[House Hearing, 113 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
A REVIEW OF THE PRESIDENT'S FY 2014
BUDGET REQUEST FOR SCIENCE AGENCIES
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 17, 2013
__________
Serial No. 113-19
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov
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COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HON. LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas, Chair
DANA ROHRABACHER, California EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
RALPH M. HALL, Texas ZOE LOFGREN, California
F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
Wisconsin DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland
FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma FREDERICA S. WILSON, Florida
RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas ERIC SWALWELL, California
PAUL C. BROUN, Georgia DAN MAFFEI, New York
STEVEN M. PALAZZO, Mississippi ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
MO BROOKS, Alabama JOSEPH KENNEDY III, Massachusetts
RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois SCOTT PETERS, California
LARRY BUCSHON, Indiana DEREK KILMER, Washington
STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas AMI BERA, California
BILL POSEY, Florida ELIZABETH ESTY, Connecticut
CYNTHIA LUMMIS, Wyoming MARC VEASEY, Texas
DAVID SCHWEIKERT, Arizona JULIA BROWNLEY, California
Thomas Massie, Kentucky MARK TAKANO, California
KEVIN CRAMER, North Dakota ROBIN KELLY, Illinois
JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma
RANDY WEBER, Texas
CHRIS STEWART, Utah
VACANCY
C O N T E N T S
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Page
Witness List..................................................... 2
Hearing Charter.................................................. 3
Opening Statements
Statement by Representative Lamar S. Smith, Chairman, Committee
on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
Representatives................................................ 5
Written Statement............................................ 6
Statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Ranking
Minority Member, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
U.S. House of Representatives.................................. 7
Written Statement............................................ 8
Witnesses:
Hon. John Holdren, Director, Office of Science and Technology
Policy, Executive Office of the President
Oral Statement............................................... 10
Written Statement............................................ 12
Discussion....................................................... 28
Appendix I: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Hon. John Holdren, Director, Office of Science and Technology
Policy, Executive Office of the President...................... 61
Appendix II: Additional Material for the Record
Letter to Hon. Dana Rohrabacher, Chairman, Subcommittee on
Oversight and Investigations, Committee on Foreign Affairs,
From Charles F. Bolden, Jr., Administrator, National
Aeronautics and Space Administration........................... 76
A REVIEW OF THE PRESIDENT'S FY 2014
BUDGET REQUEST FOR SCIENCE AGENCIES
----------
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 17, 2013
House of Representatives,
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
Washington, D.C.
The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:07 a.m., in Room
2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Lamar Smith
[Chairman of the Committee] presiding.
Chairman Smith. The Science, Space, and Technology
Committee will come to order. I would like to welcome everyone
to today's hearing, a Review of the President's Fiscal Year
2014 Budget Request for Science Agencies. I will recognize
myself for an opening statement and then the Ranking Member.
The topic of today's hearing is the President's budget
request for the coming year. It is the first of several
hearings to examine the $40 billion in annual federal R&D
spending within the Science Committee's jurisdiction. Each
Subcommittee will examine the request for the science agencies
under their jurisdiction in the coming weeks.
However, at the outset of this series of hearings, I would
like to say that these budget hearings are about something far
more important than simply numbers on a ledger. The budget
choices for federal research and development investments we
choose will affect research and technology for many decades to
come.
This Committee was first created in 1957 in response to the
threat of the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik. At that time,
Americans were fearful of what this small spacecraft
represented. The threats we face today are far more diverse and
complicated. But in many ways, the same fundamental concern
remains today as when this Committee was first created: Is
America still a leader in science, space, and technology or are
we falling behind? How does America stay ahead in the race for
global competitiveness? How can we measure the benefits of such
research investments when the payoff might be many years later?
And how can American innovators better leverage these Federal
Government investments to benefit the American people?
These questions are the prism through which the President's
budget request and Congress' policy and budget decisions must
be viewed. It is less a matter of dollars and cents, but more
about finding common-sense solutions.
Here are some of the decisions this Committee faces with
the President's budget before us.
LToday, the United States pays Russia $63 million
to take each of our astronauts to the International Space
Station we built with the now-retired Space Shuttle. How best
can we develop the new systems to once again launch American
astronauts on American rockets? How can we better utilize the
research capabilities of the International Space Station over
the next decade?
LBeyond low-Earth orbit of the Station, where are
the next destinations for our astronauts to explore? Is it an
asteroid, as the President suggested three years ago? Or is the
Earth's Moon a more compelling place for American astronauts to
return rather than finding an asteroid to pull into the Moon's
orbit?
LIn his inaugural address last January, the
President spoke briefly about climate change and the
``overwhelming judgment of science.'' His budget proposes $2.7
billion spread across 13 different federal agencies for climate
science. How does this high level of spending affect other
research priorities? Is some consolidation of research effort
needed here?
LToday, China and other countries are using the
very same Internet computer connections America invented and
built over decades to spy on high-tech American companies and
laboratories to gain our know-how and intellectual property.
They might even attempt to cause physical damage using the
computer systems that drive our society today. What is the best
way to defend against cyber attacks and intrusions?
These are only a handful of the decisions before us as we
consider the President's fiscal year 2014 budget request for
federal research and development. American ingenuity and
perseverance in the face of adversity is what makes our country
great. We have many challenges before us--technological,
scientific, and budgetary--but we will face them with the same
determination Americans have in our past.
And that concludes my opening statement. And the
gentlewoman from Texas, Ms. Johnson, and the Ranking Member of
the Committee is recognized for her opening statement.
[The statement of Mr. Smith follows:]
Prepared Statement of Full Committee Chairman Lamar S. Smith
The topic of today's hearing is the President's budget request for
the coming year. It is the first of several hearings to examine the $40
billion in annual federal R&D spending within the Science Committee's
jurisdiction.
Each Subcommittee will examine the requests for the science
agencies under their jurisdiction in the coming weeks. However, at the
outset of this series of hearings, I would like to say that these
budget hearings are about something far more important than simply
numbers on a ledger. The budget choices for federal R&D investments we
choose will affect research and technology for many decades to come.
This Committee was first created in 1957 in response to the threat
of the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik. At that time, Americans were
fearful of what this small spacecraft represented.
The threats we face today are far more diverse and complicated. But
in many ways, the same fundamental concern remains today as when this
Committee was first created: Is America still a leader in science,
space, and technology, or are we falling behind? How does America stay
ahead in the race for global competitiveness? How can we measure the
benefits of such research investments when the payoff might be many
years later? And how can American innovators better leverage these
Federal Government investments to benefit the American people?
These questions are the prism through which the President's budget
request and Congress's policy and budget decisions must be viewed. It
is less a matter of dollars and cents, but more about finding common-
sense solutions.
Here are some of the decisions this Committee faces with the
President's budget before us: Today, the U.S. pays Russia to take each
of our astronauts to the International Space Station we built with the
now-retired Space Shuttle. How best can we develop the new systems to
once again launch American astronauts on American rockets? How can we
better utilize the research capabilities of the International Space
Station over the next decade?
Beyond low-Earth orbit of the Station, where are the next
destinations for our astronauts to explore? Is an asteroid the next
destination, as the President suggested three years ago? Or is the
Earth's Moon a more compelling place for American astronauts to return
to, rather than finding an asteroid to pull into the Moon's orbit?
In his inaugural address last January, the President spoke briefly
about climate change and the ``overwhelming judgment of science.'' His
budget proposed $2.7 billion spread across 13 different federal
agencies for climate science. How does this high level of spending
affect other research priorities? Is some consolidation of research
effort needed here?
Today, China and other countries are using the very same Internet
computer connections America invented and built over decades to spy on
high-tech American companies and laboratories to gain our know-how and
intellectual property. They might even attempt to cause physical damage
using the computer systems that drive our society today. What is the
best way to defend against cyber attacks and intrusions?
These are only a handful of the decisions before us as we consider
the President's FY 2014 budget request for federal research and
development. American ingenuity and perseverance in the face of
adversity are what make our country great. We have many challenges
before us--technological, scientific, and budgetary--but we will face
them with the same determination Americans have in our past.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much and good morning. And
welcome, Dr. Holdren. It is good to have you back before the
Committee and as we begin to digest the President's fiscal year
2014 R&D budget proposals.
I am pleased that the President remains committed to
prioritizing investments in research and development and STEM
education in his request. Even in these fiscally challenging
times, we must set priorities, and there are few more important
investments that we can make for our Nation's brainpower.
The scientists, engineers, and innovators of today make
discoveries and develop technologies that generate whole new
industries and jobs, improve the quality of life and the
security of our citizens, and keep our Nation thriving in a
competitive world economy. They also help to give our children
the grounding in science and technology they will need to
become the innovators of the future or simply to be prepared
for the highly skilled jobs of the future.
Specifically, I applaud the President's continued
commitment to keeping the budgets of NSF, NIST, and DOE's
Office of Science on sustained, upward trajectories initiated
in the America COMPETES Act. These agencies, among others, help
to ensure our long-term economic growth through their support
for cutting-edge, basic research and STEM education.
I am also pleased with the Administration's increased
support for advanced manufacturing. The last few years have
proven that we cannot be just a service economy and continue to
grow. We must also maintain a strong base of American
manufacturing. While we will have questions about some of the
specific initiatives as we proceed with the series of agency
budget hearings, I firmly believe that the key to maintaining
and rebuilding our manufacturing capacity is through strategic
investments in advanced manufacturing R&D and workforce
development.
I also support the increased funding for the U.S. Global
Change Research Program. Scientists are telling us that the
climate is changing, and I do not understand why some of us
keep fighting that. The significant increase in extreme weather
events across the globe--it snowed in Texas last week, as it
was 80 degrees here in recent years and the empirical records
of increased global temperatures and greenhouse gas
concentration should be evidence enough. I hope we act before
it is too late to direct our Nation's great brainpower to
developing solutions to reduce the warming and mitigate the
impacts of our most vulnerable communities.
