AEI Seminar: How Can Science Make Its Case to Congress?

This week Congress meets briefly to open the 105th session, then recesses till the end of the month. Activity will pick up in early February; the President’s budget request is due to be submitted to Capitol Hill on February 4, although that date may slip. Soon after the budget submission, various congressional committees will begin hearings on the funding requests for departments and agencies within their jurisdictions, and will begin to draft appropriations bills to fund these programs. Input from the science community is especially valuable during Congress’s drafting of the funding legislation.

To gain some insight into how the science community can communicate to Congress the importance of R&D, last month the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) sponsored a seminar in which experts in science and policy addressed the issue. The panelists were in unanimous agreement that scientists must actively make the case for research funding to Members of Congress, particularly as balancing the budget is likely to force cuts to the R&D enterprise. There was less consensus over whether, and how, the science community should take the initiative in setting priorities and indicating which areas could be cut. Most of the speakers agreed that funding for university research should be considered a very high priority.

Erich Bloch, former director of NSF and now a distinguished Fellow of the Council on Competitiveness, warned that “R&D cannot be unaffected” by balancing the budget, but added that the enterprise “can live within a lower budget; the sky would not fall.” While he thought that priority-setting and eliminating unnecessary bureaucracy “can go a long way in minimizing the negative effects” of such cuts, he warned that cuts made as a result of politics rather than strategic planning could be damaging.

Former Rep. Robert Walker (R-PA), who just completed a term as chair of the House Science Committee, echoed that it was “essential that science make its case” to Congress. He declared that “Congress is pro-science,” and that the science community starts out “with considerable goodwill” and a broad bipartisan consensus that the federal government should support basic research. He characterized as “destructive” a tactic used last year that ranked Members by their R&D roll call votes, saying that by not considering votes in committee and behind-the-scenes consensus, it did not reflect a broader context.

The science community has been lobbying for science for the past 50 years, said Cornelius Pings, president of the Association of American Universities, but it is currently not doing an adequate job. He encouraged university officials to get to know their Members and invite them to the universities to see the research supported by federal funding.

Pings reported that when university presidents asked him for advice, he urged them to stress “the importance of getting control of entitlements.” Normal Ornstein of AEI had similar advice. Instead of parts of the science community “fighting over the same crumbs,” he recommended that they advocate controlling entitlement growth to make more discretionary funds available for science and technology. Walker agreed that it was important to look at tax policies and other areas which would have an effect on the size of the entire federal budget.

A questioner asked whether the panel accepted that the R&D system would be downsized. “Cuts are going to be made,” responded Walker, so the community must ask what is “the best use” of federal dollars. While admitting that there is no clear delineation between basic science and “corporate welfare,” Walker argued that many things categorized as science spending are “largely life-support for technologies that can’t make it in the marketplace.” Bloch warned against the community’s letting Congress determine where to make cuts. Pings cautioned that setting R&D priorities is “complicated.” He pointed out that priorities in basic science largely evolved with the growth of new knowledge, and argued for use of the peer-review system as a means of priority-setting. Kenneth Kay, of the public relations firm Podesta Associates, added that scientists would “shirk their duties” if they did not take on priority-setting. The critical question, he said, was determining how to ensure that as the R&D enterprise is reduced, “what’s left is more relevant” to the future than today’s system.