Senator Jay Rockefeller on Science Policy
Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W VA) was a featured speaker at last week’s AAAS Colloquium on Science and Technology Policy. He is chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space. Some of his remarks follow:
ON THE CONSTRAINED FEDERAL BUDGET: “Strong supporters of science and technology programs in Congress need your profession to recognize and respect the realities that govern future policies, future budgets, and future funding sources. We have to be able to count on you to help us adapt and improve these tools that are so critical to building a great future.”
ON STRATEGIC RESEARCH: “As I have said on other occasions, my definition of these words is research in areas of strategic interest to this country -- areas like energy, the environment, and manufacturing. It does not mean `applied.’ Strategic research may be very fundamental research. And I want to emphasize my belief that it is entirely appropriate for a majority of taxpayer-funded research to be in strategic areas.”
ON THE DESIRABILITY OF THE NIH MODEL FOR NSF: “If we are to go down the path of strategic research, we must have a clear vision of what it is and when we have gone far enough. The concept of terminating programs is not an easy one. It means someone loses jobs. But fighting to make programs eternal means wasting money, and crowding out priorities that should take their place. For these reasons, I am not sure that a structure like that of the National Institutes of Health is sensible for the National Science Foundation. If NSF is reorganized around the current `Strategic Areas’, how will it move into new areas?”
ON PROMOTING R&D: “No matter what model we choose for addressing societal goals, we must communicate to the taxpayer the importance of R and D. Americans probably sense that technology is an important tool in job formation, but I doubt they really believe the connections. There are two approaches to solving this communications problem: One is simply to rely on a hard core of supporters and politicians like me to keep fighting for funds. The other is for everyone who truly believes in science and engineering research to spend more time making the case to the general public.” He later continued, “If R and D is to be a larger fraction of the ever decreasing Federal discretionary budget, then we must work harder with local constituents to make our case both for strategic research -- an easier sell -- and for research that will be in the future national interest.”
A FINAL WORD: “All of us in this room firmly believe that science and technology is a cornerstone of the US economy. It is now also our job to go out and spread the word. We must work together. We must recognize the limits on the public treasury. We must use all the ingenuity and scientific genius in this room to plan for the future, adapt to it, and shape it for the health and vitality of our society as a whole.”