At the same time, I am concerned that in a number of cases,
agencies are being given increased responsibilities without
being provided the necessary additional resources. NASA is a
case in point, with some climate responsibilities previously
assigned to NOAA being shifted to NASA without the out-year
budget being adjusted accordingly. In addition, NASA is now
being asked to carry out an ambitious asteroid retrieval
mission which, while making use of some existing projects, will
clearly also require significant new development work to be
undertaken.
In both of these cases, is the Administration going to
provide to NASA the additional resources required to
successfully carry out the mandates that have been given, or is
it going to require NASA to cannibalize other important
activities?
And finally, I want to address the Administration's
sweeping proposal to reorganize federal STEM education
programs. I support the Administration's effort to develop a
coherent vision and strategy for federal investments in STEM. I
firmly believe in a federal role in STEM education, but I also
believe that we must hold ourselves and our agencies
accountable for these investments. We need to prioritize and we
need to focus on outcomes, not outputs or dollars spent. This
is exactly what we asked you to do in 2010 COMPETES Act, and I
am happy that you took the task seriously.
At the same time, the release of this proposal before we
have the strategic plan in hand makes it difficult for us to
understand and evaluate all of the decisions and realignments.
I hope, Dr. Holdren, that you will be able to elucidate more of
this for us today, and I urge you to prioritize getting us the
full report. I am supportive of your process and I want to be
supportive of your outcome, but the longer you wait to share
your detailed plans and justifications, the greater the chance
that Member and stakeholder concerns will grow and your
tremendous efforts will be set back at least a year, if not
longer.
That being said, we will have some concerns and
disagreements about the federal R&D budget proposal, but let me
be clear. This is a good budget for research, innovation, and
education. I look forward to working with the President and my
colleagues in the months ahead to work toward the goal of
making sure that the fiscal year 2014 authorization and
appropriations bill that this Congress will eventually pass
will continue to reflect the need to invest in our future.
Thank you, Dr. Holdren, for being here today. And thank you
for letting me go over 51 seconds. Thank you.
[The statement of Ms. Johnson follows:]
Prepared Statement of Full Committee Ranking Member Eddie Bernice
Johnson
Thank you, Chairman Smith, for holding this hearing, and welcome,
Dr. Holdren. It's good to have you back before the Committee as we
begin to digest the President's FY 2014 R&D budget proposals.
I am pleased that the President remains committed to prioritizing
investments in research and development and STEM education in his
request. Even in these fiscally challenging times, we must set
priorities, and there are few more important investments we can make
than in our Nation's brain power.
The scientists, engineers, and innovators of today make discoveries
and develop technologies that generate whole new industries and jobs,
improve the quality of life and security of our citizens, and keep our
Nation thriving in a competitive world economy. They also help to give
our children the grounding in science and technology they will need to
become the innovators of the future, or simply to be prepared for the
highly skilled jobs of the future.
Specifically, I applaud the President's continued commitment to
keeping the budgets of NSF, NIST, and DOE's Office of Science on the
sustained upward trajectories initiated in the America COMPETES Act.
These agencies, among others, help to ensure our long-term economic
growth through their support for cutting-edge basic research and STEM
education.
I am also pleased with the Administration's increased support for
advanced manufacturing. The last few years have proven that we cannot
be just a service economy and continue to grow. We must also maintain a
strong base of American manufacturing. While we will have questions
about some of the specific initiatives as we proceed with a series of
agency budget hearings, I firmly believe the key to maintaining and
rebuilding our manufacturing capacity is through strategic investments
in advanced manufacturing R&D and workforce development.
I also support the increased funding to the U.S. Global Change
Reserach Program, including the purposed increase for NASA's climate
research. Scientists are telling us that the climate is changing, and I
don't understand why some of us keep fighting them. The significant
increase in extreme weather events across the globe in recent years and
the empirical records of increased global temperatures and greenhouse
gas concentrations should be evidence enough. I hope we act before it
is too late to direct our Nation's great brainpower to developing
solutions to reduce the warming and mitigate the impacts in our most
vulnerable communities.
Finally, I want to address the Administration's sweeping proposal
to reorganize federal STEM education programs. I support the
Administration's effort to develop a coherent vision and strategy for
federal investments in STEM. I firmly believe in a federal role in STEM
education, but I also believe we must hold ourselves and our agencies
accountable for these investments. We need to prioritize and we need to
focus on outcomes, not outputs or dollars spent. This is exactly what
we asked you to do in the 2010 COMPETES Act, and I am happy that you
took this task seriously.
At the same time, the release of this proposal before we have the
strategic plan in hand makes it very difficult for us to understand and
evaluate all of the decisions and realignments. I hope, Dr. Holdren,
that you will be able to elucidate more of this for us today, and I
implore you to prioritize getting us the full report. I am supportive
of your process, and I want to be supportive of your outcome, but the
longer you wait to share your detailed plans and justifications, the
greater the chance that Member and stakeholder concerns will grow and
your tremendous efforts will be set back at least a year, if not
longer.
That being said, we will have some concerns and disagreements
across the federal R&D budget proposal, but let me be clear. This is a
good budget for research, innovation, and education. I look forward to
working with the President and my colleagues in the months ahead to
make sure that the FY 2014 appropriations bills that this Congress will
eventually pass continue to reflect the need to invest in our future.
Thank you, Dr. Holdren, for being here today, and thank you for
your contributions to ensuring continued U.S. leadership in science and
technology.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Ms. Johnson.
Also, if other Members have opening statements, they will
be made a part of the record at this point.
I am going to introduce our witness, but Ms. Johnson just
saying that she went over a few seconds reminds me to let Dr.
Holdren know that if he goes beyond the usual five minutes for
witnesses, that is fine, too. You are the only witness here,
and so if you need to take more time, that would be perfectly
fine.
Our witness today is the Honorable John Holdren. Dr.
Holdren serves as the Director of the Office of Science and
Technology Policy at the White House, where he is both the
Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Co-
Chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and
Technology.
Prior to his current appointment by President Obama, Dr.
Holdren was a professor in both the Kennedy School of
Government and the Department of Earth Science at Harvard.
Previously, he was a member of the faculty at the University of
California, Berkeley, where he founded and led a graduate
degree program in energy and resources. Dr. Holdren graduated
from MIT with degrees in aerospace engineering and theoretical
plasma physics.
As our witness knows, he is normally limited to five
minutes, and as I have just mentioned, please take more if you
need to. And Dr. Holdren, we look forward to your testimony.
STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN HOLDREN,
DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY,
EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT
Dr. Holdren. Well, Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Johnson,
Members of the Committee, I am certainly happy to be here with
you today to discuss the civilian science and technology
components of the President's fiscal year 2014 budget.
The President, in his most recent State of the Union
address, articulated three overarching priorities: making
America a magnet for new jobs in manufacturing; unlocking the
promise of American energy; and educating our citizens with the
skills and training to fill the jobs of the future. The
President's 2014 budget supports these three priorities by
investing strategically in science and engineering research and
in STEM education.
We know from decades of experience that these are the kinds
of investments that will pay off for the Nation in the years
ahead. They are the kinds of investments that a forward-looking
nation must maintain even in economically trying times. By
building and fueling America's engines of discovery, these
investments promise to expand the frontiers of human knowledge,
revitalize America's manufacturing sector and promote
sustainable economic growth, cultivate a clean energy future
for the Nation, improve health care outcomes for more people at
lower cost, manage competing demands on environmental resources
while addressing global climate change, and strengthen our
national security.
Importantly, the President's budget does so without adding
to the federal deficit, balancing increases in some areas with
decreases in others and doing so strategically rather than with
the blunt tool of sequestration. The numbers have been out for
about a week now, so I am not going to take a lot of time going
through them in detail, but as you know, the President's budget
proposes $142.8 billion for federal research and development in
fiscal year 2014. That is an increase of 1.3 percent over the
2012 enacted level and proposes $69.6 billion for nondefense
R&D, which would be an increase of 9.2 percent. These increases
are offset, as I mentioned, by strategic cuts.
For example, the $71.5 billion proposed for development,
the D in R&D in the 2014 budget, represents a decline of $3.8
billion in that category. Because the final 2013 appropriations
were so recently enacted, the comparisons in the budget and
those I will make here today are between the 2014 proposals and
the enacted 2012 appropriation. And I use current dollars, not
adjusted for inflation. If you want to adjust them for
inflation, the estimate for inflation between 2012 and 2014 is
estimated to be 4.0 percent.
Among the particular highlights of the budget, it provides
targeted support for three agencies repeatedly identified as
especially important to the Nation's continued scientific and
economic leadership: the National Science Foundation, the
Department of Energy's Office of Science, and the National
Institute of Standards and Technology laboratories. The
increase there is 8.0 percent for those three combined. They
total $13.5 billion.
The budget provides $17.7 billion to NASA, including funds
for the continued development of the Space Launch System and
the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle to enable human
exploration missions to new destinations, including an exciting
mission in the planning stages that would bring an asteroid
within range for a human visit.
Within the Department of Energy, the budget proposes an
Energy Security Trust to support research into transportation
technologies to shift our cars and trucks off oil and insulate
American families from volatile gasoline prices. And it
provides $379 million for the Advanced Research Projects
Agency-Energy, or ARPA-E, to support transformational
discoveries and accelerate development of clean energy
technology.
The budget also supports several high-priority interagency
science and technology initiatives, including the Networking
and Information Technology R&D Program, the National
Nanotechnology Initiative, and the U.S. Global Change Research
Program, as mentioned by the Chairman.
Finally, the budget proposes $3.1 billion for STEM
education programs. That is a 6.7 percent increase, and it
would reorganize the welter of small STEM ed programs spread
across the mission agencies into about half the current number
to improve focus, coordination, and evaluation.
In closing, let me emphasize the long-standing bipartisan
cooperation that has characterized the Federal Government's
work to maintain America's global leadership position in
science, technology, and innovation over many administrations.
My colleagues and I in the Obama Administration look forward to
continuing to work with this Committee and the rest of Congress
to strengthen the Nation's science and technology portfolio in
order to sustain and expand the economic and other societal
benefits that that portfolio underpins.
Thank you very much. I think I am just a few seconds over.
[The statement of Mr. Holdren follows:]
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Chairman Smith. Dr. Holdren, thank you. I don't know how
you got so much in five minutes. And there will be a lot of
questions on other subjects as well.
