Twenty-four Days to Go

In a little more than three weeks, President Clinton sends his FY 1999 budget request to Congress. This will be a year unlike any since 1971, as the President’s proposed budget will balance. Remarkably, there is talk of future budget surpluses. These developments set a new climate for science and technology spending for the fiscal year starting on October 1.

Two years ago, President Clinton and Congress were locked in disagreements over policy and spending that led to a prolonged shutdown of parts of the federal government, including NSF, NASA, and NIST. Members of Congress engaged in bitter arguments that led one longstanding representative, in announcing his retirement, to declare, “There used to be a civility. Today they would almost rather destroy another member than compromise.”

Yet a new spirit of compromise, helped greatly by a booming economy, has obscured if not alleviated many tensions. While there are still hot-button issues, Congress and the Administration are working together more amicably. A good example in science and technology is the relative ease with which Congress approved the Advanced Technology Program budget last fall.

Casting a rosy light over the upcoming budget cycle are predictions of surpluses in future federal budgets. Indicative of how rapidly this is becoming accepted was a relatively short article in this week’s Washington Post headlined “Seeing Budget in Balance, CBO [Congressional Budget Office] Projects a Decade of Surpluses.” This news, which only a year or so ago would have been viewed with astonishment as a front page article, was buried on page 15 of the Post.

So how is all of this affecting the kind of science and technology budget President Clinton will ask Congress for in 24 days? A few months ago, the outlook was not promising, with persistent reports that science budgets would be kept flat. The situation is looking better according to some talk. Developments bringing attention to R&D funding are the bipartisan introduction of S. 1305, the release of the Unified Statement on Research endorsed by more than 100 scientific societies, a strong statement of support for scientific funding by House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and constituent involvement.

Gingrich (R-Georgia) is continuing his call to increase federal spending on science. On January 5, before a Georgia Chamber of Commerce, he said, “We are on the edge, if we will have discipline, of a generation of surpluses. We are on the edge of surpluses in the $80 billion, $90 billion, $100 billion a year category. Which means we will have the resources to start looking at saving Social Security, to start looking at modernizing defense, science and transportation, and start looking at annual tax cuts, not by having one step at a time.”

It is on the issue of fiscal discipline that the White House is trying to control calls for significant new federal spending or tax cuts. This week, the President cautioned that he did not want the nation to put itself back into the “terrible hole” which “we have dug ourselves out of...with a lot of effort and a lot of pain....” Office of Management and Budget Director Frank Raines and Director of the National Economic Council Gene Sperling reiterated Clinton’s remarks at a thirty-minute briefing.

The budget for biomedical research is looking very good. The New York Times reports that Clinton will seek “a substantial increase” for this field, with many predicting that Congress will appropriate even more money. In an earlier interview with the Times, Clinton said, “I do believe that in scientific terms, the last 50 years will be seen as an age of physics and an age of space exploration. I think the next 50 years will very likely be characterized predominantly as an age of biology and the exploration of the human organism....”

Unknown is how the administration will treat other science and technology spending. The healthy economy has changed the federal budget outlook, with Gene Sperling saying at the White House this week, “you’ll see surpluses as far as the eye can see.” Hopefully, as the Administration puts the final touches on their budget based on a strong economic outlook, they will remember what the President said last month, “Half our economic growth in the last half-century has come from technological innovation and the science that supports it.”