Scientists Report That Communicating With Congress Is Simple, Effective

SIDEBAR : Sources For Help In Contacting Congress TIMES CHANGE: Robert Park says scientists can no longer afford to rest on their laurels. With continuing calls for massive cuts in federal R&D spending, scientists are finding it ever more important to lobby Congress for continued funding. Those who have taken the plunge report that lobbying Congress is easier, more productive, and less aversive than it may appear. "For years we felt that what we do is so important that anyone but a fool would recognize it, and all we have to do is sit back and they should come to us and ask us what we need. And that used to work," notes Robert L. Park, director of public information for the College Park, Md.-based American Physical Society and a professor of physics at the University of Maryland, College Park. But those days are over, observes R.D. Shelton, a professor of engineering and computer science at Loyola College in Baltimore. "This is really serious business. The corporate fad of downsizing has reached Washington in the form of this balanced-budget frenzy. Because scientists and engineers are not speaking out, their budgets are being cut, perhaps disproportionately." Photo: James Rowe NO ALTERNATIVE: James Rowe notes that many longtime congressional science champions have departed. Another factor, remarks James H. Rowe, vice president for government, community, and public affairs at Harvard University, is "an unprecedented turnover in Congress." In the Senate alone, there have been 13 retirements and one resignation -- by Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole. "A good number of those individuals have been strong champions of research," notes Rowe. "So what we're faced with is extraordinary turnover, the loss of past champions, and the bipartisan commitment to balancing the budget. . . . Given all that, I don't think there's any practical alternative to getting more mobilized." Rowe is one of the prime movers behind the Science Coalition, a two-year-old organization of 371 members that includes universities, companies, associations, and individuals who have banded together to communicate to Congress the importance of federal support for scientific research. 'AN OPEN INSTITUTION': Edward Abrahams points out Congress members' receptivity to lobbyists. Becoming mobilized doesn't necessarily mean joining a large organization. And one needn't be a Washington insider to influence Congress, notes Edward Abrahams, director of government and community relations at Brown University. "Most people don't realize how accessible Congress is," Abrahams observes. "This is an open institution. They are lobbied all the time by a plethora of groups. They expect it." While some scientists worry that a new law -- the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995, which took effect on Jan. 1, 1996-may place inconvenient limits on lobbying, the consensus is that the law will have little or no effect on science lobbying (T.W. Durso, The Scientist, May 13, 1996, page 1; A.L. Burke, The Scientist, May 13, 1996, page 11). The law requires some lobbyists to register and places certain restrictions on lobbying by nonprofit organizations. "Lobbying for us, especially in the nonprofit sector, really is education -- explaining what you do," Abrahams points out. "It's not buttonholing a congressman and asking him to vote in a particular way. It's explaining how and what NSF [the National Science Foundation] has done . . . and how that's made a difference in the lives of American citizens." Most large universities employ someone like Abrahams who can give scientists advice on whom they should contact in Congress and how to do so. Additionally, many scientific societies have government-relations specialists who perform the same function and communicate with interested members of the society whenever an important issue arises. RAPID RESPONSE: Pasko Rakic describes help for neuroscientists. For example, the Washington, D.C.-based Society for Neuroscience maintains a Rapid Response Network. According to the society's president, Pasko Rakic, a professor of neuroscience and chairman of neurobiology at Yale University Medical School, 11,000 of the society's 26,000 members have submitted their E-mail addresses to the network. Whenever an issue of particular importance arises, these 11,000 scientists receive a message detailing the issue, recommending a course of action, and providing contact information for each scientist's representatives. The Bethesda, Md.-based Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) this month inaugurated BioInfoNet, a public policy network that focuses on life scientists in research-intensive universities in the U.S. The network is organized around campus coordinators, who take FASEB's informational communiqués and action alerts regarding federal policy and redistribute them to interested scientists via local campus E-mail networks. Another approach was taken by the American Institute of Physics (AIP), based in College Park, Md. AIP has produced a series of colorful, one-page leaflets called "Physics Success Stories," highlighting the role of government-funded physics research in the such areas as cleaning the air, developing medical imaging techniques, and creating new jobs and consumer goods. AIP recommends that scientists enclose these leaflets with letters they send to members of Congress or leave them behind if they visit a congressional office. MAIL BONDING: R.D. Shelton syas legislators take letters seriously. Aside from one's institution or professional society, there are a number of resources that can aid scientists interested in contacting Congress. For basic information, including names, addresses, phone numbers, and E-mail addresses of senators and representatives, the CapWeb site on the World Wide Web is authoritative. And Shelton, who served as a government fellow in a program sponsored by the Washington, D.C.