And I will recognize myself for questions. And really, I
think I had more observations than questions, and I would ask
you to comment on them.
First of all, let me go to NASA. Last December, a National
Academy of Sciences' review of NASA's Strategic Direction made
the following observation: ``The Committee has seen little
evidence that a current stated goal for NASA's Human
Spaceflight Program--namely, to visit an asteroid by 2025--has
been widely accepted as a compelling destination by NASA's own
workforce, by the Nation as a whole, or by the international
community. On the international front, there appears to be
continued enthusiasm for a mission to the Moon but not for an
asteroid mission. The President and the Administration are now
proposing to capture a small asteroid and bring it closer to
Earth as a destination for American astronauts.''
I guess my question here is, it seems to me, that most of
the scientific community would prefer some form of a return
mission to the Moon. Why wouldn't we follow their advice?
Dr. Holdren. Let me say, first of all, that I think the
situation has changed in a number of important respects since
the National Research Council report, which you quote. It is
true that there was a degree of lack of enthusiasm, a lack of
excitement among some about the initially proposed mission to
send U.S. astronauts to an asteroid by 2025, but the things
that have changed and have changed that picture very
substantially is, number one, NASA has developed an
extraordinarily ingenious and cost-effective new approach to
that mission, which entails sending a robotic probe to a small
asteroid, towing it to a position about 40,000 miles outside
the orbit of the Moon, and sending U.S. astronauts to visit
there and to sample it and to return the samples using the
Space Launch System and the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle
that are already being developed.
And by the way, we were already planning to visit the
location to which that asteroid would be towed, an
equilibration point just beyond the orbit of the Moon--
Chairman Smith. Right. And Dr. Holdren, I--
Dr. Holdren [continuing]. As a way station--
Chairman Smith. Right.
Dr. Holdren [continuing]. For heading to Mars.
Chairman Smith. I know--
Dr. Holdren. So we are now seeing a lot of enthusiasm.
Chairman Smith. Let me just interject real quick. I know
this is a new mission, but it never appeared on any of the
recommended missions by the Academies or by the various panels
that were asked to make recommendations. So it is a new
mission. Maybe we need to wait and see how it is received by
the scientific community. But it just seems to me to be a
little bit of an afterthought when the first mission didn't get
supported by the international or by the scientific community.
But I realize it is new, and we can weigh it as we go forward.
Another observation is this: as I mentioned in my opening
statement, I think there are 13 agencies that engage in climate
change research. There is only one agency, NASA, that is
engaged in space exploration. Why not let NASA focus on its
missions in regard to space and let the other 12 agencies focus
on climate change, since NASA is the only one that deals with
the space exploration?
Dr. Holdren. Well, I would say, first of all, that NASA has
long had a mission to planet Earth, a mission looking down as
well as a mission looking out, and NASA has unique
capabilities, as it does in other areas, including aeronautics
and green aviation, next-generation air traffic control. NASA
has long been a multi-mission agency with many important
missions--
Chairman Smith. That is true but--
Dr. Holdren [continuing]. And our position is NASA needs to
pursue all of those missions with the unique resources it has
for those purposes.
Chairman Smith. The President--what concerns me is the
President, I think, over the last year or two has shifted
something like $300 million from space exploration into climate
change research, and it just seems to me that one agency that
does space ought to be allowed to continue to do space and
focus on that. It may be just a difference of opinion that we
have.
My last observation is this, and that is that in regard to
the National Science Foundation grants, many proposals are
approved, and only one out of seven is approved, that seem to
deal with subjects that might not rise to the level or meet the
standards that most people would think that they should meet. A
couple of examples would be one study was approved to, I think,
analyze the animal pictures in National Geographic from 1988 to
2008. There was another National Science Foundation grant that
was approved that I think dealt with Chinese women's labor in
the 16th century or something like that, and there have been a
number that dealt with situations and cultural changes in
China.
I--help me if you will and suggest as to how we might make
sure that those who decide to approve these grants might be
persuaded to approve grants that seem to focus more on more
helpful subjects, more scientific subjects, more basic
research?
Dr. Holdren. Well, first of all, let me say, Mr. Chairman,
that I think there has been a lot of good and important
research in the social sciences funded by the National Science
Foundation. And I think you would probably agree. There has
been research that has strengthened our democracy, that has
increased the efficiency of our government, that has improved
our foreign policy.
Sometimes, it is hard to tell from the title of the project
what its merit is, but I would also concede that as rigorous as
NSF's review processes are, there is always room for
improvement, and I think some of the recent developments that
have called into question some of the grants in the social
sciences that NSF has funded will lead to increased scrutiny
there as to how their review process can ensure that the social
science work that they support contributes in evident ways to
the national interest. But we would also not want to undermine
the basic research dimension of what the National Science
Foundation does, and we should be careful in the ways we
intervene not to do that.
Chairman Smith. Okay. Thank you for that. And I would like
to continue to discuss the subject with you and maybe come up
with ways to achieve our common goals in that regard. Thank
you, Dr. Holdren.
Ms. Johnson is recognized for her questions.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much.
Dr. Holdren, I don't think it is any surprise that I am
very interested in STEM education. And I was enthusiastically
supportive of looking at the 127 programs coming together from
a number of agencies to see how we could better concentrate.
And I do support the goals of the proposal. However, we don't
know what the program is now. I question about how this will
all work because we are looking at a budget without the plan,
and I wonder whether or not we can see the plan soon.
For K-12 programs that are being transferred, how will the
mission-specific needs and the decades of education and public
outreach experience that built up at the mission agencies like
NASA and preserved by Smithsonian, the development in the
Department of Education?
NASA has a long history of engaging students outside the
classroom, and I have seen so much enthusiasm among students
and I worry about the loss by transferring these programs, and
I am specifically worried about consolidating too much in the
Department of Education, which doesn't have a long history with
STEM. And so I am really concerned about not knowing what this
restructuring is and how we can work toward achieving the goal
of being successful in STEM education.
Dr. Holdren. Well, that is a big set of questions, Ranking
Member Johnson, but let me quickly try to address a couple of
the main pieces of it.
First of all, the reorganization that the budget contains
leaves intact a great many programs, still over 100 programs
spread across the mission agencies. So it by no means has
taken, or is proposing to take away, all of the diverse
programs out there. And there has been a very serious effort to
make sure to preserve the programs that most leverage the
unique assets of the mission agencies, to preserve the programs
particularly that reach women and other underrepresented groups
in STEM, and in the consolidation, to do it in a way where the
additional resources that end up in the Department of Education
focused on K through 12; and NSF focused on college,
undergraduate, and graduate education; and in the Smithsonian
Institution focused on engagement and outreach outside of
schools. Those consolidations, those additions of resources,
will be managed in a way that interact with the mission
agencies and preserve aspects of the programs that they lost
that are the most valuable ones.
And we have commitments from the Department of Education,
from NSF, from the Smithsonian that they are already doing
that. They are in touch with the agencies. They are working to
make sure that this consolidation, which provides more
opportunities for coherence, for coordination, and for
evaluation that was difficult with the very dispersed and often
very small programs that are being consolidated, will all
happen.
The second point I would make is the Department of
Education is committed to expanding the staff dedicated to STEM
education in order to be able to manage these additional
responsibilities. And I have spoken with folks at NSF and
Smithsonian as well, and they are all building up their
capacity to deal with these additional responsibilities.
On the Strategic Plan, we have the benefit in conducting
this reorganization of the progress report on the Strategic
Plan that was released in 2012 and which was provided to the
Congress and posted publicly. But I can tell you that the final
version of the Strategic Plan, which is due in May, is, I
believe, going to be delivered in May. So you will have it next
month and be able to evaluate what is being proposed against
it.
Ms. Johnson. Well, thank you very much. And I really
sincerely hope that is something that is workable. In my
experience--and I am in and out of schools all the time--many
of the students are excited about external programs that are
sponsored by NASA and some of the other groups. I have seen
where there have been Title I teachers, for example, that is
moving furniture around and not teaching students. So I am not
so sure about the oversight that--and how close that is done as
well as the other departments and the Department of Education.
But thank you. I yield back.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Ms. Johnson. The gentleman from
Texas, Mr. Neugebauer, is recognized for his questions.
Mr. Neugebauer. Well, thank you, Chairman. And thanks for
holding this important hearing.
As you know, Dr. Holdren, the Keystone pipeline would
deliver an estimated 830,000 barrels of oil a day to U.S.
refineries and it would alleviate supply pressures that
contribute to high gas prices enabling Americans to receive oil
from our best ally in Canada instead of our foreign adversaries
such as Venezuela.
Last month, the State Department's 1,500-page
``Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement,'' the SEIS,
essentially affirmed the safety and environmental soundness of
this pipeline, concluding that it was not an impact--it would
not impact greenhouse gas emissions, which has been a key
environmental objection. As President Obama's Science Advisor
with a background in environmental science, I presume that you
have been involved in reviewing the climate science and
pipeline technologies associated with the Keystone's pipeline
decision. Could you describe any official, unofficial, or
official advice or guidance that you have provided the
President on or the President of the Administration's science
agencies in their review of the Keystone pipeline?
Dr. Holdren. Congressman, first of all, as you know, the
main locus of that decision ultimately will be the State
Department. Obviously, the President is interested in it and is
looking at it, and Secretary Kerry and the President are
obviously committed ultimately to making the decision that is
best for the country and best for the American people. The
advice that I give to the President I give in my capacity as
the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, and
I cannot discuss the content of that, but I can tell you that
this has not been a major focus of my activity, and I have not
in fact had any conversations with the President at this point
about the Keystone pipeline. He might in the future ask me
about scientific aspects of it, but that has not happened until
this point.
Mr. Neugebauer. Well, let me ask you a question then. Do
you share the perspective of the State Department report that
the pipeline does not increase the amount of greenhouse gas
emissions, and if it is, it is a negligible amount?
Dr. Holdren. We in the Executive Office of the President,
again, have not been given the responsibility at this point to
review that. I wouldn't want to preview what we might conclude
if the President asks us to look more closely at the science in
that particular assessment.
