Views & Estimates :: March 19, 1998

Democratic Views and Estimates on the Budget for Civilian Science and Technology Programs, Fiscal Year 1999

What a difference three years can make. In the Spring of 1995, a new majority in Congress was pushing a budget that would have led to a five year, one-third reduction in civilian science and technology (S&T) accounts. We condemned that proposal as a disaster for the nation. Now, just over half-way through that projected time frame, we seem to have forged a bipartisan consensus that S&T programs must be nurtured and expanded.

As Democratic Members of the House Science Committee, we have made ongoing efforts to convince our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, as well as our Party's leader at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, that investing in research and development (R&D) accounts is a generational obligation every bit as important as balancing the budget. Of course, the Democratic Members of the Science Committee were not alone in that effort. The budget proposal of three years ago served as a wake-up call to researchers, students, teachers, scientific societies, corporate executives, university officers, governors - virtually anyone who cares about investing in our Nation's future - to get involved in bringing the message to Washington that Americans care about these programs. Our very future depends upon them.

Those efforts have made a terrific contribution to the broad recognition that R&D accounts provide the cornerstone for keeping the American economy vital, productive and innovative. There is a broad, clear consensus about the importance of R&D to our Nation's economic future. This consensus is leading to recommendations, across party lines, from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue and from either side of the Capitol, that we provide additional funding to these important programs. Without the work of all these people, that consensus would not be so deep or so wide.

Therefore, it should come as no surprise that we agree with the central thrust of the Majority's Views and Estimates: that increases in civilian R&D programs are a necessary condition for continuing to enjoy economic prosperity well into the next century. Last year the vast majority of the Democratic Members of this panel signed on to the Majority views as well as providing some additional guidance of our own. However, this year we regret that we cannot sign on to the Majority's views because of their unwillingness to embrace the President's budget request. The Majority's Views and Estimates demonstrate that despite the consensus on R&D, some differences remain over the details of how to proceed.

The President's plan would see civilian science and technology accounts grow by almost 9% in real dollars by FY2003 (21.1% in current dollars).^[1] The Administration's plan provides strong but responsible growth in these important programs, with special emphasis on the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

The Majority's criticism of the President's plan focuses on the revenue assumptions that underlie it. They argue that the Administration's budget is not based on "real" revenues, but on "uncertain tax increases and uncollected money from the proposed tobacco settlement."^[2] Further, they argue that if we did have the money and spent it as the President suggests, we would break the budget caps. Finally, they conclude by recommending that "the Committee on the Budget... at a minimum, increase funding by the 4 percent recommended by the Administration for programs under the Science Committee's jurisdiction for Fiscal Year 1999."^[3]

We would respectfully suggest that they seem to want it both ways. Acknowledging the importance of R&D to economic performance, they want to see these accounts strengthened, perhaps even beyond the President's numbers. However, they are concerned about the President breaking the caps on discretionary accounts in his budget while not giving any attention to offsets when it comes to their own budget advice. They want to see revenues go to these accounts, but not the revenues the President identifies nor the revenues that the booming American economy is producing, leaving the observer to wonder what revenues they would draw on to do what they claim we need to do. Unfortunately, the Majority's Views and Estimates do not provide the kind of guidance necessary to responsibly assess the effects of their budget advice.

On the question of "uncertain" revenues in the President's budget, the fact is that it is entirely within the Congress's power to approve the tobacco settlement - a major source of funding for many of the President's initiatives. The President has a budget plan that reflects anticipated revenue streams that Congress can produce or block by its action. But even if a tobacco settlement were to be put off for a year, there are more than adequate revenues - and they grow with each new Treasury or CBO projection - from current revenue sources and closing tax loopholes to cover increases in civilian R&D for FY1999.^[4] Knowing that the revenues are there now and that a tobacco settlement that will be no worse than the current one will be there this year or in the not too distant future, we are willing to support the President's broad outline for Science and Technology accounts.

We endorse the overall plan of the President, but we do have some reservations about the distribution of funds among civilian research agencies in the out years. While NIH, NSF, Energy and EPA all enjoy real increases in funding in the Administration's five-year projections, Commerce, Interior, Agriculture, Transportation and NASA are all slated to suffer declines in funding (see Table One).

We believe that some small proportion of the increase scheduled for NIH should be redistributed among the agencies slated for decreases to keep a little more balance in our research portfolio. We are concerned that the aggressive funding ramp for NIH will lead to inefficiencies in the management of those funds. We also note that the imbalance of funding for NIH as against other fields of science and technology may be a long-term drag on developments in the biomedical and biotechnology fields due to the interdependence of physics, chemistry, broad technology innovation and medical research.

We are also pleased with the strong programs in our science agencies to expand science and technology opportunities for women and minorities. However, we would encourage the Administration to look for more ways to create a more inclusive culture in these fields.

Finally, we have some specific programmatic guidance that we would offer.

Department of Energy

In recent years, a consensus has formed among participants in the climate change debate that investing in technology development to reduce the potential threat of climate change is a prudent and wise course. In addition to reducing the threat of climate change, such technology development would also benefit other key areas, such as decreasing the Nation's dependence on foreign oil, increasing air quality, and reducing the price of energy. We note that the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology also lauds this program in their November, 1997 report on Federal Energy Research and Development for the Challenges of the Twenty-First Century.

