Kerry should fight Bush science cuts
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., is blaming President Bush too much for “sending American jobs overseas,” but nowhere near enough for risking U.S. technological leadership by underfunding basic scientific research.
Only about 100,000 of the 1.8 million jobs lost during the Bush presidency went overseas, but experts say that millions of jobs — in fact, America’s place in the world — could be lost if other countries gain dominance in new technologies.
Not only should Kerry be raising more hell about this, but Congress, instead of slathering pork into the pending highway bill, ought to spend a few billion dollars to increase Bush’s budgets for the National Science Foundation (NSF), science programs at the Departments of Energy and Defense, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Ever since World War II, the United States has led the world in science, developing computers, semiconductors, the Internet, satellites, lasers, lightweight new materials, robotics, fiber optics, medicines, imaging systems like MRIs and instant global communication. Such products, all originated through federally funded research, kept America the richest nation on earth. Academic studies show that between 50 and 80 percent of U.S. productivity and economic growth is linked to technological innovation.
But various experts, including some Republicans, warn that the United States is in danger of losing its edge — with profound consequences for the economy and national security — because of underinvestment in basic research.
For instance, the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the leading federal sponsor of physical science research, is scheduled for a 2 percent cut in Bush’s new budget.
The National Science Foundation is slated for a 3 percent increase, but that’s far short of the 15 percent authorized by Congress in 2002.
Defense “research and development” is up by 7 percent, but basic and applied research — as opposed to weapons development — is down by 11 percent in Bush’s budget.
One Republican who’s protesting is former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich who told me that “it’s a grave risk for the country’s future not to be investing heavily in basic research.”
“The amount of scientific knowledge we gain in the next 25 years will equal or exceed that of the whole 20th century,” Gingrich said. “For the United States not to be in the forefront of that is to risk our national security and our economy.
“We’re not going to be able to compete with China and India in the next 25 years if we graduate more lawyers than we do scientists,” he added. “We’re engaged in a huge misallocation of priorities to spend as much as we do overall and not spend more for science.”
Kerry has issued a high-technology position paper largely built around extending broadband computer access to all homes, businesses and health facilities, and he has promised to make the R&D (research and development) tax credit for corporations permanent. But Kerry could do more — specifically by mentioning Bush’s research record as part of every speech and by building a full research platform of his own.
As Gingrich told me, “the problem is that science isn’t as well organized as the industries of the past are to lobby for money. Those industries get the government to prop up the past, but science is inventing the future.” Congress ought to listen to its old leader. So should Bush.
Morton Kondracke is executive editor of Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill.