Politics Wins Out Over Science In Congressional Debates

WASHINGTON--Senators and representatives return next week from their annual August recess knowing that they still face many important issues. But what to do about big science should not be one of them. That debate appears to have been settled, at least for this year. A series of votes this summer attempted to establish an acceptable balance between funding huge teams of scientists working on multibillion-dollar construction projects and continuing to nurture individual investigators engaged in small-scale science. The results of the debate favored size: A bill to double the superconducting supercollider's budget for the 1992 fiscal year was signed by the president last month. Both the Senate and the House have separately approved a $2 billion appropriation for the space station, although differences in the two measures must still be worked out. Those projects won out despite fervent efforts by several professional societies and individual scientists to limit big science's rate of growth, arguing that the megaprojects were robbing the little guys. What part have scientific issues played in all of this? Not a starring role: Other considerations took precedence as the legislators weighed the pros and cons of the research projects whose funding depended on their deliberations. And while that hard fact of political life might surprise--and disappoint--the average working researcher, it's something that science policy analysts see as a factor scientists need to comprehend to win over their elected officials. "If Congress believes that something is a good idea, then it will fund it," says Peter Boyce, executive director of the American Astronomical Society (AAS). "It's not an arena where logic can prevail, and it's very hard for scientists to understand that fact." This summer AAS mounted a vigorous, and ultimately futile, campaign to convince the House to support a proposal from Rep. Bob Traxler (D-Mich.) to shift nearly $2 billion away from the space station and into other scientific research (The Scientist, July 13, 1991, page 11). Jerry Grey, director of science and technology policy for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, has worked to garner support for the space station. But he agrees with Boyce that science is not the pivotal issue in the argument. "The whole debate on the space station is founded on a straw man," says Grey, whose organization's 45,000 members are mostly engineers. "The space station is not a science program, and its main purpose is not to conduct science. It's a development facility, like a wind tunnel, and while it will certainly do science, its real purpose is to support a manned space program." According to Rep. George Brown (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, which authorizes funding for several science agencies, the primary motive for congressional opponents of the two megaprojects was political, not scientific. Brown's contention stems from the situation created by last fall's budget agreement between Congress and the White House. It divides the federal budget into three parts--defense, domestic, and foreign aid programs--and prohibits any transfer of funds among them. "What you had for the past 12 years, as perhaps the central element in the normal battle between the parties, is the question of the rate of spending on defense," says Brown. "The Democrats consistently made that a major issue, and they reached a stalemate that was embodied in last fall's summit agreement. "Now, because there is a constant need for some critical defining issues between the two parties, we Democrats are looking in the area of civilian discretionary spending and at those issues the president is giving a high priority to. And these projects happen to be in science." John Pike, director of space policy for the Federation of American Scientists, agrees with Brown's assessment: "The fight has always been between proponents of domestic spending and the aerospace industry, and in the past it's been fought out within the defense budget. Now the fight has shifted to the domestic aerospace industry, and that includes the space station." Yet the coalition of organizations that backed Traxler's proposal interpreted a vote against the space station as a vote for science, Brown says, in the mistaken belief that their members would benefit directly from a `shift in funding. And they allowed themselves to be used, he says, by those whose real motive was to attack a Republican president. "The scientists fell for this thing hook, line, and sinker," says Brown. "And they did not see the need to protect the total amount of funding going to the R&D component of the national budget, which is too low. The scientists know it's too low, but under the terms of this debate they began to cannibalize each other" (see story on page 17). Not everyone in his party buys Brown's analysis, however. Rep. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), who voted against the space station and the SSC, disputes Brown's interpretation. Durbin held a July hearing on setting research priorities that featured testimony from Brown, Pike, NASA and DOE officials, and Nobel laureates Arno Penzias of AT&T Bell Laboratories and Philip Anderson of Princeton University. "This isn't a Democratic or Republican issue," says Durbin, who chairs the House Budget Committee's Task Force on Defense, Foreign Policy, and Space. "If you look at the recent votes, you'll see a majority in both parties support both issues.... I am not suggesting that the money saved from cutting the space station or the SSC should be diverted into nonscientific research. I want to see that money better spent within the space program and in other, related areas of small science. "In fact, what we are doing with the space station is not research, but rather development. And that development is of dubious value to us in comparison to what we can generate by funding basic research." Scientists opposing these megaprojects also complain that their voices are being muffled by the forces of big science. "It is impossible to emphasize too much that the big science projects, because they are very expensive, allow you to employ public relations experts," Anderson told Durbin's subcommittee. "And the political pressure behind them builds up because, of course, they are employing very important contractors and they are representing a large amount of money spent in one congressional district or another. The small science project has nobody in its favor except the future." Both sides concede that the projects must continue for at least a few more years, at a cost of several billion dollars, before their impact on science becomes clear. One Senate aide who follows the debate closely says that fact muddies the water for those trying to understand what motivates opponents and supporters of these megaprojects. "To be opposed to the projects as part of a political strategy, as Mr. Brown contends, [the projects] need to be seen as a total white elephant," the aide notes. "And it's not clear, until you spend a few billion dollars more, whether that's true." Durbin believes that the arguments presented this year by scientists will bear fruit in seasons to come. "This debate isn't over," he says. "These projects are going to remain in the news, and as they continue to have difficulties, people will be reminded that a large part of the scientific community never endorsed them in the first place. And that will help us build the case to abandon them, or at least stretch them out so that they are more affordable."

Politics Wins Out Over Science In Congressional Debates

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of