Mr. Neugebauer. Have you looked at the science?
Dr. Holdren. I personally have started to look at the
assessment, but I have not reached any conclusions.
Mr. Neugebauer. So another question that I had was when we
look at, particularly, the satellite program for weather and
that program has been plagued with a lot of mismanagement. In
fact, I want to read something here that the JPSS weather
satellite program is projected to cost, I think like $13
billion between now and 2028.
But last year, an independent review team called the
Administration's management of this program dysfunctional and
recommended that NOAA refocus the joint JPSS system program on
its primary mission--weather centers and not climate
monitoring. Do you agree with the review team's assessment
about the dysfunctional management priority of the weather
centers for the JPSS program?
Dr. Holdren. I agree with the findings that there were
serious management problems at the time the study was done.
NOAA and the Commerce Department have taken those
recommendations very seriously and have already implemented a
great many reforms in the management of that program. And the
JPSS is now on schedule, within budget, and has met a number of
its milestones, and is, actually, ahead of schedule. I think
that report of the independent review team was extremely
useful. And again, it has helped put that program back on
track.
Mr. Neugebauer. So what are you doing to monitor that?
Dr. Holdren. Well, you know, Congressman, when I came into
this position I was told in my confirmation hearing that one of
my obligations was to fix the polar-orbiting satellite system,
which was a mess. We spent a year and a half working with all
the relevant agencies, with NOAA, with NASA, with the
Department of Defense, and we believe we did basically put in
place the ingredients of a fix. The IRT report was a course
correction for the part of it that ended up at NOAA. We are
monitoring that very closely. I continue to consider it my
responsibility as the Director of OSTP to make sure that that
program stays on track. We cannot afford a gap in our polar-
orbiting satellite coverage of weather, and it is our intention
to avoid a gap.
Mr. Neugebauer. Do you get periodic reports on the
progress?
Dr. Holdren. Oh, yes, absolutely.
Mr. Neugebauer. Yes. Could you furnish the Committee a copy
of the most recent report on that?
Dr. Holdren. Well, I can certainly provide some relevant
material to you. A lot of the reports that I get are in
conversations with the Administrator of NOAA, currently the
acting Administrator, Dr. Kathy Sullivan, and in discussions
with the acting Secretary of Commerce, Dr. Becky Blank. So I
can't provide you transcripts of those conversations, but they
have certainly been taking place frequently.
Mr. Neugebauer. So you can--
Dr. Holdren. I can provide you with some other material
that summarizes our understanding based on those conversations
and conversations that have gone on with OMB on the state of
progress. I would be happy to do that.
Mr. Neugebauer. Thank you.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Neugebauer.
The gentleman from California, Ms. Lofgren, is recognized
for her questions.
Ms. Lofgren. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And it is great to
see you, Dr. Holdren. Thank you for your service to our country
and to science. It is always a pleasure to communicate with
you.
And I want to appreciate publicly your efforts with our
national labs to make sure that they are getting the support
that they need and, especially, thank you also for your trip
out to Sandia and Lawrence Livermore last year. It had a
tremendous boost for morale for the scientists and it meant a
lot, I think, to all of them.
I want to talk about--and I know this will probably come as
no surprise to you--the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence
Livermore National Lab. And I appreciate that we are trying to
make sense of the numbers that are coming out of OMB, but here
is what I think is the case. I mean, in 2012 we had a budget
for the National Ignition Facility of $486.8 million. The
Administration requested only $271 million in 2013. As you
know, we added $32 million in a bipartisan effort here in the
House, but because we did not get the appropriations bill to
the finish line, that in the end was not provided to the
National Ignition Facility.
I realize that there are apparently efforts to allow for
direct charging by the National Ignition Facility, but it is
not clear to me how that is going to work. We spent $5 billion
building the best tool in the world for this. As you know, the
National Academy and National Research Council just finished a
two-year study on the inertial confinement fusion effort and
determined that it is a national research priority and that the
NIF is a critical research tool. So here is my question: is it
the intent of the Administration to eliminate the fusion energy
program at the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore
lab? And if not, how are we going to avoid that result?
Dr. Holdren. Well, thank you for that question,
Congresswoman Lofgren. As you know, I am committed, Secretary
Chu is committed, and I expect, if confirmed, Secretary Moniz
will be committed to maintaining this valuable facility and
using it for the variety of purposes for which it was designed.
As you also know, most of the budget for the National Ignition
Facility comes from the National Nuclear Security
Administration because of its relation to the Stockpile
Stewardship Program, the capability to understand without
nuclear explosive testing what we need to understand to
maintain the safety and reliability of our enduring nuclear
weapons stockpile. That has always been the case. The primary
source of funding was the weapons program and remains so.
There has been a small amount of funding that has come from
the fusion energy side of the operation in DOE, which is then
based on the proposition that ultimately inertial confinement
fusion, as being pursued in this facility, might be a viable
commercial energy source. The fusion budget, however, is now
under intense pressure because of the rising cost of ITER, the
International--
Ms. Lofgren. Right.
Dr. Holdren [continuing]. Thermonuclear Engineering Reactor
and the need to maintain a strong domestic plasma physics
program. And so this year DOE decided that the modest support
for NIF that it provided from the energy side would not
continue to be provided--
Ms. Lofgren. Well--
Dr. Holdren [continuing]. But that doesn't mean that the
value of NIF to demonstrating ultimately the possibility of
harnessing fusion energy in this way will be lost because the
main thrust of activities there will continue.
Ms. Lofgren. If I could--and I thank you for that
reassurance that our intent is actually not to close this
program. It is confusing, and you have been very helpful in
finding--get--helping me understand what OMB is saying, but it
sounds as if the intent is to charge off to users more of the
cost of the facility and--but the NSF $18 million has now been
removed and--or DOE--and is it the intent that the NNSA will
now be charged for their activity?
And, you know, I guess the other question I would ask--this
is not something that the facility could decide, but both
Russia and China are trying to emulate what we did and build
comparable machines. Is it the intention of the Administration
to charge off to those two countries experimental work? And
what are the security implications if we were to do that?
Dr. Holdren. Well, first of all, Congresswoman, I believe
that NIF remains the preeminent facility in the world and that
nothing Russia or China has done up until now really comes
close to its capabilities. I think the United States will
remain in the lead in this domain, even though Russia and China
are barking at our heels, as it were. But we intend to maintain
our position of strength in the field.
As far as the details of who is being charged for what, I
have to tell you we got the Congressional justification from
OMB at the same time you did--
Ms. Lofgren. Right.
Dr. Holdren [continuing]. And we are still trying to
understand the intricacies of what is reflected there in terms
of what the numbers--
Ms. Lofgren. Well--
Dr. Holdren [continuing]. Add up to. But I can tell you
about our intention. Our intention is to maintain this as a
viable, world-leading facility with important applications both
for our weapons program and potentially to the future of fusion
energy.
Ms. Lofgren. I thank you very much, Dr. Holdren, and I look
forward to continuing to work with you and again appreciate
your tremendous effort here.
Chairman Smith. Okay. Thank you, Ms. Lofgren.
The gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Hultgren, is recognized
for his questions.
Mr. Hultgren. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Holdren, good to
see you. According to my count, I think this is the fourth time
that you and I have had the opportunity to discuss the
President's science priorities. And I want to start by just
saying I appreciate you, I respect you, but I have to tell you
I am disappointed in the President and I am disappointed in
your office.
I think the President likes to give great speeches about
science, but I don't think he actually really understands the
importance of pure discovery research. And if you look at the
chart that I have got here in my hand, now we have got up on
the board, I see no evidence that you or the President have
given a second thought to the input from this Committee over
the last several years. This chart tells the same story it does
as the chart I showed you last year.
The President favors massive increases to his pet projects
in the alternative energy sector, and the closer the investment
gets to pure discovery science, the less he cares about them.
When it comes to high-energy physics, he once again wants to
use it as a piggy bank to pay for other things. You said a year
ago that you are not content for us to leave the future of
cutting-edge facilities in high-energy physics to the rest of
the world, but that we were constrained, and that everybody
knows the budget challenges under which were operating.
And I look at the President's budget request this year, and
I find myself thinking, sure, you can use that as a convenient
excuse to cut high-energy physics yet again, but does an almost
40 percent increase in ARPA-E and an almost 60 percent increase
in EERE strike you as constrained approaches? Does yet another
real-dollar cut to high-energy physics strike you as supportive
of high-energy physics?
Dr. Holdren. Well, let me say that, first of all, as I know
you know, we are in a world of pain when it comes to the
amounts of money available to us overall. I mentioned in my
opening remarks that areas that were increased had to be bound
by areas that were decreased. And difficult choices were made
in that domain and reasonable people can disagree about what
the most reasonable pattern of decisions would have been. But
we are maintaining a world-leading program in neutrino physics
at the Fermilab, which, of course--
Mr. Hultgren. Well, let me jump in on that real quickly.
Particle physics has been singled out by the Administration for
decreased investment year after year. It lost annual purchasing
power almost 25 percent in the last decade, which is in direct
contrast to every other program in the Office of Science. Bill
Brinkman, in his recent testimony to Congress, stated that we
have squeezed too hard, yet you and President Obama continued
to decrease investment in this important area of basic
research, as is shown again in the latest budget request. How
is this consistent with maintaining a position of leadership in
the world in basic scientific research?
Dr. Holdren. Well, first of all, we have benefited from a
very high degree of international collaboration in this domain,
which has saved us some money. The extraordinary work to
discover the Higgs-Boson, which took place at CERN in
Switzerland, was carried out with enormously elaborate,
expensive detectors and teams from the United States. The fact
that it took place in Switzerland on a machine, much of which
was paid for by other countries, saved us money, but it did not
diminish U.S. leadership--
Mr. Hultgren. Well, I would say it did. You know, I think
that should have happened here. I think we could have done much
of that here. To maintain a position of leadership in any
domain of particle physics, the plan of the U.S. community is
to define leadership at the Intensity Frontier--where the focus
of the greatest flux of particles and not the highest energy.
