Office of Science and Technology Policy Director John Marburger was
the keynote speaker at the AAAS Forum on Science and Technology Policy
on April 20. The following are selections from Marburger's address regarding
the rationale for increased physical sciences funding, the American
Competitiveness Initiative, priority setting for funding, competition
between scientific fields, and earmarking. Marburger's full remarks
may be read at http://www.ostp.gov/html/JHMAAASpolicyforum.pdf
AMERICAN COMPETITIVENESS INITIATIVE - HISTORICAL CONTEXT:
"These [also the Advanced Energy Initiative] are long term initiatives
based on a conviction that science is fundamentally important for our
future economic competitiveness, and for national and homeland security,
the President's three highest priorities. In the larger context of post
cold war science policy, the American Competitiveness Initiative [ACI].
. . is part of a long evolution that began in the early 1990's and will
likely continue into the next decade."
PAYING FOR THE ACI:
"The question immediately comes to mind: How are you going to
fund a major initiative like this and cut [overall non-security discretionary]
spending at the same time? The ACI proposes nearly a billion dollars
($910 million) of new research funding for three specific agencies,
and a commitment to double their combined budgets over 10 years -- a
total of $50 billion during that period. To increase incentives for
industrial research, the Budget would forego $4.6 billion of tax receipts
for companies that invest in research and experimentation, for a 10
year cost of $86.4 billion. The education component of the ACI would
add another $380 million in FY07. The President's FY2007 budget does
not increase overall non-defense discretionary budget authority, and
the request for nondefense R&D budget is proposed to increase at
a rate slightly less than inflation. Accommodating the ACI in a flat
or declining budget is only possible by setting priorities and allocating
funds differentially to the highest priority programs. The key phrase
in the President's reference to this program is the ‘American Competitiveness
Initiative that targets funding…' The FY07 budget for science is
very clearly about priorities."
COMPETITION BETWEEN SCIENTIFIC FIELDS:
"The word ‘prioritize' sends shivers down the backs of most
science advocates," Marburger said. He cited a speech given eighteen
years ago by National Academy of Sciences President Frank Press which
Marburger said "was a shocker of a speech because Frank made concrete
proposals for how to prioritize science in a time of fiscal constraint,
and urged his colleagues to participate in the process." Marburger
continued, "I regard Frank's 1988 address as a key document in
the history of American science policy. He prepared it at a time when
scientists were chafing under the crunch of a serious budget deficit
that the President and Congress were struggling to get under control.
Research opportunities were outstripping growth in the non-defense federal
science budget and different sectors of the science community were sniping
nastily at each other. . . . "
"These [funding levels and priorities] remain the issues today,
but in the intervening years something very important has happened,
and the atmosphere is different. I am not sure there ever was a time
that scientists felt their sponsored funds were commensurate with their
opportunities for discovery, and frustration over that gap is widespread
to this day. But I no longer see the sharp-edged ill-will among different
fields that worried [Frank] Press nearly twenty years ago. Those were
the final years of Cold War science policy and cracks had begun to appear
in the framework of mutual understanding among sponsors and researchers
that had supported science since Sputnik. Today we are emerging from
that long transition in U.S. science policy I mentioned that began at
about the time of Frank Press's 1988 address. Let me reflect for a moment
on what happened during that period.
"In 1989 the Berlin wall came down, and Tim Berners-Lee and colleagues
at CERN launched the world wide web. Two years later historians declared
the cold war officially over, and Congress began looking for a peace
dividend. Within the Department of Defense, the largest sponsor of university
based engineering research, science was not spared. In 1993 Congress
terminated the superconducting super collider and narrowly authorized
the international space station project with a margin of one vote. The
ebbing tide of cold war weapons production had revealed a huge problem
of environmental contamination at Department of Energy weapons facilities,
and DOE science funding went flat. House Science Committee chairman
George Brown admonished scientists in general, and physical scientists
in particular, to seek a new post-cold war rationale for government
funding of their work. Industries that had supported productive research
laboratories began reducing budgets and shrinking their horizons. Some
were reacting to reductions in defense spending, and others to deregulation
and continued competitive pressure from Japan and the then emerging
Asian ‘tiger economies.'