Faced with such a consensus, it is puzzling that the Majority's views seem to oppose the Climate Change Technology Initiative (CCTI). While the Minority agrees that some portions of the CCTI program could be reworked, we strongly support the thrust and goals of the program. We would also point out that the Majority urged the Budget and Appropriations Committees to adhere to the authorization levels set in H.R. 1277, the DOE civilian research authorization passed by this Committee last year. This would require reducing the President's request for DOE by $330 million. The Majority neglects to mention that the authorization passed by the Committee did not deal with either CCTI or the Spallation Neutron Source and we suggest that the result was an authorization level well below what the Committee would approve today. H.R. 1277, which has not been passed by the House, provides an imperfect and misleading indication of the views of the Committee on the appropriate level of support for DOE research programs.

National Institutes of Standards and Technology

We recommend full funding at the requested level for the Advanced Technology Program. NIST and the Technology Administration are leading the way towards providing objective evaluations of the returns on Federal investments in technology development and their steady and improving management of this program justifies their budget request. We support the Majority's request that the Manufacturing Extension Program be increased to $111 million. However, we are concerned that many areas of the country are still not effectively covered by this creative program.

The one note of caution we would add regarding the NIST budget is that the request for construction funding seems to be only loosely justified. We would recommend that the Committee consult with the Department of Commerce's Inspector General regarding the lack of a clear construction plan relating to this request.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Our primary concern regarding NASA is that the President's request, especially in out years, may be inadequate to fully support their important research and exploration missions. We strongly support the basic sciences programs at NASA: Space Science, Life and Microgravity Science and Earth Science. While the Majority's views on NASA are generally sound, we would note that the allegations regarding the Johnson Space Center's managerial performance are unwarranted and unsubstantiated.

Environmental Protection Agency

We share the majority's concern about the overall level of funding requested for EPA's Office of Research and Development's (ORD) programs, but we fail to see how exploring the elimination of EPA's research program, as suggested by the Majority, would alleviate this problem. We feel the Agency should maintain a balanced research portfolio. Research programs should focus not only on immediate needs dictated by statutory responsibilities and deadlines of the program offices, but should also develop a broad knowledge base for the evaluation of the health of environmental systems.

The majority also indicates a concern about the "potential conflict" that arises by having science conducted in a regulatory agency, and expresses the Committee's intent to explore the feasibility of having other agencies conduct the research to support EPA's regulations. Democratic Members share the majority's view that regulations should be based on sound science. For that very reason, we are skeptical about the Majority's proposed solution. Removing science from EPA may simply ensure that science plays even less of a role in future regulations. While we support suggestions to improve the quality, integrity, and independence of environmental science, such a radical change should follow only from a careful, thorough, and deliberate study of any perceived problems and proposed solutions.

The Majority's suggestion that the science needs of EPA can be met through unspecified increases in the budgets of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) and possibly other agencies appears to directly contradict the Majority's second stated criteria for the authorization of R&D programs in our jurisdiction: "that federal R&D should be highly relevant to and tightly focused on agency missions."

National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program

We strongly support full funding, at the authorized level, for this critical and innovative multi-agency effort. We are disappointed that the Administration's request is some $9 million below that level and encourage the Budget and Appropriations Committee to fully fund this program.

Conclusion

The President's budget request provides a solid basis for investing in our Nation's future by providing adequate resources to our civilian science and technology accounts. While we would recommend some slight reshuffling of funding among agencies, the overall goals are the right ones. These reservations aside, the President's budget represents an important step towards building the base of a productive, booming 21st Century economy.

[1] AAAS Analysis, Projected Effects of President's FY1999 Budget on Nondefense R&D, preliminary analysis released March 5, 1998.

[2] Proposed Views and Estimates of the Committee on Science for Fiscal Year 1999, Majority draft, March 16, 1998, p. 2.

[3] Ibid., p. 3.

[4] The House Budget Committee Democratic Caucus has produced a document, A Summary of President Clinton's Fiscal Year 1999 Budget, which clearly articulates that the President's budget is fully in line with the PAYGO scorecard. It is this principle that underlies both the budget agreement and the effort to balance the budget. The caps are artificial constructs of projected spending levels designed to get the budget into balance; to the degree the budget is in surplus over the caps, the caps themselves are no longer meaningful guides to balance. In other words, we don't need the caps to get there because we have already arrived. Those who claim that the President would break through those caps have to concede, as the Budget Committee points out, "that the tax and entitlement compartment of the budget will be running surpluses, or credits, large enough to fully offset the apparent breach in discretionary spending," (p. 40). The Budget Committee goes on to offer three methods by which the President's discretionary increases can be offset. To those who would now claim that discretionary caps are sacrosanct numbers carved in stone, brought down from the Mountain, we would point out that the 1997 Budget Agreement which delivered those tablets completely ignored and violated the discretionary caps we established in the 1995 Budget Agreement. When fiscal conditions change, it is only prudent to change our revenue and spending behavior in appropriate ways. To behave as if the economy and the Government's position was other than it is could have dangerous macroeconomic consequences for the Nation.