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Senate Commerce Subcommittee On Science, Technology
And Space/Hearing on Federal Research and Development
Funding and Trends
April 16, 1997
Federal Research and Development Funding and Trends
was the subject of a April 16, 1997 hearing of the
Senate Commerce Subcommittee On Science, Technology
And Space. Witnesses were: Dr. John Gibbons, Assistant
to the President for Science and Technology, Dr. Al
Teich, AAAS, Dr. Lewis Branscomb, John F Kennedy School
of Government, and Claude Barfield, American Enterprise
Institute.
Subcommittee Chairman William Frist (R-TN) lauded the
contributions of federal funded science and technology
to the national welfare. As part of his opening statement,
Senator Frist noted that: 1) research and development,
science and education bring advancements and innovation;
2) innovation has been the basis of our competitive
edge--peaceful and defense--and of our extraordinary
lifestyle; it is the cornucopia of modern America
and the envy of the world; 3) federal funding of research,
and creating an environment that encourages private
research and innovation, is the bedrock upon which
the National Enterprise has been founded.
Frist was joined by Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV)
who used this opportunity to press for greater attention
to R&D priorities - especially in areas where
the U.S. is close competition with other nations.
Rockefeller particularly noted the importance of technology
partnerships like the ATP and also plugged the concept
of EPSCoT an idea put forth by himself and Senator
Conrad Burns (R-MT), to extend the EPSCoR program
so that mid-size and smaller universities would have
greater participation in the federal R&D system.
Dr. Gibbons defended the President's budget request
for R&D. Gibbons noted that balancing the budget
by the year 2002 required tough choices, but that
the President's request will hold the line on civilian
research funding while completing the job of balancing
the budget. He pointed to R&D partnerships as
a critical way to leverage scarce resources. Gibbons
said "we want to create new State-Federal level cooperation,
seeking international cooperation as well." Gibbons
also touched upon the stresses on the university system
in recent years and mentioned the efforts of the PCAST
to launch a government-wide policy and administrative
review of the university research system. He said
the review will assist the US in developing strategies
to promote cost-effective university-based research,
allocate research costs fairly, strengthen the research-education
linkage, and maintain appropriate accountability for
expenditure of public funds in an environment of highly
constrained budgets.
Dr. Teich gave a detailed assessment of federal R&D
budget trends and said that despite the forecasts
of downward trends, the FY 97 appropriations turned
out to be more generous than the budget resolution.
Teich cautioned that the 1.8% FY98 R&D increase
in the President's budget over FY97 may be overstated
because the total includes approximately $1.2 Billion
to froward-fund a number of new DOE facilities projects.
He also said that using inflation adjusted numbers,
federal R&D would continue to fall over the next
few years. Of the individual agencies, only NIH is
expected to show any real growth over next few years
and adjusted for inflation, overall R&D will see
a 14% cut.
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