Credit: Klaas Lingbeek-van Kranen
Several scientists probably did a double take when President Bush announced a plan to double funding for basic research over the next decade during January's State of the Union address. In recent years, the Oval Office couch had been cold to government scientists suggesting that the President request more funds for research. Instead, a grim trend of neglect for science ensued, culminating last year in the National Institutes of Health choking down their first budget cut since 1970.
Insiders say New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat, a 500-page treatise on the globalization of business, as well as a report from the National Academies, which landed on the president's desk like a ton of uranium, has the White House suddenly taking cues from a liberal wonk, not to mention a bunch of scientists. The proposed reallocation of federal funds will benefit the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy's Office of Science, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, all while overall non-military spending is slated for reduction.
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"I like and respect our president, but he's a slow learner when it comes to this," said, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, a Texas Democrat on the House Committee on Science.
One senior government official said that Friedman's book provided Washington insiders and elected officials a much-needed lexicon with which to discuss America's burgeoning competitiveness woes in the international scientific arena. The National Academies report, titled "Rising Above the Gathering Storm," harnessed momentum from Friedman and pushed full speed ahead. Both documents have gained so much traction in Washington that David Goldston, chief of staff of the House Committee on Science, recently called this the "Year of Science."
The National Academies report frequently reads like an ultimatum: Unless we bolster scientific research, it warns, "We can expect to lose our privileged position in the world," as science and technology jobs go abroad. Its damning conclusion proclaims, "For the first time in generations, the nation's children could face poorer prospects than their parents and grandparents did."
According to a senior Congressional staff member, the current administration is renowned for ignoring academy reports, but John H. Marburger, III—Bush's science adviser and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy—said a strong case "came together" that persuaded the president to reemphasize research. "'Gathering Storm' had a significant impact," Marburger said. "The president is grateful to the academies...and industry."
As any veteran climate scientist knows, President Bush isn't one to be swayed by a little doomsday prophesying, even (or rather, especially) from the science community. The difference, in this case, is that the National Academies of Science, which put together the report at the behest of Senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), assembled a reporting committee that had a real shot of getting the president's ear.
Alongside prominent scientists like Charles M. Vest, president emeritus of MIT, and three Nobel laureates—Steven Chu, Joshua Lederberg and Robert C. Richardson—the committee included captains of industry. The academies went outside their walls, appointing Norman R. Augustine, retired CEO of Lockheed Martin, to chair the 20-person committee that issued "Storm," as the report is often referred to on Capitol Hill. (On other occassions, the report is affectionately called the "Augustine report.")
In addition to having once worked with the government to create an arms export subsidy program worth $15.2 billion, Augustine remains a regular Republican donor and Bush confidante. Other committee members have similarly close ties: Craig Barrett, chairman of the board of the Intel Corporation, is married to Barbara Barrett, whom President Bush nominated to serve as secretary of the Air Force in 2003; Lee R. Raymond, recently retired CEO of the Exxon Mobil Corporation, is a major donor to the Republican Party.