Economic pressures escalate as presidential candidates weigh in on S&T funding

War and debt limit options

Concern is increasing south of the border that the financial crisis rocking the nation and the planet has the potential the seriously cut into funding for science, technology and innovation. With recession looming or already upon us, S&T is more exposed than other areas of federal spending. It is largely viewed as a derivative of economic policy rather than an area responsible for the majority of economic growth in recent years.

The recent $700-billion bailout of the financial sector will only make a bad situation worse, exacerbating worries over the fate of spending bills supporting the American Competitiveness Initiative and associated America COMPETES Act. The Act would double spending by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy's Office of Science in seven years.

While both US presidential candidates have comprehensive S&T policies, any commitments — such as Barak Obama's pledge to double funding for basic research over the next decade for physical and life sciences, mathematics and engineering — may be delayed or postponed indefinitely as more immediate financial pressures are addressed.

The candidates' commitments were made in response to 14 questions formulated by Science Debate 2008, an science advocacy group backed by several organizations including the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Council on Competitiveness, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine and more than 175 leading US universities and other organizations.

Between the two candidates, Obama has the definite edge. Not only is he being advised by a prestigious 40-plus committee of prominent researchers headed by Dr Harold Varmus, but a letter was published recently and signed by 61 Nobel laureates supporting Obama for president. Obama is committing far more funding for science than McCain and has released a detailed science policy plan. He is also pledging to "ensure independent, non-ideological, expert science and technology advisory committees" — a pointed reference to the abuse of science policy instruments by the Bush administration.

R&D spending stagnant

While US federal spending on S&T and R&D is impressive by most measures, it has been more or less stagnant for the past 25 years and is actually decreasing as a percentage of gross domestic product. That also holds true for some other industrialized nations but it's the rapid rise in R&D spending by China, India Korea and other developing nations that is raising levels of concern.

"Our international competitive position is based on our brain power (and) products and processes from R&D that we can sell domestically and overseas," says Dr Albert Teich, director of S&T policy for the AAAS. "If that piece of our strength is threatened by our lack of activity and the growth in other nations, we lose our economic place in the world. That's what worries people."

Teich was in Ottawa last month to deliver the inaugural John de la Mothe lecture at the Univ of Ottawa. His examination of private sector R&D spending and government policies and initiatives to encourage more firms to innovate sheds light on a complex system in which a low public profile and long-standing divisions between left and right make gains in funding, performance and productivity subject to many complex forces.

S&T competes with other priorities

Chief among them is the battle science must face each year against other discretionary spending measures. Funding for an ambitious program to encourage collaboration between industry and academia under the Clinton administration was derailed when the Republicans won control of Congress in 1994. Now called the Technology Innovation Program, it was included as part of the America COMPETES Act in 2007, but its budget is still far short of originally intended levels of more than $1 billion.

The 2005 release of the highly publicized report — Rising Above the Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future – raised hopes that science funding would be substantially increased. But Teich downplays the importance of the report and says that most of the funding increases authorized by Congress never received corresponding appropriations.

"There's nothing surprising in it. There have been a whole bunch of reports before it that date back to the early 1980s and they all said the same thing," he says. "It was a set-up in a sense. Congress asked for it. They knew what they were going to get and when they got it they reacted and essentially forced the president to create this American Competitiveness Initiative."

The Democrats now control Congress but the nation's financial situation has deteriorated considerably, with the Iraq war consuming vast amounts of money. The US public debt has just exceeded $10 trillion and could mushroom to $53 trillion if commitments made for medicare and social security are actually funded. The ballooning debt is leading many, including Teich, to fear that science will once again be bypassed for what are perceived to be more pressing priorities.

"It means there's going to be less and less free money. We may see R&D programs and programs promoting innovation as necessities but the political system sees them as discretionary expenditures that can be delayed in the way welfare payments can't."

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