-based Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), has placed some of his advice on another Web site (see list on page 15 for addresses). But perhaps the most down-to-earth advice comes from a slim volume called Working With Congress: A Practical Guide for Scientists and Engineers (Washington, D.C., American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1996) by William G. Wells, Jr. An associate professor of management science at George Washington University, Wells has served as a consultant to two presidential science advisers -- D. Allan Bromley and John H. Gibbons. Wells's most basic piece of advice is, "Learn the rules of the game before you start playing. It's insulting to walk into a congressional office and display abysmal ignorance or naïveté either about the individual or the system." For example, he says, "You don't go in two weeks before Congress is ready to adjourn and say, 'I'd like you to introduce this bill.' You need to know the budget cycle." Sources For Help In Contacting Congress American Association for the Advancement of Science 1200 New York Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005 (800) 731-4939 ¤ Fax: (202) 842-1065 http://www.aaas.org American Institute of Physics One Physics Ellipse , College Park, Md. 20740-3843 (301) 209-3100 ¤ Fax: (301) 209-0843 http://www.aip.org American Physical Society One Physics Ellipse, College Park, Md. 20740-3843 (301) 209-3200 ¤ Fax: (301) 209-0867 http://www.aps.org FASEB 9650 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, Md. 20814 (301) 571-0657 ¤ Fax: (301) 571-0686 http://www.faseb.org/opa CapWeb's Congressional Web Site http://policy.net/capweb/congress.html Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 1828 L St., N.W., Suite 1202, Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 785-0017 ¤ Fax: (202) 785-0835 http://ieee.org Research!America 1522 King St., Alexandria, Va. 22314 (703) 739-2577 ¤ Fax: (703) 739-2372 researcham@aol.com Science Coalition 1317 F St., N.W., Suite 600, Washington, D.C. 20004 (202) 789-2495 ¤ Fax: (202) 289-4141 TSC_ADMIN@clsdc.com R.D. Shelton's Web Site http://justice.loyola.edu/~rds/asee96.html Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry 1010 N. 12th Ave., Pensacola, Fla. 32501-3307 (904) 469-1500 ¤ Fax: (904) 4699-9778 http://www.setac.org/ Society for Neuroscience 11 Dupont Circle, N.W., #500, Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 462-6688 http://www.sfn.org/ The simplest way to contact a member of Congress is by writing a letter. Although some people express a sense of futility about letter-writing, imagining the thousands of letters pouring into every congressional office, Shelton maintains that letters are taken very seriously indeed. Shelton should know. He joined the IEEE-USA Government Fellows Program, which places society members in congressional or executive-branch offices to provide assistance on policy issues involving science and technology. IEEE is one of several scientific societies offering such a project. Shelton's fellowship had him working in the office of Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) as a legislative assistant. "Constituent mail is a very big part of a legislative assistant's job," Shelton recalls. "We spent roughly half of every day drafting letters for the congressman to respond to these constituent letters." He was amazed at how few of these letters came from scientists. "Compared to other, better-organized communities, scientists are woefully inadequate in lobbying," Shelton comments. "Every scientist should write three or four letters to his congressman every year, just letting him know what he's concerned about," he continues. "Be respectful, constructive, short -- no more than a page long -- and interesting. Provide some facts that the office can use. Offer to help. Give them a phone number, saying that you're available if they would like to learn more about the subject." CARDS AND LETTERS: Mary Woolley urges writing to Congress. That's not the only time a scientist should write, notes Mary Woolley, president of Research!America, an Alexandria, Va.-based research-advocacy organization. "Every scientist, when they get a grant or a contract or some kind of federal funding, should write a letter to their own member of Congress and thank them for their part in bringing those tax dollars to their home district," she advises. "Tell them what they're buying with those dollars: jobs for a number of people, a contribution to the economy . . . and a contribution to the health and well-being of not just that congressional district, but the country and maybe even the world." Scientists shouldn't write to just any congressman, warns Shelton: "It needs to be their congressmen and senators, not somebody s. Out-of-district mail is routinely thrown out. Congressmen and senators have very little interest in people who don't vote for them." But at least one congressman who is highly experienced in scientific issues begs to differ. Rep. George E. Brown, Jr. (D-Calif.) is running for his 17th term in the House of Representatives. Brown is the ranking Democrat on -- and former chairman of -- the House Committee on Science. While he acknowledges that as a general rule mail from nonconstituents isn't taken seriously, there is an exception: "A scientist writing about something that he is uniquely knowledgeable about to a congressman who may have something to do with it will get an answer. That's a different category of letter." Brown points out that "the main problem that scientists ought to be involved in lobbying on is not specific projects, it's the priority for science as a whole. Right now the entire science and technology budget . . . is facing a dramatic, sharp, 25 percent decline after having been on a growth curve now for the last 50 years. That is the situation that demands the attention of the scientific community, not the specifics of which programs will be hurt and which won't." ACTIVIST: Chemist Gregory Voth contacted his legislators. This is the approach that Gregory A. Voth, an associate professor of chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania, took two years ago when he began contacting his representative and senators. Upset at proposals that would drastically slash Department of Defense (DOD) basic research funds, Voth immediately wrote a letter to his congressman, Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.). "I described who I was and what stood to be lost . . . and how much it would damage the country," explains Voth. "And I also contacted my federal relations people here at the University of Pennsylvania and alerted them to what was at stake. That really got them mobilized. They started working with me in contacting some key people, arranging some visits for me down in Congress." Voth has now visited the offices of both of his senators (Arlen Specter and Rick Santorum, both Republicans) as well as Weldon, his representative. "Generally you don't actually get to see the senators or congressmen, but you get to see fairly receptive and important staff people." Voth hastens to add, "All of this was totally aboveboard. It was not an attempt to get pork-barrel money or anything. I made it very clear [to Rep. Weldon] that if the money is there, if it's appropriated for good programs, we can compete for that money, because we're good." But not everyone agrees that lobbying Congress is a worthwhile activity. Some believe that lobbying is futile unless scientists are willing to make financial contributions to campaign coffers or to political action committees (PACs), a prospect they regard with considerable distaste. CRITIC: Rod Parrish deplores the need for scientists to "play by Washington rules." For example, Rod Parrish, executive director of the Pensacola, Fla.-based Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, recently wrote a letter to Science (273:561, Aug. 2, 1996) in which he characterized calls for scientists to become more active politically to be "both compelling and repelling." Parrish tells The Scientist that the compelling part is that scientists do need to have a voice in how research dollars are spent. The repelling part is the idea that "we have to play by Washington rules and speak Washington language. The reason that we're in the sorry state that we're in is because of the Washington language and the Washington rules. I think we have to try to be logical and honest and open to effect changes, but I don't think it's necessary that we do the kind of ridiculous games that are played in Washington today by professional lobbyists and others: wining and dining, and currying favor and contributing to PACs and that sort of thing." "If you want to play a game, you first have to learn the rules of the game and play according to the rules," counters Shelton. "Maybe if you're successful at that and become a leader at that game, you might have some influence in slightly changing the rules, but that comes much later." "We've got to work in political campaigns," adds Wells. "We in the scientific and engineering world have a terrible reputation politically in both parties as people who show up only when we've got a problem, as [people who are] whiners." Wells is organizing a group of scientists who wish to help the Clinton-Gore presidential campaign, and says he hopes that other scientists would be working with the Dole-Kemp campaign. Whatever one's approach to scientists' lobbying efforts, Abrahams says, "it's working pretty well. A lot of people have the feeling it's going to hell in a handbasket, but given the context that we're in -- that the budget's going to be cut, that taxes are going to be cut -- one would have to assume that science is doing fairly well, with large increases at NIH [the National Institutes of Health], flat funding at NSF, and flat funding at DOD." But that's no argument for complacency. As a final word of advice, Wells offers, "Don't be a political couch potato. Just don't sit home on your butts, or in your offices, or in your labs, and whine, 'But as one person I can't do anything.' If we did that in science or engineering work we'd . . . never get anyplace, and I think the same thing applies in the political setting." Robert Finn, a freelance science writer based in Long Beach, Calif., is online at finn@nasw.org.

Scientists Report That Communicating With Congress Is Simple, Effective

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