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0.1° C regulation of any volume froml0μltol00L. < 1° C overshoot of setpoint during warm-up GOOD TIMES Marburger (from left), Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman, Deputy Undersecretary of Commerce David A. Sampson, and NSF Director Arden L. Bernent Jr. testified before the House Science Committee about their agencies' portions of the 2007 budget request.
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Proposal to increase support for physical sciences basic research and education is cheered SUSAN R. MORRISSEY, C&EN WASHINGTON (ACI), which is a blueprint to increase supSSESSING U.S. LEADERSHIP IN science and technology has port for basic research and education in the physical sciences. been the focus of many reports and meetings over the years. "Our greatest advantage in the world Although concerns over the has always been our educated, hardworknation's future as the leader in this area have ing, ambitious people—and we're going to been growing in the science and technology community, it wasn't until this year that FUNDING bolstering U.S. science and Basic physical science agencies are on track to technology made its way into double their budgets by 2016 the public mainstream. CHANGE The boost came on Jan. 2016C 2006-07 $ BILLIONS 2006a 2007b 31 during the presidential $11.16 7.9% NSF $5.58 $6.02 State of the Union address. 7.19 3.60 13.9 DOE Office of Science 4.10 In his address, President 1.14 22.7 NISTcore d 0.44e 0.54 George W. Bush noted that to maintain a strong econo$19.49 TOTAL $9.62 10.8% $10.66 my, the U.S. must remain a NOTE: Fiscalyears. a Enacted, b Proposed, c Projected; individual agency alglobal leader in science and locations to be determined, d NIST core includes NIST lab research and construction accounts, e Excludes $137 million in earmarks. DOE = Department technology. To that end, of Energy, NIST = National Institute of Standards & Technology, NSF = Nationhe rolled out the American al Science Foundation. SOURCE: Office of Science & Technology Policy Competitiveness Initiative
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[email protected] keep that edge," President Bush said in his address. "Tonight, I announce the Ameri can Competitiveness Initiative to encourage innovation throughout our country and to give our nation's children a firm grounding in math and science." The proposed 10-year, $136 billion ini tiative will reverse the trend of poor fund ing for physical sciences. Specifically, ACI will put the federal agencies that focus on physical sciences research—namely the National Science Foundation, the Depart ment of Energy's Office of Science, and the Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards & Technology—on a track to double their budgets over the next decade. "IT'S NOTABLE that the Administration has been until now very reluctant to make long-term commitments or even long-term projections," says Kei Koizumi, director of the research and development budget and policy program at the American Associa tion for the Advancement of Science. He adds, however, that he is cautious about reading too much into the initiative because money has been put on the table only for fiscal 2007. As Koizumi notes, t h e President's 2007 budget request provides support to get ACI started. All told for 2007, ACI commits $5-9 billion to increasing R&D funding, strengthening education, and encouraging private-sector innovation. The investment consists of $4.6 billion in R&D tax incentives and $1.3 billion in new federal funding to support increases at the three targeted agencies as well as general physical science research and education programs at other agencies such as the Departments of Defense and Education. ACI is not intended to spark the creation of entirely new government programs; instead, it is intended to increase funda mental research capacity. This initiative will translate into big gains for the three targeted agencies. For NSF, the President's budget request provides $6.0 billion, a nearly 8% increase from the 2006 budget level. For DOE's Office of Science, the proposed 2007 budget is $4.1 billion, representing a growth of 13-9% from this fiscal year. And for the lab research and construction accounts at N I S T (NIST core), the 2007 budget is set at $536 mil lion, which is up nearly 24% from the 2006 level after earmarked funds are removed. (Earmarked funds are funds added to an agency's budget by Congress for specific projects not included in the presidential budget request.) The increased funds at these agencies