The LBNE, as you mentioned, is a key facility necessary to
establishing leadership in the area of particle physics. Why is
investment decreasing in LBNE in fiscal year 2014 at a critical
time, again when strong international participation is being
sought?
Dr. Holdren. There is funding for the LBNE within the
Office of Science request for 2014. We continue to support it.
And we believe that the overall plan that we are working to
develop for out-year support for facilities will be able to
support the LBNE. We have no disagreement with you about the
importance of the Intensity Frontier and--
Mr. Hultgren. I appreciate your agreement, that just
doesn't follow up with the budget plans. There are cuts there,
and I think it really does send a very poor message. When we
are out there seeking international partners, we are at the
leadership of neutrino research, and yet we are undercutting
these programs.
I just want to show--my time is running out--but the latest
edition of the Scientific American talks about ``Strange,
Surprising Neutrino Physics,'' much of the research again that
is going on with LBNE. But from that, on the cover, they are
featuring neutrinos. Particle physics has never been more
exciting. As you mentioned, we have seen remarkable advances
with the discovery of the Higgs and crucial measurements of the
properties of neutrinos. These discoveries have had important
participation from American scientists as you mentioned, but
they have really been led and enabled by facility investments
in Europe and China.
It seems to me that the President's budget plan that you
are defending cedes American leadership in high-energy physics
to Europe and China.
And my time is up, but to just a kind of highlight that
again, I was looking back through your testimony of last year
and reading through, and I will point you to the second page of
your testimony today, the bottom paragraph. It is interesting
because you had that exact same paragraph in your testimony
last year, but one thing was changed, and that is, last year,
you talked about these three jewel-in-the-crown agencies
referring to NSF, Office of Science, and you have taken that
out in your most recent, the idea of the jewel-in-the-crown
agencies. It is the only thing that is removed from that
paragraph. And my fear is that is exactly what is happening. We
are taking away by undercutting investment in these important
programs. We are taking away and ceding our leadership
opportunity.
My time is expired. I do appreciate you so much and the
work you are doing. I know these are difficult times, but this
is the stuff we have got to do. And so I ask and implore and
look for ways that we can be working together to strengthen
this investment and see where we can be taking money again
where huge increases have happened in certain areas and put it
back where we absolutely have to be doing it, where the market
can't do it in basic scientific research.
With that, I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Smith. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Hultgren. And the
other gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Lipinski, is recognized.
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Dr. Holdren, for all the work that you do, it is
very important that we maintain our leadership in the world on
science, and I appreciate what you are doing.
The first thing I want to talk about is NSF's Innovation
Corps Program. For those who aren't familiar with it, I-Corps
is essentially an education program developed by serial
entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley that teaches researchers how to
develop a viable product from their research while also
connecting them with potential customers and venture
capitalists so that they can get feedback on their work. It is
based on the Lean Startup model, which you can read about in an
article written by the father of the movement, Steve Blank,
which is in the May issue--the most recent issue of the Harvard
Business Review.
I really believe that I-Corps has the potential to leverage
our federal investments in research to create new jobs and new
companies. We have already seen some success despite the fact
that the program has only been operating for less than two
years. Now, recently, one of the I-Corps teams--former I-Corps
teams that went through the program formed a company called
Neon and was able to secure funding from a private venture
capital group. I bring this up because the company's current
product and business model came as a result of their
participation in the I-Corps program, and they readily admit
that that is the case.
Now, recently, the ARPA-E program entered into an agreement
with NSF to train some of their researchers in the I-Corps
program. And I think more agencies could benefit as well. And
this is--those were--are going--getting funding to take part in
the I-Corps program are researchers who have already received
federal grants. So today, I am sending letters to NIH and the
Department of Energy to ask them to consider participating in
the I-Corps program with some of their research divisions.
So, first, I want to applaud the Administration's
commitment to innovative approaches to technology transfer like
I-Corps. And second, I wanted to get your thoughts, Dr. Holdren
on the I-Corps program and whether some form of entrepreneurial
education like I-Corps might make sense at other science
agencies. I just want to get your perspective on that.
Dr. Holdren. Well, thank you, Congressman Lipinski. I am
very grateful for this question, because we in this
Administration are very strong supporters of NSF's I-Corps
program and of the broader proposition that there is tremendous
leverage in measures that can accelerate the transition of
discovery in laboratories, whether they are research
universities, laboratories, or national laboratories or
corporate laboratories. They can accelerate the transition of
discovery into practical products in the marketplace, meaning
the national interest. I-Corps is doing, I think, a great job
of that.
We are delighted that the I-Corps and ARPA-E are now in
consultation. We have had a number of other projects and
programs with the same general aim of trying to foster
entrepreneurship in the scientific community that will move
things in this direction. These efforts have included
components of the STEM education programs we have at the
college level, where we are encouraging colleges to offer
courses in entrepreneurship for their scientists and engineers
to take so that when they go out in the world with their
advanced degrees, they are not just specialists in their
particular field of scientific or engineering advancement and
discovery, but they are knowledgeable about how to translate
those discoveries into practical products, into companies, into
new jobs. And I certainly applaud your interest in trying to
expand this model even further.
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you. And very briefly, I know there are
a number of initiatives on advanced manufacturing in the
President's budget, the total requested $2.9 billion across the
Federal Government. Can you give a brief overview of the
Administration's strategy and vision on this revitalized U.S.
manufacturing in 46 seconds?
Dr. Holdren. The basic notion, of course, is that advances
in additive manufacturing, formerly called 3-D printing;
advances in materials, which we are promoting through what we
call the Materials Genome Initiative; trying to cut in half the
time it takes to develop and certify new materials; advances in
robotics all together provide the possibility of a very
substantially revitalizing American manufacturing. It is
already happening. It is already showing results.
We think there is the possibility to generate more jobs,
more businesses that are using these advanced technologies in
the manufacturing domain, and that is going to help in part
because when you separate the laboratory and the discovery from
the manufacturing process, as has happened to some extent over
the past couple of decades, you lose the opportunity for close
feedback, which tends to improve the manufacturing process as
it increases its efficiency, lowers costs. As we bring these
manufacturing activities back to the United States and create
and keep those jobs here, we are also going to benefit through
increased efficiencies because of the feedback between research
activities, development activities in the actual manufacturing
plant.
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you very much. And I agree. I concur
with what the Ranking Member said in her opening statement. We
need to make more here in America. Thank you for your work on
that.
I yield back.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Lipinski.
The gentleman from Florida, Mr. Posey, is recognized for
his questions.
Mr. Posey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you, Dr. Holdren, for coming to share with us
today.
I would like to read for you a couple titles of some
research grants that the National Science Foundation recently
funded. Picturing animals in National Geographic for the years
1888 to 2008 costing $227,000; kinship, women's labor and
China's economic performance in the 17th through 21st century
costing $267,000; regulating accountability and transparency in
China's dairy industry costing $152,000. The press has
reported, as I am sure you know, many other examples of social
and political science studies, and the Committee has got
obviously other examples of questionable studies that cost over
$600,000. NSF's current spending on social, behavioral, and
economic science studies is over $250 million a year. And the
President's request increases this research spending over 70
percent--over seven percent, I am sorry.
Within that $250 million, staff says, approximately $10
million goes toward political science studies. This comes at a
time when many households are being asked to pay more taxes to
fund more studies like this. And, you know, the questions our
constituents beg for answers to are how do we justify such
questionable studies as a priority for funding?
Dr. Holdren. Well, I would offer a couple of comments. One,
I am not qualified to even try to defend every social science
grant that NSF has ever given, and it is a perilous business
sometimes to try to determine from the title of a grant, or
even from a description of it what value it might have as
fundamental research in social and behavioral sciences.
What I will say is that there have been many extremely
valuable--from the clear standpoint of the national interest--
valuable studies funded by NSF in political science and other
social and behavioral sciences. I will give you one example.
Elinor Ostrom--the late Elinor Ostrom, the only woman and the
only political scientist ever to receive an economics Nobel
Prize, did work showing that local management of resources held
in common can be effective and sustainable without centralized
regulatory control. This is a finding that should have
considerable appeal on both sides of the aisle. She got a Nobel
Prize for it. She was funded by a series of NSF grants in
political science.
Mr. Posey. Well, I think we will all agree that it is
probably a good subject to study, you know, how our economy
works, how we make our economy better, but Chinese dairy
industry regulation, China's economic performance kinship,
picturing animals--I mean it is just hard to conceive how those
are important to our national security or our national
interest.
And, you know, while I am not advocating we stop all social
science study spending, I just think it might be appropriate
that much of that be left to the private sector, and I know the
recently enacted Coburn amendment requires that the Director of
the National Science Foundation certify that each and every
social science study meets the criteria of promoting national
security or economic interest of the United States of America.
And I think that is a good and proper filter by which all
future studies should be considered. Do you agree?
Dr. Holdren. I respectfully do not agree. I think that is
too narrowly drawn. I think there have been many beneficial
results from research funded by NSF in the social, behavioral,
and economic sciences that have contributed, for example, to a
better understanding of how our democracy works and how to make
it stronger, that have contributed to making our government
more efficient. Saying that the only possible justifications
are clear economic benefit or national security benefit, I
think, would leave out a variety of important domains of NSF
research.
And I think with respect to the private sector, we know
that the private sector won't fund--
Mr. Posey. Can you state just a couple of those for me?
Dr. Holdren [continuing]. Fundamental research.
Mr. Posey. Give me some of those other domains, then, so
maybe I can get a better handle on this bigger picture you are
talking about.
Dr. Holdren. Okay. Again, improving the efficiency of the
United States Government. There has been a huge amount of work
supported by NSF in that domain--
Mr. Posey. I think that is an economic interest and the
national security, quite frankly.
Dr. Holdren. Well, you can make that argument and maybe it
is, but I think it is a dangerous thing for the Congress or
anybody else to be trying to specify in detail what kinds of
fundamental research the NSF should support. The NSF has
developed on the whole an enormously respected track record in
supporting basic research across a wide range of disciplines in
which it works. And we know the private sector is not going to
support basic research to the extent that society's interests
require. The uncertainties are too great, the timescale for
return too long, the appropriability of the results inadequate.
