Observers See Ominous Trend In '96 Science Budget

Sidebar:Projected Efforts of Congressional Budget Resolution on Nondefense R&D for the years 1995 to 2002. Analysts say funding cuts represent a shift in Congress away from traditionally 'reflexive' support for scientific initiatives Senate and House committees surprised many science-minded Americans last month when-after months of rumored cuts-they decided to sustain funding for nondefense medical and basic research through 1996. Few analysts were surprised, however, when the committees began to slash funds for energy and environmental research and federal technology-transfer programs. PLAYER: Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif) has a new take on science funding. Albert H. Teich, who directs science-policy programs for the 140,000-member, Washington, D.C.-based American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), says fiscal conservatives in Congress telegraphed their intent during weeks of debate over government funding for science by mounting their "greatest assault" on environment, energy, and technology-transfer programs, initiatives favored by the Clinton administration. The Senate has voted on all but one of the 11 science-related appropriations bills. The remaining bill funds the Department of Labor and the Department of Health and Human Services, the parent agency of the National Institutes of Health. Going into the October recess, the measure was stalled by a Senate deadlock over a provision that would rescind a presidential order prohibiting the government from doing business with companies that permanently replace strikers. At the time, Senate majority leader Robert Dole (R-Kan.) had not scheduled the measure for debate because he was unable to round up the 60 votes necessary to break a threatened Democratic filibuster. Although at press time, Congress has not yet completed work on the 11 bills -- making it impossible to assess specific funding levels for various science-based agencies -- common themes have nonetheless begun to emerge. Those themes took on sharper definition when the legislators returned from the recess last week. The message of By Steve Sternberg 1996, according to scientists and analysts, is not that the Republican-led Congress seems to favor politically palatable research programs over such controversial programs as those designed to yield knowledge about, and conserve, natural resources. It is that the days of reflexive congressional support for science may be over. "This is only the first step in what looks like a long-term decline in funding," says Eugene Skolnickoff, a professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a veteran of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy during the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Carter administrations. OMINOUS: John Suttie fears this year's cuts reflect a trend against science in Congress. "We are intentionally trying to dismantle an enterprise that is accepted as the leading one of its kind in the world, and without any apparent understanding of the consequences. I am appalled," he maintains. John Suttie, president-elect of the Bethesda, Md.-based Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) and a professor of biochemistry and nutrition at the University of Wisconsin, echoes Skolnickoff's concern that programs spared in 1996 may be cut in 1997. "We're locked into a commitment to move toward a more balanced budget," he observes. "That commitment overrides almost everything else. This is just the start. We're looking at decreases every year." This may be a particularly harsh reality for his organization, widely criticized last year for demanding excessive funding for NIH. Suttie says prior demands were justified in the face of science's pressing challenges. This year, he asserts, science's budget requests are even more urgent. A study released by AAAS in August concluded Suttie's fear is anything but overblown ("Interim Report on Congressional Appropriations for R&D in FY 1996," Washington, D.C., AAAS, 1995). It found that this year's congressional action will, in just seven years, cut federal funding for nonmilitary research by a third. AAAS called the cutbacks, which erase some programs, "the most significant across-the-board funding cuts to the research-and-development enterprise in the post-World War II era." Larry Hart, staff assistant to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Science Committee's energy and science subcommittee, takes issue with this view. "Most of the cuts have not come in science, even though they come under titles in the budgets that call themselves research and development," he points out. "Under R&D, you have every bureaucratic expense from travel to paper clips." Hart says the only exception to this was fusion research, which was cut "based on a cost-benefit analysis showing that $9 billion had been spent over the last 40 years with nothing to show for it. We were facing the prospect that we would spend $25 billion more without accomplishing anything." Some organizations and government agencies are likely to fare better than others. The House of Representatives has voted NIH an increase of about 6 percent over its $11.3 billion 1995 budget. The National Science Foundation's R&D budget would decline slightly to $2.4 billion, a drop of 2.3 percent from its 1995 level. But the budgets of the Department of Energy (DOE), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the United States Geological Survey (USGS), and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) face cuts of up to 35 percent, and some core initiatives -- such as the Advanced Technology Program, the Environmental Technology Initiative at EPA, and advanced reactor R&D at DOE-face eradication. Members of both chambers have begun to meet in committees to craft compromise versions of the spending measures. Their decisions will establish research priorities; affect the lives of thousands of scientists nationwide; and may, ultimately, determine the pace of progress in scientific fields as diverse as immunology and particle physics. Although more moderate than the House, the Republican-led Senate has demonstrated it shares the ideological leanings of its colleagues in the opposite chamber. Perhaps the best example came earlier this year, when both houses agreed to eliminate the Office of Technology Assessment, reportedly because the nonpartisan agency-praised for its unbiased research by Democrats and Republicans alike -- has supplied data that have been used to justify federal regulation (S. Sternberg, The Scientist, Sept. 4, 1995, page 1). More recently, the Senate appropriations committee decided that the House had been disproportionately generous to NIH and recommended that the