"Science, meanwhile, saw new horizons opening with the almost
miraculous appearance of powerful tools generated by the information
technology revolution. If Frank Press's late 1980's were a ‘golden
age' for science, the 1990's revealed a platinum, or even a diamond
age of discovery based on new capabilities for managing complex or data
intensive systems, and especially the extraordinarily complex systems
of the life sciences. The coming twenty-first century was described
as the century of biology in contrast with the old century of physics.
The new technologies, to be sure, were based on physical science, but
it appeared to be a known and reliable physical science that had provided
an inventory of capabilities ‘on the shelf' that the military or
industry could exploit in its own new breed of shorter horizon, development-oriented,
R&D laboratories. Industrial research made Moore's ‘law' come
true during this decade, and produced the devices and systems that lured
entrepreneurs and their financial backers into the dotcom bubble. These
conditions tended to obscure the role of basic research in the physical
sciences and depress the perception of its importance in the agencies
on which the field had depended since World War II."
FUNDING PRIORITY PRINCIPLES:
Marburger cited a 1995 NRC committee report, a 1998 report prepared
by Rep. Vernon Ehlers (R-MI), several PCAST reports, a Council of Competitiveness
Report, and last year's National Academy Report ("Rising Above
the Gathering Storm...) and then stated: "These reports contributed
to a clear basis for establishing funding priorities among programs
and agencies in the ACI initiative, launched in President Bush's January
2006 State of the Union message. The policy principles are first that
funding long term, high risk research is a federal responsibility; second
that areas of science most likely to contribute to long term economic
competitiveness should receive priority; and third that current levels
of funding for research in the physical sciences are too low in many
agencies.
"The American Competitiveness Initiative identifies the National
Science Foundation, the Department of Energy Office of Science, the
National Institute for Standards and Technology, and the Department
of Defense as key agencies with major funding satisfying the three principles,
and seeks to double the budgets of the first three over the next decade.
The current year increase for the sum of the three is 9.3%. . . . My
point in recounting history since Frank Press's 1988 speech is to contrast
the reluctance of non-government science stakeholders at that time to
discuss priorities among different fields with what can be read as a
consensus within some of the same communities today that even in a time
of budgetary constraint something needs to be done with the budgets
in at least some areas of physical science research."
IMPACT OF THE "GATHERING STORM" REPORT:
"[T]he ‘Gathering Storm' report played an important role
in bringing diverse components together under the theme of economic
competitiveness and created an atmosphere in which such a complex set
of proposals could receive favorable treatment by Congress. The report's
authors, and particularly the committee chairman Norman Augustine, deserve
a great deal of credit for investing time and energy to raise awareness
of the need for a set of coordinated actions to ensure the future economic
competitiveness of our nation."
IMPACT OF EARMARKING:
"I have said little about the budgets of other areas of science,
or the details of how the ACI can be funded without serious negative
impacts on other areas of science funding. The fact is that the FY07
cost of the ACI is dwarfed by the $2.7 billion in current year earmarks
in the research budget. Earmarking has increased rapidly during the
past five years, and has reached the point where it now threatens the
missions of the agencies whose funds have been directed toward purposes
that do not support the agency work-plans. From the point of view of
transparency in government operations, earmarking at this level erodes
the value of reported budget numbers for inferring agency resources."
"Earmarking and prioritization are clearly related. One person's
priority is another's earmark. One of the drivers for earmarking is
the reluctance of individuals or institutions to participate in the
merit based review procedures that are best practices in most funding
agencies today. Another is the absence of funding programs for categories
of expense that are deemed important even sometimes by the targeted
agencies. I believe that where science stakeholders can form a consensus
on priorities, the negative impact of earmarking can be greatly diminished."
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