This is a responsibility of the government to fund basic
research, including basic research in social sciences. And if
you say it has to have a specific application, you are pulling
the rug out from under the capacity of the NSF to fund basic
research.
Mr. Posey. Well, maybe some of my colleagues share my
feelings and some of them don't, but, you know, the picturing
of animals in National Geographic costing $227,000, I don't
think that is a basic--personally--research that American
taxpayers need to foot the bill for. And I think if there is
someone who thinks that is beneficial to them, perhaps they
should start paying $227,000 for picturing animals in National
Geographic during that period of time.
Chairman Smith. The gentleman's time--
Dr. Holdren. Again, it is not my field. I cannot comment on
what merit or lack of merit that particular project had as
basic social science.
Mr. Posey. Well, do you think there should be some
parameters? Don't you think there--
Mr. Posey. --should be some--
Dr. Holdren [continuing]. An elaborate and rigorous review
process at NSF. That is not to say it couldn't be made better.
Mr. Posey. Thank you.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Posey.
The gentlewoman from Maryland, Ms. Edwards, is recognized.
Ms. Edwards. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you, Dr. Holdren. I want to go back to the
question of STEM education in the reorganization because I
actually--I do generally support the idea that we are
consolidating some of these STEM education programs. I think it
is important that the NSF play a very functional role in
identifying what are the criteria for successful programs, what
kind of guidance teachers need in order to be effective
teachers.
And it seems to me that there are a couple of categories
that are distinguishable in our STEM funding: the sort of pre-
K-12 area, undergraduate, graduate education, and then the sort
of nonprofit informal sector. And I think that there are
different things that, for example, our centers in NASA or NOAA
engage in communities and in developing STEM programs that are
very distinct from the needs that take place in the K-12 area
in classroom and in the informal sector.
And where I have seen a real problem is in the wide range
of STEM programs in the informal sector, and without sometimes
a lot of rhyme or reason in terms of the educational value and
not because they are bad people doing those things but because
they just don't know what makes a good program and in what
communities is there a successful program. What are the
demographic groups that we are targeting so that we make sure
that the educational value makes sense?
And so I would hope that going forward you would be able to
make these distinctions from a budget standpoint so that the
good stuff that is happening like at Goddard Space Flight
Center and the role that it plays in our local community in
working with our school system and the NOAA center, that those
things aren't wiped out with the responsibility of the
scientists who are really engaged in the research playing a
role in developing that program as distinct from these sort of
informal programs that need, I think, a little bit more
guidance and coherence.
And so I wonder if you could tell me if you envision a role
for, you know, scientists on the ground to participate with
NSF, with the Department of Education in rolling out effective
programs in communities and developing materials, because I
would think that we would not want to lose that kind of
expertise and that sort of hands-on involvement of people who
are really, you know, doing real work on a day-to-day basis but
also engage with our young people in the classrooms.
Dr. Holdren. The short answer is absolutely yes. I
appreciate very much the work that these programs at NOAA and
NASA and for that matter DOE and the Department of Defense that
have practicing scientists and engineers on the ground
contributing to the educational process. These have been of
great value. A lot of these programs have been left intact.
Again, this reorganization affects about half of the
dispersed programs that were out there, so half remain in
place. And the ones that are being consolidated and moved in
terms of their management to NSF or the Department of Education
or the Smithsonian Institution, as I mentioned before, all of
those agencies are determined to continue to tap the expertise
in the dispersed mission agencies for these purposes. They have
made that commitment to me. I have been talking to the
leadership of all of those agencies about it. We are talking
about it in the meetings of the Committee on STEM Education of
the National Science and Technology Council, which I chair,
together with the acting NSF Director, Cora Marrett. And I
believe it is going to happen. I believe we are going to get
this right.
Ms. Edwards. And just to follow up on that, can you also
tell me about how you plan to continue to engage funding of
basic research in historically black colleges and universities
and minority-serving institutions, because then those become
the filters for graduate--undergraduate, and graduate
education, and it seems to me that if you really want to get
students engaged, a diverse population of students engaged,
that they have to get--there have to be opportunities in those
institutions that serve them. And so I would hope that there is
kind of a parallel development of funding of research in those
institutions with what is happening in this reorganization of
STEM programs.
Dr. Holdren. I agree with that as well and I would make two
further points. One is that in this reorganization we took care
not to impact any programs connected with historically black
colleges and universities or other programs that were
explicitly focused on women or minorities in STEM. We are now
in the process of conducting a further review to make sure that
we didn't miss anything in terms of indirect connections that
might be affected because we are in complete agreement in this
Administration. The President feels very strongly about this,
that one of the core elements of our STEM education efforts has
to be to improve opportunities and access for women and
minorities, and other underrepresented groups in the STEM
fields. So we are taking that very seriously.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Ms. Edwards.
he gentleman from California, Mr. Rohrabacher, is
recognized for his questions.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you,
Dr. Holdren, for being with us today and having this exchange
of ideas and views and enlightening us to some things about our
budget requests that we have to deal with.
From 1990 through the end of 2013, America will have spent
$42 billion through the U.S. Global Change Research Program,
$42 billion. In your testimony, you state that this work is,
``including but not limited to climate change.'' What other
global change areas is being worked on and what percentage of
the $2.8 billion dedicated to these--will be dedicated to these
non-climate change areas that is coming out of the U.S. Global
Change Research Program?
Dr. Holdren. Some of the areas on which the USGCRP focuses
include water, soils, desertification, deforestation, oceans.
Please keep in mind there are 13 different agencies involved
here with a wide variety of missions. They have different
pieces of the action. It is not by any means limited to climate
change alone, although I have to say climate change has become
such a pervasive phenomenon that it is linked in various ways
with most of these other issues, with soils issues, with water
issues, with ocean issues, and so on.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, obviously, what we have been
concerned about here on this end of the debate is that many of
the things you are talking about--deforestation, water, et
cetera--that the people in the Departments and agencies perhaps
have felt that if they really want to get the money for their--
and it is sequestered for their little interest or their
mission, just attach it to deforestation under climate change
and water under climate change, et cetera. Do you think there
is any validity to that worry?
Dr. Holdren. Basically, I don't.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay.
Mr. Holdren. That is, I think there is lots of work going
on under the USGCRP on these domains that is not particularly
focused on the climate change dimension, but it is also
important that work go on that does look at the interactions.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, have you--can you give us an example
of this $42 billion in research that we have had since 1990,
has there been anything there that has been discovered that
will in some way alter our ability to live on this planet and
to survive and to prosper on this planet?
Dr. Holdren. Oh, absolutely.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay.
Dr. Holdren. Understanding what is going on in the ocean in
terms of acidification, other impacts on ocean food chains is
extremely relevant to our ability to live prosperously on this
planet.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. I agree with that. And some people
tie that to climate change; other people say--
Dr. Holdren. Well, some parts--
Mr. Rohrabacher [continuing]. That it is not necessarily as
a--
Dr. Holdren. No, there are non-climate phenomena that are
at work there as well--
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay.
Dr. Holdren [continuing]. And they are important, and our
improved understanding of them has improved our capacity to
manage these problems, our capacity to manage forests--
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay.
Dr. Holdren [continuing]. Which is very important to our
future well-being has been improved under these programs.
I would be happy to get back to you if you would like with
a breakdown--
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, I think you have done a good job
right here, and I appreciate your sincerity and your knowledge
on that.
Last question: I have, as you are aware, been concerned
that technology transfers to countries that could someday be
our enemies is something we should be looking at and that,
because of concerns that citizens of the People's Republic of
China, the PRC, have been given broad access to NASA facilities
and NASA technology, which then enables them to bring back to
China with them information that was developed and technology
and data that was developed by our investment. I asked General
Bolden how many PRC citizens had access to NASA facilities. He
has provided me with this report, which I would submit for the
record, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Smith. Without objection, so ordered.
[The information may be found in Appendix 2.]
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. This report states that 293 Chinese
nationals had access to our critical aerospace centers, and
just a few weeks ago, we saw that one of these PRC citizens,
who had broad access to NASA Langley Research Center, was
founded trying to skip the country with hidden laptops that
were filled with stolen data. So clearly, whatever protection
measures we have in place to prevent this sort of thing need to
be double-checked and looked at and beefed up if they are
inadequate. And who knows how many times this thing has
happened that people haven't been caught?
So what I am asking you today is simply for the record--and
I know you don't have this information with you now--but could
I have a commitment from you that you will provide it, and just
a number of how many PRC citizens have access to our national
science, space, and technology facilities; those that are run
by the Federal Government or funded by the Federal Government;
and information that is broken down by agency and by the nature
of the access that these people had?
And if you could--and I know you wouldn't be able to answer
that now, but if you can have your staff get me that
information--I think it is important for our national security
not to have Chinese citizens gathering up information at our
research centers and our very sophisticated science operations
and taking that information back to China.
Dr. Holdren. Well, we will certainly do our best to pull
that information together for you. It sounds like quite a task.
I can tell you that only U.S. citizens may work at the Office
of Science and Technology Policy, so the answer for OSTP is
zero.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Rohrabacher.
The gentleman from California, Mr. Swalwell, is recognized.
Mr. Swalwell. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And welcome, Dr.
Holdren.
I am very grateful having--I am a representative for
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and also Sandia National
Laboratory, and I am grateful that my colleague on this
Committee, Ms. Lofgren, has been a tireless and fierce advocate
for our laboratories. And many times Members of Congress are
advocates for what is in their district and it is hard to look
outside the district, but I am grateful that Ms. Lofgren has
been such a champion for the laboratories.
And I wanted to follow up on some of her questions about
NIF, because it is very important. And the Administration is
proposing cuts to NIF and the Inertial Confinement Fusion and
High-Yield Campaign over fiscal year 2012. And these cuts could
lead to the ending of research at this recently completed
world-class facility.
NIF has long received, as Ms. Lofgren pointed out,
bipartisan support in the Congress. And it is at Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory, which is the largest employer in
my Congressional district and it houses the world's most
powerful laser and the preeminent tool in the world for this
type of fusion research. It is also a critical part of our
Stockpile Stewardship Program.
