House Hearing on NSF Request; PCAST Meeting

NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION HEARING: NSF Director Neal Lane and National Science Board Chairman Richard Zare appeared before the House Subcommittee on Basic Research on March 5. This was a low-key hearing, lasting around 90 minutes, that was the first of three by the subcommittee on the NSF FY 1998 budget request. It started with Rep. Vernon Ehlers (R-MI), substituting for chairman Steven Schiff (R-NM) stating, “I believe the President, with this FY 1998 budget request for NSF, has presented a realistic proposal from which we on the Science Committee can work. In the last Congress, we were supportive of a 3 percent annual increase in NSF’s Research and Related Activities Account. NSF’s request for FY 1998 of 3.4% growth thus converges with the Congress’ view of how we can both balance the budget and provide some growth in our federally supported research enterprise.”

Ehlers identified “several items of particular interest to the Subcommittee.... The Major Research Equipment Account, where new expensive proposals for a Polar Cap Observatory, a Millimeter Array radio telescope, and infrastructure improvements in the Antarctic [see FYI #29 ], will receive increased attention.” Ehlers called the requested 1% increase in NSF’s Education and Human Resources budget “inconsistent with the President’s rhetoric” on education.

In response to a question, Zare said the National Science Board is considering expanding its role from that of an NSF “Board of Trustees” to that of an overseer of federal science. Ehlers explained that House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) and Science Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) were interested in Ehlers chairing a congressional task group for a “complete review of national science policy” over the long term. Subcommittee members raised other questions, including the Advanced Technology Education Program, the Next Generation Internet, social and behavioral sciences, supercomputing centers, the role of private v. public funding, and NSF’s cost management control systems.

All and all, this was a friendly hearing, with subcommittee members expressing support, perhaps qualified in some instances, for the foundation’s budget request. A hearing by the VA, HUD, Independent Appropriations Subcommittee is scheduled for April 10.

PRESIDENTIAL COMMITTEE OF ADVISORS ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY: PCAST held a public session on the afternoon of March 6 at which science funding was discussed from a variety of perspectives. T. J. Glauthier of OMB described the new budget benchmark: “In this environment, being frozen is a pretty good thing.” He said the administration’s focus this year was for science budgets that were reliable, manageable, and predictable, with better long term outlooks than those of a year ago. Glauthier said that the administration’s “priority programs” were those with a cost-of-living increase. Al Teich of the American Association for the Advancement of Science summarized AAAS’s preliminary findings, one of which is that except NIH and NSF, all other R&D spending by major federal science agencies declined when calculated in constant dollars for the period FY 1994-1997. Basic research increased slightly. Looking ahead, defense R&D is projected to decline 17.6%, and nondefense R&D projected to decline 9.5%, from FY 1997-2002, both expressed in constant dollars, under the administration’s budget plans.

OSTP Director John Gibbons remarked that the biomedical community has done a good job of communicating their relevance to the average American family. He urged other disciplines to follow their example.

Also briefing PCAST members were Rep. Ehlers and Rep. George Brown (D-CA). Brown discussed science as a component of cultural evolution, and wondered aloud about how best to reach the next stage of growth. Ehlers said “there is a lot of support for science in Congress,” with science viewed more favorably by Congress than the public. He called for more education of the public about science, saying that without this it will be difficult to obtain greater federal support of science. He bemoaned declining corporate support for basic research, and called for a rethinking of national science policy. Paraphrasing a statement Brown has made, Ehlers remarked, “We don’t have a science policy, we have a budget policy.”