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will be used to support grants, facilities, and people. For example, the additional funds at NSF are expected to make possible 500 more research grants and support 6,400 more scientists, students, postdocs, and technicians; at DOE's Office of Science, the number of researchers supported will grow by 2,600, and several new tools and facilities will be funded. Researchers supported by NIST core will grow by 600, thanks to ACL The 2007 budget proposal also tags $380 million to improve K-12 math, science, and technology education. Activities for this part of the initiative will build on the No Child Left Behind Act and will include some new and expanded programs to improve both curriculum and teacher quality. Another important element of ACI is making the research and experimentation federal tax credit permanent. Currently, the tax credit is legislated through temporary extensions. But making the tax credit permanent, the literature supporting ACI argues, would "enable companies to have certainty in their tax planning and therefore be bold in their R&D investment strategy" On the basis of the Administration's projections, making the tax credit permanent would cost an estimated $86.4 billion over the 10-year initiative. At a recent congressional hearing held by the House Science Committee on the proposed 2007 budget, committee members expressed appreciation for and excitement about the requested growth of support by the Administration for physical sciences under ACI. "For a long time, many of us have been calling for a renewed emphasis on research in the physical sciences, a commitment that would be demonstrated not with rhetorical feints but with genuine investments," said Science Committee Chairman Sherwood L. Boehlert (R-N.Y), adding that the 2007 budget request supporting ACI provides such a commitment. Noting that it's now up to Congress to follow through bypassing the budget, he explained at the hearing, "we will pass and enact whatever authorizing legislation will help make the proposed funding a reality both this year and in years to come and whatever legislation will help ensure that any additional funds are spent as wisely as possible." With a number of competitiveness-related bills already introduced in the House and Senate, Boehlert noted that his committee will look at the strengths of all of them and work on developing amalgamated legislation this spring that targets a few key ideas and programs. "I don't want to pass bills that are laundry lists of new or
duplicate programs that will never come into being," he said. Representatives from NSF, DOE, and Commerce all testified about how their agencies planned to invest the proposed ACI funding increases. They shared their excitement over the President's support of research and education in the physical sciences. "ACI is a brilliant stroke of publicity," said hearing witness John H. Marburger III, director of the Office of Science &
Technology Policy and science adviser to the President. He and the other witnesses noted the importance of the President's discussing science and engineering to raising the public's interest in these areas, which are essential to the U.S.'s future leadership. "We are on our way to a new era of awareness," he added. Several members of Congress, however, expressed concern at the hearing that science outside of ACI is being cut to offset the initiative's increases. Echoing this point,
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GOVERNMENT & POLICY Koizumi tells C&EN, "The proposed bud get would cut physical science research at the Department of Defense and the Nation al Aeronautics & Space Administration. So even within the narrowly defined physical sciences, it ends up being less positive than it might first appear." ANOTHER CONCERN raised at the hear ing as well as by other interested parties is whether the funding for education pro grams is sufficient. The House committee members expressed almost unanimous ap prehension with the proposed budget cuts to education programs at NSF, saying these cuts are inconsistent with ACI's goals. American Chemical Society President E. Ann Nalley agrees with the Congress members and tells C&EN that the "next big step is getting more support for sci ence education." On behalf of ACS, Nalley wrote a letter to the President in January encouraging him to speak on competitive ness and the role of physical sciences in his State of the Union address (C&EN, Feb. 6, page 7). She was pleased when she heard that happen. "ACI is a great step forward," Nalley says,
adding that the initiative gets the federal government to recognize that to be globally competitive, the U.S. has to have more fund ing for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education. She explains that the U.S. is in a critical state in terms of sci ence education and that drastic steps need to be taken to secure future success.
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"We have to continue to really tell our story well in order to convince not only Congress but also the general public that support for physical science research and
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education is needed," Nalley says. Because of the long-term nature of this initiative, sci entists and other advocates must continue to get the message out to ensure that future funding remains on track after this initial year. "We have a great challenge ahead of us," she points out. The immediate challenge, however, will be to encourage Congress ζ to pass the 2 0 0 7 budget S request, Nalley and others £ note. T h e issue seems to ο have bipartisan and bicamZ eral support, but under the constraints of time and lim ited budget dollars, nothing is sure in Congress this year. "We're not going to de clare victory and go home" just because the President introduced ACI, Boehlert said at the hearing. Instead, he and others in Congress have committed themselves to seeing that the funding to support ACI is passed. "We need to think of it in this way: We've won the battle, now it's time to win the war," he said. •
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