And today, as we look around the world and we look at the
threat of a nuclear weapon being used against the United
States, particularly with Iran or North Korea, I think making
sure that stewardship is taking place with our stockpile has
never been more important. And as we look forward and to the
future, this research from NIF can lead to clean, safe,
plentiful fusion energy.
And so I believe that the funding reduction for NIF greatly
puts us at risk for our stockpile stewardship. I am also afraid
that it is ceding America's leadership when it comes to fusion
to Russia or China, and France as well. They have also
accelerated their investments in this area to compete in
confinement fusion. And I believe this could put the United
States behind.
Dr. Holdren, given our sizable investment in NIF, and up to
this point it has been the $5 billion initial investment and
the continuing operational investment, do you think we should
pull support just as this facility is demonstrating its
potential?
Dr. Holdren. Congressman, with respect, we are not pulling
support. I think that the cuts in the NIF budget, as I
currently understand them, are modest. They are not
insignificant, but they do not, in my judgment, imperil our
Stockpile Stewardship Program. They do not imperil the
continued operation of the facility. If I discovered that the
contrary were true, I would join you in alarm. Our Stockpile
Stewardship Program is important. This is a cutting-edge
facility, which is important to that program and to the
potential future use of inertial confinement fusion as an
energy source, and it is not our intention to shut it down.
Mr. Swalwell. But Dr. Holdren, wouldn't you agree, I mean,
going from fiscal year 2012 a funding level of $486.8 million
to fiscal year 2013 a request at $271.7, that that is a sizable
reduction that will greatly affect the operations at NIF, will
reduce the staffing at NIF, and will set them behind in their
fusion goals?
Dr. Holdren. I think there were a number of changes that
contributed to that reduction in budget, partly the expanded
use of the facility as a user facility and some changes in
bookkeeping, which affected it as well.
I do want to mention that I was a full-time employee of the
Livermore lab from 1970 to 1972 and a consultant from '74 to
'94, including a consultant to the division that built NIF. And
I have a strong attachment to the importance of that facility,
and as I said, if I thought that what was going on in the
budget was imperiling the future use of that facility, I would
do everything I could to prevent that outcome.
Mr. Swalwell. And I was also--I was an intern for Ellen
Tauscher in 2001 in this town. I saw NIF at its inception and I
see it as my role. And again, I am very grateful that I have a
colleague up here who also understands the importance not just
for our nuclear security but also the future of our energy
security, and I hope we can work together to make sure that it
does have an adequate funding level so it can continue to make
progress, and more importantly, reach the goals which I hope we
are close to reaching there.
Dr. Holdren. I will certainly continue to work with you and
with Congresswoman Lofgren to that effect.
Mr. Swalwell. Great. Thank you, Doctor.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Swalwell.
The gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Schweikert, is recognized
for his questions.
Mr. Schweikert. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Doctor, I am going to back up a little bit and have you
sort of educate me on some of the process you go through. Your
substantial portfolio is determining priorities and priorities
for funding and you make recommendations to the President?
Dr. Holdren. The process that leads to recommendations to
the President is a process that involves OSTP, OMB, and all of
the departments and agencies that have science and technology
budgets and that process is--
Mr. Schweikert. And are you the--sort of the--
Dr. Holdren [continuing]. Multiple phases and back-and-
forth iterations.
Mr. Schweikert. Doctor, would you consider yourself sort of
the overall coordinator of such? I mean, you know--
Dr. Holdren. Jointly with the Director of OMB. I have the
responsibility in the White House for overseeing those budgets
and for making recommendations to the President. But again, we
do it jointly with the departments and agencies.
Mr. Schweikert. All right. And as you do that, how the
you--I mean how do you manage--particularly as a scientist as
you are, how do you manage, say, we are going to work to
maximize primary research, basic research, and avoid political
folklore, political goals being moved into those research and
science allocations of resources?
Dr. Holdren. The short answer to how I and we manage this
is with difficulty. This isn't--
Mr. Schweikert. I mean, it is human nature. I mean, we all
have our--
Dr. Holdren. This is in enormous challenge, and one of the
ways we avoid or try to avoid bias and political fads, as you
suggest, is by having a great many voices in the process,
again, voices from the departments and agencies, voices from
the diverse staff of OSTP. I don't do this by myself.
Mr. Schweikert. And I would love a side conversation with
you because I can build you a model saying that is exactly the
wrong way to do it because of sort of collective folklore that
we all operate with. I mean, we all have our perception bias.
But within there, I mean one simple sort of a one-off
example, I am looking at some of the NOAA funding--what is it,
the JPSS? And it looks like some of those dollars went to NASA
but not to manned spaceflight. It has gone into sort of the
climate monitoring activities of NASA. Is that a--sort of an
example of, okay, this is our political belief system, this is,
you know, our goal, and stripping and moving monies around to
keep financing them?
Dr. Holdren. No, it was not in the sense that the money
that left NOAA was money that had supported a specific set of
climate change monitoring sensors, and NASA now has the
responsibility for managing that set of sensors so the money
went with it.
Mr. Schweikert. Okay. So my understanding, though, the NASA
resources as prioritized by your Office and the President and,
you know, the President's budget folks is moving down manned
spaceflight and moving up, you know, climate monitoring even
though those resources, as you say, came from NOAA? I mean, am
I at least getting that balance correct?
Dr. Holdren. Well, we are doing our best to fund human
spaceflight and exploration under the instruction of the
Congress in a manner that simultaneously builds the next
generation space launch system, multi-purpose crew vehicle that
provides adequate funding for the development of a commercial
space industry so that we can get cargo and astronauts to the
International Space Station. It is a juggling act. I have often
said in this hearing and elsewhere that NASA has long had the
problem of 20 pounds of missions in a 10-pound budget.
Mr. Schweikert. No, just--
Dr. Holdren. And they continue to.
Mr. Schweikert. I need to sort of take us back. n the whole
sort of allocation of grants, resources, it is--how would you--
if I came to you and said I want you to design a system, so
clean slate, you know, no more sort of the grant review process
we use today where often the university that has the best grant
writers and those--because if you look at where much of the
money goes, there seems to be consolidations and
concentrations. How would you design a grant system that was
truly based on trying to fund basic research? What would you do
different than we do today?
Dr. Holdren. Well, first of all, I think the key to
successful funding of basic research is a rigorous peer-
reviewed system. And there are parts of the Federal
Government's support for research which could use an increased
infusion of peer-reviewed research as opposed to other
approaches to allocating funds. And certainly if I were king, I
would make some modifications in that direction.
But what I would add to this process is an interactive
process that also includes the Congress. When we look at NASA's
budget, we have had clear instruction from the Congress about a
number of things that NASA's budget absolutely has to do. And
we take that seriously. We follow to the best of our ability
within the overall constraints the guidance of the Congress
on--
Mr. Schweikert. And I was sort of moving more onto sort of
the primary basic research, and how do we make sure that
resources go where we get, you know, maximum benefit to our
society, the world, and not to, you know, necessarily the best
grant writer or, you know--you know, it is--I have great
concern on the benefits we are receiving and the allocation of
how we do the grants.
Dr. Holdren. I can only say again that this is a huge
challenge. I mean the question, for example, of how do you
compare the leverage of investments in basic biomedical
research with the leverage of investments in nanotechnology or
fusion energy? In fact, what we find in many cases--and this is
the reason we have more crosscutting programs than we used to
have--is that these fields intersect in interesting ways. And
some of the most important opportunities now emerging in
biomedicine are sitting at the intersection of genomics,
engineering, physics, and measurement.
Mr. Schweikert. Doctor, dozens of other questions.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for your tolerance.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Schweikert.
The gentlewoman from Connecticut, Ms. Esty, is recognized
for her questions.
Ms. Esty. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you, Dr. Holdren, for joining us here today. I
want to return to flesh out a little bit the priorities and the
approaches on energy. This budget proposes the establishment of
a new Energy Security Trust, which would support research into
a range of technologies that would help us transition from oil
towards more secure alternatives. I understand from what I see
that the trust would be funded by revenue generated from
federal oil and gas development. But can you give us any more
details about how that trust would actually be carried out? For
example, would the money go directly towards augmenting current
programs, relevant programs in DOE's Office of Energy
Efficiency and Renewable Energy or ARPA-E? Or are you proposing
some kind of new mechanisms or programs for supporting
research?
Dr. Holdren. The set of questions around exactly how this
would work is one that we expect to be in a continuing
conversation with the Congress about. We would envision a
variety of approaches, including strengthening the support for
some existing programs, and providing support for some new
opportunities not currently being funded. But again, that is at
an early stage of formulation and we would expect to do it in
consultation with the Congress.
Ms. Esty. Following up on that a bit, there has been--the
proposal has a substantial increase in the ARPA-E budget, and I
know that was already sort of referenced a little bit earlier.
Can you flesh out the basis for that? Sort of what
accomplishments have been achieved to date and if--that would
justify an increase at a point when obviously we have got
severe fiscal constraints? And what are the sorts of projects
that you would contemplate being carried out if this funding is
approved?
Dr. Holdren. Well, you know, ARPA-E in its short history
has developed a strong reputation for thinking outside the box
and for developing new ideas that can contribute substantially.
Some of those ideas have been in the domain of energy storage,
advanced batteries, fuel cells, and so on. Some of them have
been in the domain of advanced biofuels. Some of them have been
in the domain of how we can make our grid much smarter and much
more efficient. I think folks who follow the energy technology
field closely believe that money invested in ARPA-E has had a
lot of leverage and so we are proposing to expand it on that
basis.
Ms. Esty. I appreciate that. This is an area that is of
enormous interest. In Connecticut, we have a lot of fuel cell
energy, other companies that are startups that are very
interested in working on this. And obviously, basic research
that can augment what the private sector would try to develop
is of great interest. But again, we need to be looking at
accountability.
If I can switch gears for a moment, you referenced, just a
moment ago, synergies between different areas, and one I would
like to turn to is on the bioeconomy, is some of the
developments that the White House last year released a National
Bioeconomy Blueprint about supporting economic activity. Again,
I have the Jackson labs moving into my district from--to
support efforts that were created in part around state efforts
at stem cell. We are now building on this at University of
Connecticut and at Yale. Could you flesh out a little bit more
about what sort of support there would be for basic R&D as
contemplated as part of this process, especially updating
training programs, what is contemplated in this initiative?
