Sensenbrenner to Take Over Reins at House Science
The chairman of the House Science Committee has the potential to influence national science policy, yet that potential is rarely fully utilized. Leaders in the last Congress even contemplated the committee’s elimination. House Appropriations Chairman Robert Livingston (R-LA) recently remarked that he expects authorizing committees to play a more influential role in the coming year. Taking over the chair of the Science Committee from the retiring Robert Walker (R-PA) at the beginning of the 105th Congress is F. James Sensenbrenner, a 10th-term Republican from Wisconsin’s ninth district who served in the last Congress as chair of House Science’s Subcommittee on Space.
First elected to the House in 1978, Sensenbrenner is known for his conservative views and his irascible nature, particularly toward Democrats. (At an April Science Committee hearing, he referred to Democratic complaints about procedures as “squealing from the animals.”) He is a strong proponent of balancing the federal budget, having commented that he came to Washington “to get the government’s hands off of the taxpayer’s wallet.” Sensenbrenner takes pride in having topped several lists in 1994 for voting most consistently against federal spending. (In that year he also ranked lowest in the House on voting with President Clinton.) Although he has opposed science projects like the SSC, he has been an outspoken supporter of both NASA’s space station and space science programs, and argued for stabilizing the space agency’s funding. Sensenbrenner has been a long-time member of several Judiciary subcommittees, but in the 104th Congress he was passed over for those chairmanship positions and put at the head of the Space Subcommittee.
Sensenbrenner hails from a southeastern Wisconsin district that encompasses Milwaukee suburbs, small factory towns, and dairy farms. The population of 544,000 is mostly white and Germanic in origin. Wealthy by birth and a lawyer by training, Sensenbrenner spent 10 years in the Wisconsin state legislature before coming to Washington. In the most strongly Republican district in his state, he is always re-elected by an easy margin (74.5% in 1996.) Industries in Wisconsin’s ninth district include manufacturers of medical systems, electrical transformers, internal combustion engines, and plumbing fixtures. Waukesha County Technical College (enrollment 4,975) is the only higher education institution with more than 2,000 students.
As Sensenbrenner’s predecessor, Walker took pride in getting his committee’s authorization bills passed by the House, although none made it through the Senate to the President’s desk. Walker insisted that his committee’s bills helped guide the appropriations process. Part of that influence, however, could be due to the fact that he belonged to House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s (R-GA) inner circle and was Vice Chairman of the House Budget Committee -- connections that Sensenbrenner, not a member of the House Leadership, may not possess.
Under the leadership of Chairman George Brown (D-CA) in the Democratic 103rd Congress, the committee spent much time examining the state of the U.S. R&D enterprise, but rarely moved authorization bills out of committee in time to affect the appropriations process. (Brown will continue to be the Ranking Minority Member of the Science Committee in the 105th session, as he was in the 104th.)
From his record, Sensenbrenner will likely continue to be an active protector of the international space station, which he has called “an excellent foundation on which to build the future of our civilian space program.” However, the recent loss of a Russian Mars probe may cause his concerns about Russian participation in the space station project to resurface. He defended space science, supporting an increase above the President’s request in this year’s authorizing legislation, to come partly at the expense of Mission to Planet Earth. He has warned, however, that “NASA has a history of over-optimistic planning” and that many new starts will be unlikely in the current budget situation.
Not much is known of Sensenbrenner’s inclinations toward the other programs and agencies under the committee’s jurisdiction. He has often followed Walker’s lead in such matters as opposing NIST’s extramural partnerships and endorsing the elimination of NSF’s Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Directorate, calling the programs, respectively, “corporate welfare and questionable behavioral disciplines.” He has strong feelings on the proper role for the federal government in science: “We must prioritize programs and discontinue those functions that the private sector can take over from Washington.”
Sensenbrenner can be expected to place great emphasis on progress toward a balanced budget and, consequently, is more likely to seek programs that can be cut or privatized than ones to increase. If he intends to make his mark as committee chairman, he will need to act this spring, while appropriations bills are still being shaped in the House.