agency receive just 2.7 percent over last year's $11.3 billion budget, 3 percent less than the House voted. Suttie of FASEB, whose members rely on NIH for much of their funding, says his organization can only hope that the House will prevail when the two chambers hammer out compromise legislation in conference committee. No one can predict precisely how much of last year's $73 billion research and development budget will survive. The president requested $72 billion, but Congress is likely to approve less than Clinton asked for. Hart of the House science and energy subcommittee says worse may be in store if Clinton and Congress cannot agree on specific appropriations measures. In that case, a continuing budget resolution adopted before the October recess -- which was designed to allow government to function for six weeks while Congress and the administration continue to debate controversial appropriations -- may remain in force. The problem is this: President Clinton and Congress agreed to enforce deficit reduction even through the continuing budget resolution, so the measure does not provide full funding for any branch of government. In effect, Hart comments, the resolution "does what we didn't want to do, which was cut basic science and retain other [science] programs." And, he says, "it is unclear what will happen next. Congress may arrive at some agreement with the president" or, if the two sides cannot agree, "vote to keep the continuing budget resolution for the next year, cutting all science programs mindlessly to reduce the deficit. How this turns out will make a big difference in these budgets." Either way, Teich and other advocates -- including officials at science-based agencies -- maintain, science will suffer. "You can't cut off a branch of scientific research and expect it to grow back," Teich says. "There will be serious ramifications for the entire nation if these cuts are approved and we have no way of determining exactly what those ramifications might be." Mary Good, the Department of Commerce undersecretary who heads the threatened Office of Technology Policy and other endangered programs at NIST, points out that the belt-tightening may ultimately affect the nation's fiscal well-being, by cutting off research into areas that promise to build new strength in the economy. "These cuts will not be dramatic in terms of the impact on the public today or tomorrow, but they will have an impact on the economy down the road," Good says. Denise Graveline, a spokeswoman for DOE, asserts that the cuts are also likely to have an eventual impact on the quality of life in communities around the nation: "One of the bigger cuts in the House is for research into the safety of the nation's drinking water -- and this at a time when water poses a growing microbial threat." Even within agencies, the proposed cutbacks will be uneven. Early action by the House and some committees in both chambers offer indications of the budgetary narrows approaching downstream. According to AAAS and agency officials, this is how certain agencies would fare: Department of Energy: The House called for an R&D budget of $5.8 billion, 7.2 percent below the administration's request. Basic research programs including those in General Science and Basic Energy Sciences would increase by 6.1 percent over last year's budget, while solar energy, light water reactors, and energy-conservation programs would be markedly cut. The Energy Research Lab Technology Transfer Program and advanced reactor research and development would be phased out. According to Kei Koizumi, coordinator of AAAS's research and development budget and policy project and an author of the AAAS interim budget analysis, the cuts could mean that "if fusion becomes commercially viable, it's possible that U.S. may not be among leader nations." In addition, new solar technologies would be slower to develop, he says. "It's uncertain how the private sector would respond," he notes. "Would it really step in, as the Republican party claims, and do the research? Or would the research go undone?" National Aeronautics and Space Administration: The House appropriated $9 billion for NASA's research and development programs, 7.4 percent less than in 1995. The Mission to Planet Earth program would be cut by 22 percent to $1 billion. The Senate, in contrast, sustained the program at about the 1995 level of $1.3 billion. Complains Skolnickoff of MIT: "Apparently some people in Congress believe we don't need to know a lot about our environment." The House also would cut the Space Infrared Telescope Facility and the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy. NSF: Specific cuts remain unclear, except that the House voted to decrease the agency's spending on R&D facilities from $376 million in fiscal 1995 -- an amount rescinded in July to $244 million -- to $170 million in fiscal 1996, under an agreement with NSF. Work on the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, the Green Bank Telescope, and the Gemini Telescopes would continue. Department of Commerce: One year ago, Congress approved a 19 percent increase in the department's R&D budget. In fiscal 1996, Commerce's R&D programs would be reduced by 33.6 percent to $741.4 million, according to the AAAS report. Much of the cutback would be accomplished through the elimination of NIST's Advanced Technology Program, which funds preliminary, cost-shared R&D at corporate laboratories. "Many Republican lawmakers had criticized this program as a subsidy for wealthy corporations and an example of government involvement in an area where the market should allocate resources," the report says. HOME ECONOMICS: Mary Good points out that some cuts may hurt the economy. Good notes that NIST laboratories appear likely to get slightly more than they received last year. But construction funds earmarked for NIST to replace its 10-year-old measurement laboratories have been rescinded, handicapping its efforts to achieve the nano-level measurements that the semiconductor industry can't afford, but needs to remain globally competitive. "We're left with a budget that will only allow maintenance and repair. It is not really a good picture," she comments. Skolnickoff reports that the extent of the proposed cutbacks took him entirely by surprise. "I am a political scientist who has worked in this area for a long time. I would never have predicted what is happening now," he says. "I guess it means I'm not a very good political scientist. To me, it's incredible." Steve Sternberg is a freelance science writer based in Alexandria, Va. (The Scientist, Vol:9, #20, pg.1, 4-5 , October 16, 1995) (Copyright © The Scientist, Inc.)

Observers See Ominous Trend In '96 Science Budget

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