Congressional Effort to Increase DOE Funding Needs Your Help
Now that Congress has returned from its recess, the appropriations committees will start putting together their funding bills for FY 2003. Among those bills of considerable interest to the physics community is the Energy and Water Development Appropriations bill that funds the programs of the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. The Bush Administration has requested increases in funding for physics research programs ranging from 1.7% to 6.5% for next year (see FYI #16 ).
House and Senate appropriators will be hard-pressed this year, as they are every year, to draft legislation that meets competing needs while staying within their budget. The Energy and Water bill is expected to be particularly difficult because of reductions the Administration has proposed in Army Corps of Engineers projects.
One effective way to indicate support for a program is for a letter to be sent to appropriators signed by many Members of Congress. A letter drafted by Rep. Judy Biggert (R-IL) and Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-CA) in support of funding for the Office of Science has been sent to their colleagues. The text of this letter is below.
There are many such letters circulating on Capitol Hill. The probability that a letter will be signed increases when constituents express interest to their Member of Congress. Biggert and Tauscher are now seeking signatures for their letter. A similar letter last year was signed by 105 Members.
The House of Representatives maintains a web site - http://www.house.gov/writerep/ - that allows constituents to contact their representative by e-mail. Another House site - http://www.house.gov/house/MemberWWW.html - will direct you to an individual Member’s site with their telephone numbers. Both sites use zip codes. Traditional US mail is not recommended because of lengthy screening procedures.
The Biggert/Tauscher letter to key House appropriators follows. Time is of the essence.
Dear Chairman Young and Ranking Member Obey, and Chairman Callahan and Ranking Member Visclosky:
We are writing to express our strong support for the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science and the world class scientific research that it funds. To this end, we would encourage you to significantly increase fiscal year 2003 funding for the DOE Office of Science above the level appropriated in fiscal year 2002. Increased funding will allow for the fullest utilization of the tremendous scientific talent and world’s best research facilities that are supported by the DOE Office of Science.
The DOE Office of Science is the nation’s primary supporter of the physical sciences, providing an important partner and key user facilities in the areas of biological sciences, physics, chemistry, environmental sciences, mathematics and computing, and engineering. This federal research and development funding goes to scientists and students not just at our national labs, but at our colleges and universities as well. Furthermore, the DOE Office of Science supports a unique system of programs based on large-scale, specialized user facilities and large teams of scientists focused on national priorities in scientific research. This makes the Office of Science unique among, and complementary to, the scientific programs of many other federal science agencies, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF).
We applaud the strong support shown for research conducted within the NIH and NSF, and ask that this level of support be extended to the DOE Office of Science. Future medical breakthroughs depend on fundamental advances in the physical sciences and other research conducted by the DOE Office of Science. One recent example is the Human Genome Project, which progressed so rapidly because of advanced computing and biological technologies pioneered by the DOE Office of Science. Harold Varmus, former director of the NIH, said, “Medical advances may seem like wizardry. But pull back the curtain, and sitting at the lever is a high-energy physicist, a combinational chemist, or an engineer.”
While federally supported medical research like that conducted by NIH has doubled, funding for research in the physical sciences has remained stagnant. In constant dollars, the budget for the DOE Office of Science is still only at its 1990 level. It is the research itself that has been most negatively impacted by this funding shortfall, since the cost of maintaining existing facilities continues to rise with inflation.
Scientific research may not be as politically popular as health care and education right now, but science is as important to progress in these two areas as it is to ensuring America’s economic, energy, and national security. The National Academy of Sciences has determined that during the last half-century, science-driven technology has accounted for more than 50 percent of the growth of the U.S. economy. As for energy security, basic energy research funded by the DOE Office of Science will help address current and future energy challenges with technologies that improve the efficiency, economy, environmental acceptability, and safety in energy generation, conversion, transmission, and use.
According to the Hart-Rudman Report on National Security, " the U.S. government has seriously underfunded basic scientific research in recent years. The quality of the U.S. education system, too, has fallen well behind those of scores of other nations. The inadequacies of our systems of research and education pose a greater threat to U.S. national security over the next quarter century than any potential conventional war that we might imagine.”
The report goes on to recommend doubling the federal government’s investment in science and technology research and development by 2010. While we understand that it may not be practical to double the federal research and development budget this year, we believe Congress should take the necessary steps to move in that direction by increasing funding for research in the physical sciences. The House has already taken the first step, by authorizing $3.6 billion for the DOE Office of Science in Title V of H.R. 4, the Save America’s Future Energy (SAFE) Act, which passed by a vote of 240-189 on August 2, 2001.
We ask that you take the next step and help the DOE Office of Science attract the best minds, educate the next generation of scientists and engineers, support the construction and operation of modern facilities, and continue to provide the quality of scientific research that has been its trademark for so many years.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
