions, it may be considered of military value. The present attitude of military authorities seems to be a negative answer to the latter question. It does not follow, however, that such devices may not have some possibilities, especially in the future commercial or industrial uses of aircraft. With such a possibility and view, development should be encouraged, at least as representing a possibility of future usefulness.
Of course, the national committee had the author's conclusion exactly backward. There is no military pilot today who climbs into an aircraft without a parachute, and no commercial passenger who dons a parachute before takeoff. The point here is that bureaucratic and political personnel are unlikely to produce the most astute scientific and technical analyses. Peer review, not politics, should underpin scientific decisions and scientific resource allocation.
The Disjunction between the Budgetary Process and Technological Innovation
Another reason why direct federal grant support for the development of advanced technology encounters problems is the disjunction between the federal budgetary process and the pace of innovation. The time lag between the first estimate of the federal budget for a fiscal year and the final passage of an appropriations bill in Congress is now about 18 months. Yet in 18 months an entire generation of consumer electronic products comes and goes. Hence, making judgments about allocating federal funds to particular technologies risks making those technologies obsolete by the time the funds are actually available.
Moreover, science is not just a line item in a program budget. A wiser strategy is to look at science and technology investments not in terms of particular products, but in terms of the nation's overall R&D expenditures. Government budgetary roles should be combined with other public policy levers that will create private investment incentives. If the government focuses direct resource allocations on basic research, it can promote the application of that research not by picking winners and losers itself, but rather by using tax policy, particularly linking the R&D tax credit for corporations to their relationships with universities, motivating commercial decision-makers to invest in those applications. As a consequence, commercial decisions are much more accurate and timely when they are made in the marketplace. Technology transfer, then, would be decoupled from government programs and become a product of commercial decisions motivated by improved tax laws.
The Department of Science Option
As government is restructured and reformed, reorganization of government agencies will also be necessary. In the cases where the elimination of agencies leaves behind critical S&T functions, these latter will need to be regathered or rehoused so that the best efforts are not lost with the elimination of outmoded programs. If, for example, the Department of Energy is eliminated, the functions of the weather research program would clearly need to be retained. There are similar situations in other public agencies whose overall mandate is outdated, however meritorious a set of particular subcomponents.
Possibly these pieces could be restructured into a Department of Science. Clearly, such a department would not encompass all federally supported science. Rather, it would provide a means for rationalizing what would be a disparate array of scientific functions that would need to survive the pruning of government structures.
The Imperative of Reform
Adjusting to a changed global economy, a new geopolitical world, and a more rapid pace of innovation, will require a rethinking of priorities throughout the federal government. Change is difficult in general and no less difficult in science and technology policy making. But change is happening around the globe. The critical challenge for government is to create a role that is focused on investing in basic science which in turn will lead to prosperity for the generations that follow.
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