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Senate VA, HUD and Independent Agencies Subcommittee
Hearing on OSTP & NSF FY 1998 Budget Requests
April 22, 1997
On April 22, 1997, Dr. John Gibbons, the President's
Science and Technology Advisor and Dr. Neal Lane,
Director of the National Science Foundation, testified
before the VA, HUD and Independent Agencies Senate
Appropriations Subcommittee on their respective agencies'
FY 1998 budget requests. Rather than explore specific
programmatic requests, Chairman Bond (R-MO) and Ranking
Member Mikulski (D-MD) concentrated their questions
on how to set priorities for federal funding of research
and development (R&D) and then evaluate the success
of those investments. Senator Burns (R-MT) made a
brief appearance in order to commend the good working
relationship between the Congress and both OSTP and
NSF.
In his opening remarks, Dr. Gibbons emphasized the
difficulties of providing sufficient federal funding
for research and development while trying to balance
the budget. Dr. Gibbons cited three areas in which
OSTP leads U.S. government efforts to improve efficiency:
- improving the productivity of federal support
through improved interagency cooperation;
- strengthening national innovation and incentives
for R&D through tax incentives, state-federal-university
partnerships, and international cooperation; and
- leading efforts to build more effective accountability
through the Government Performance and Results
Act.
In turn, Dr. Lane highlighted the impacts of NSF-supported
research, citing examples such as the development
of microbes that purify contaminated groundwater and
the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry award to NSF researchers
for their work on carbon molecules. He pointed to
the National Science Foundation's reputation for efficiency
and effectiveness and called for strong support for
research and education to keep the U.S. as a world
leading economy in the 21st Century.
Senator Bond set the tone for the hearing with an open-ended
question on how to determine the best level of federal
investment in research and development. Dr. Gibbons
suggested that about 2.5 to 3 percent of GDP is an
appropriate target. He testified that federal investments
may shrink while Congress and the President try to
balance the budget, but that, in the long term, funding
for R&D must stay strong to keep the U.S. at the
global technological forefront. Dr. Lane recommended
high levels of investment in university-based research
because of the immediately realizable educational
benefits for the future workforce. He also pointed
out that, although percentage of GDP is often used,
many factors, such as the size of our country, are
important to consider when determining the best level
of federal R&D investment.
Senator Mikulski advocated federal investment in basic
research and development as a catalyst for industrial
growth and competitiveness, reflecting her call a
few years ago for basic research in strategic areas.
She called on the U.S. government to help fill the
"Valley of Death" between federal dollars for research
and development and the export of technologies that
emerge from such investments. Finally, she questioned
Dr. Gibbons on the status of the space station, asking
specifically about the Administration's plan to take
funds from the shuttle program to pay for the Russian
portion of the space station.
In the second round of questions, Senator Bond, supported
by Senator Mikulski, questioned the lack of discussion
of the NSF's strategic initiatives from the FY 1998
budget request. In response, Dr. Lane discussed how
NSF has integrated many of the strategic initiatives
across its programs and has expanded others, such
as the High Performance Computing and Communications,
into new initiatives, like Knowledge and Distributed
Intelligence.
Before leaving, Senator Mikulski questioned Dr. Gibbons
and Dr. Lane on the role of their respective agencies
in the federal government's attempts to prevent a
computer crises in the year 2000. Both witnesses tried
to point out that the pending computer crisis is not
a research, but a coding, problem and NSF was developing
a plan to avoid a problem in the year 2000. Senator
Mikulski and Senate Bond asked OSTP to draft an overview
of government-wide efforts to prevent a computer crises
in the Year 2000.
Senator Bond pushed for more research in biotechnology
and specifically urged Dr. Lane to explain why NSF
has funded the mapping of the Arabidopsis,
a mustard plant, rather that the corn genome, given
the corn genome's potential economic benefits. Dr.
Lane explained that the mustard plant is much simpler,
having only 100 million base pairs, while the corn
and human genomes have 3 billion or so base pairs.
He pointed out that mapping the mustard plant will
more efficiently provide information that can be extrapolated
for corn genomes. Still, Senator Bond called for an
interagency process, led by OSTP, to lay out an appropriate
strategy on how to make the most progress on mapping
genomes with potential agricultural benefits.
The remainder of the hearing was devoted to how to
measure the results of federal R&D investments.
Specifically, Senator Bond asked Dr. Lane to explain
how NSF chose the strategic areas, Life in Extreme
Environments and Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence,
and how the Foundation would evaluate progress in
these areas. Dr. Lane explained that the initiatives
came from the research community, pointing out that
the need for such timely research initiatives is laid
out in the Foundation's strategic plan. He testified
that the Foundation will be developing performance
measures as part of Government Performance & Results
Act process to be used for these and other NSF activities.
Senator Bond concluded the hearing by emphasized that
the Subcommittee faces some difficult choices in the
coming months and will have to defend money for R&D
to the rest of Congress. He reiterated that it is
important that the National Science Foundation, as
well as other federal agencies, be able to clearly
articulate how it sets priorities and evaluates its
impacts.
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