I’ve been thinking a lot of late about what to say the next time I go to Washington. I seem to get there, one way or another, about twice a year these days. I don’t do it to sight-see, though Washington D.C. is “home to a rich and varied set of sights”:http://steve.cooleysekula.net/photos/WashingtonDC_20051007. I tend to go there with a purpose: to see and talk to as many of my Congressional representatives, or their staff, as is humanly possible.
Tonight, as I was checking the auto-updated news items on “scienceaction.org”:http://www.scienceaction.org, I noticed an “AIP FYI”:http://www.aip.org/fyi that escaped my attention. The FYI talked about “congressional testimony by the National Academies committee responsible for the recent report on American scientific investment and economic competativeness”:http://www.aip.org/fyi/2005/164.html. The report, “available on line”:http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11463.html, outlines the current downward trend in scientific investment, and the impact on America’s long-term economic growth and competativeness. These are themes that my colleagues and I have stressed many times when going to Washington D.C. and I am happy that again we have more solid documentation to talk about when we meet with offices.
The hearings reported in FYI 164 had some interesting moments, it seems. The one I am taking to heart is the following, as reported in the FYI:
“You’ve given us the answers,” declared Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) who, along with Bingaman, initiated the National Academies’ effort. “Now it’s down to us.” He reported that the report was already receiving positive comments from his Senate colleagues, and opined that he would like to see the President make it “the subject of his next State of the Union address.”
I would very much like to see the President stand before the American people and discuss a broad and sweeping investment in science by the federal agencies responsible for such funding and oversight: the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, and the National Institutes of Health. NIH saw its budget doubled in the past decade, part of a wider goal to increase the investment in science. However, the President and Congress fell far short of this goal with other agencies, most notably the NSF. This year, the NSF “saw an increase over what the President proposed at the beginning of the year”:http://www.scienceaction.org/soapbox/1131212219/index_html. Similarly, the DOE saw its budget increased enough to keep up with inflation – not a generous increase, but far above the President’s proposed cuts.
Given the danger into which science has so far been placed by the President’s fiscal policies, it would be a real coup if this report (well received on the Hill so far) trickled up to where the buck stops and made a real impact on the chief executive. For that, we’ll have to wait and see… or, perhaps, a letter-writing campaign to the President would be a wise move? I’ll have to think about that…