Dr. Holdren. Well, if you look at the range of challenges
and human needs that we face across the space of health and
across the space of food and agriculture and across the space
of materials and sustainable resources, what we found in the
bioeconomy blueprint is that there is enormous potential at the
intersection of several branches of biology, including
genomics, to contribute to really path-breaking advances that
would affect all of these domains, that would affect health,
that would affect food and agriculture, that would affect the
development of new, better, and more sustainable materials.
And so we envision substantial support for the basic and
early stage applied research in these domains that is essential
if you are going to then build economic activity, if you are
going to develop new firms, jobs, products, and so on. And I
would be happy to provide you with more detail about that or
sort of an update on the pace of progress on different aspects
of the bioeconomy blueprint. But that would probably be more
detailed than I can run through in a hearing.
Ms. Esty. Thank you very much and I will follow up. Thank
you.
Vice Chairman Rohrabacher [presiding]. Thank you very much.
Now, I just want to note that here it is. I finally got the
gavel here.
Mr. Weber. I see that.
Vice Chairman Rohrabacher. And Mr. Weber from Texas is
recognized.
Mr. Weber. Well, congratulations.
Dr. Holdren, in your exchange with Congressman Posey
regarding his questionable--the questionable studies money with
taxpayer dollars spent, analyzing pictures of animals in
National Geographic and he named a couple of studies, China's
dairy industry, you literally made the comment--I wrote it
down--that it was a dangerous thing for Congress or anybody
else to specify funding in research. Do you recall that?
Dr. Holdren. Certainly what I meant to say, Congressman, it
can be dangerous to try to micromanage funding in basic
research outside the peer-review process. The peer-review
process is the backbone of our basic research enterprise, and
we have done very well with it. That doesn't say it never makes
mistakes, but I think it is better than any alternative,
including me or you trying to determine what is good basic
research in fields not our own.
Mr. Weber. You went on to say that it was the
responsibility of government to fund basic research in those
comments.
Dr. Holdren. Absolutely.
Mr. Weber. I have a question about that. Can you give me
the constitutional basis for that?
Dr. Holdren. There are lots of things that we do that are
not explicitly set forth in the Constitution. The
responsibility of government--in the judgment of many anyway--
is to carry out those activities in the interest of society
that the private sector is unlikely to carry out for reasons
that we understand.
Mr. Weber. Let me give you--
Dr. Holdren. Basic research we know has been the--
Mr. Weber. Let me give you Article I, Section 8. The eighth
enumeration out of 18 of them says ``Congress is to promote the
progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited
times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their
respective writings and discoveries,'' which would sound like
patents.
Dr. Holdren. It would.
Mr. Weber. So I would like for us, from a policy
standpoint, to dispel the idea that somehow we have got to fund
all the studies and that Congress shouldn't be, in your words,
micromanaging at this various level--at this very low level all
of these types of studies.
And I will go back to Mr. Schweikert's comments about he
will build you a model that says it is exactly the wrong thing
to put everybody in the room and say that we ought to decide
exactly what trends we ought to follow, because we are in a
budget crisis now, in my opinion, because we have just said,
look, we can research anything we want, we can fund studies to
do anything we want, whether they are the dairy habits over in
China, no matter what they are.
So I just want to make sure that from an agency standpoint,
you being one of the leaders in the agency, I hope that you all
have an attitude and an understanding that it is Congress'
purview to get involved in this, and it is our responsibility
to make sure that we spent the American taxpayer dollars
properly and correctly and wisely. That just kind of bothered
me when you said that.
And let me go down to a specific question. Gasoline prices
and regulations, as you know, the EPA has recently proposed new
gasoline regulations, the Tier 3 level--I am sure you are
familiar with that--that could, in fact, raise gas price--cause
gas prices to rise by $.10 on the gallon and cause multiple oil
companies to close, multiple refineries to close. Even though
the EPA did not complete a congressionally mandated study--here
we are talking about Congress getting involved--on whether
those rules are even necessary.
So being an advisor to the President, Dr. Holdren, what--
can you tell us what specific provisions in the President's
budget will help reduce gas prices this year and get America--I
am going to have a couple questions for you--and get some
relief at the gas pump and help those who are hurting, working
families? What specific provisions in his budget have you
recommended?
And secondly, do you agree that regulations of those type
result in higher joblessness and higher energy costs, which, in
fact, impact Americans' health negatively, a lot of worry they
can have the kind of health checkups and preventative
maintenance, if you will, that they need.
So what, specifically, have you seen or proposed in the
President's budget to help alleviate some of those higher fuel
costs? And do you agree that those kinds of EPA regulations
actually negatively impact Americans' health?
Dr. Holdren. That is a multipart question. Let me first say
I am very well aware that Congress is responsible for
determining the levels of funding--
Mr. Weber. I think we have established that.
Dr. Holdren [continuing]. Across the entire government. I
would never dream of disputing that.
Mr. Weber. Okay.
Dr. Holdren. My previous point was whether it was valuable
for Congress, at a very fine level of detail, to try to
substitute for the peer-review process in individual grant-
making. There is no question that Congress determines how much
money NSF gets. Congress can determine how much of that goes to
social--
Mr. Weber. Yes, we have established that--
Dr. Holdren [continuing]. And behavioral sciences--
Mr. Weber [continuing]. But we are running out of time, so
please go on to the other two questions.
Dr. Holdren. And again--but I don't want to be
misunderstood on that point.
Secondly, with respect to EPA regulations, with respect to
the recent proposals, there are real differences of opinion as
to what the impact on the price of gasoline would be. Some
people have said $.01, some people have said $.09, and there
needs to be more analysis to determine what that would be. I do
not accept the general proposition that EPA regulations cause
adverse impacts on the American population's health. We work
very hard, EPA works hard, we work hard in the Administration
reviewing their proposed regulations to ensure that the
opposite is true.
Mr. Weber. Their regulations, Dr. Holdren, cause
joblessness. That does not have an adverse effect on Americans?
Dr. Holdren. If their regulations did cause joblessness,
that would have an adverse effect. However, in many cases,
regulations create new jobs even while impacting jobs in
another sector. And in fact, any intervention the government
makes tends to add jobs some places, cut jobs other places. You
have to do a very careful analysis of the net effects before
you conclude that regulation has cost American jobs. And of
course the aim of the regulation is to reduce air pollution,
which we know adversely impacts the health of Americans,
increases our national health care costs, and is devoutly to be
reduced if we can do so in a cost-effective manner.
Mr. Weber. And that is--
Vice Chairman Rohrabacher. The gentleman's time--
Mr. Weber. Yes, I would love to discuss more, and I am
sorry, Mr. Chairman, I have gone over my time, but I yield
back. Thank you.
Vice Chairman Rohrabacher. All right. We next have Ms.
Bonamici from Oregon.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Holdren, thank you for your testimony. Another
encouraging aspect of the President's budget that you pointed
to in your testimony is a focus on manufacturing innovation,
particularly through partnerships between universities,
community colleges, and the private sector. In my State of
Oregon, we have the Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies
Institute, also known as ONAMI, where the University of Oregon,
Portland State University, Oregon State University, and other
public and private sector partners collaborate to bring
innovative ideas to the marketplace.
Also important in Oregon are the Manufacturing Extension
Partnerships, or MEPs, that you mentioned in your testimony. I
recently met with a business that received about $50,000 in MEP
funds in partnership with the Oregon MEP. They used that
funding to hire 11 new workers who each earn about $60,000. So
in this kind of situation, the Federal Government sees a quick
return on its investment through tax revenues from these new
jobs and from a small company experiencing meaningful growth.
So can you talk about the multiplier effect that these
types of partnerships which leverage public funds by pairing
them with private funds have in the context of the federal
budget and how significant are these programs when we are
facing severe budgetary constraints?
Dr. Holdren. Well, I would start by saying that the great
advantage of partnerships is to leverage government funds,
combining them with private sector funds and in some cases with
philanthropic funds to get a much larger impact than the
government could ever do alone. But even more important than
that is the leveraging of insight that resides in the private
sector with the kinds of capabilities and insights that reside
in national laboratories and in government-funded research
universities.
We have been promoting these kinds of partnerships across a
wide range of activities ranging from STEM education where we
have the Educate to Innovate Initiative that raised three
quarters of $1 billion in private and philanthropic money, in
part to bring practicing scientists, mathematicians, and
engineers into classrooms to work with teachers to improve
curriculum and to provide role models, who were also seeing a
lot of success in the domains that you discussed, including
particularly enabling small business to have access to
facilities that enable them to develop new products and
services that they would never be able to develop that they
didn't have access to these facilities that they are too small
to afford on their own.
And we see this happening in the nanotech domain where
there are nanotech startups that have been able to use the
nanotech facilities of our research universities and our
national labs to develop new products, which then create jobs
and economic growth going forward. I think it is a terrific
model, and I am delighted that so much of it is working well
for Oregon.
Ms. Bonamici. I thank you so much. And I want to ask
another question as well. On the topic of climate and weather
monitoring, I wanted to ask about the enhanced focus on weather
priorities. I have some coastal area in my district, and
weather monitoring can be the key to the livelihood of mariners
who rely on data from the National Weather Service when they
are preparing to leave the harbor. Recently, NOAA stated that
they planned not to repair a monitoring buoy, and I contacted
them. The district was very concerned about that.
I am glad that the President's plan to focus on weather
issues is highlighted here. To what extent is this renewed
focus on weather monitoring a reflection of the growing
understanding that global climate change is leading to more
severe weather events, as noted by the 2013 National Climate
Assessment Draft?
Mr. Holdren. Well, I think you have put your finger on it.
We are experiencing more extreme weather of a wide variety of
kinds, and that makes it all the more important to be able to
predict when and where that extreme weather is going to strike,
and that requires, obviously, increased investments in
prediction capabilities ranging from buoys, satellites, other
kinds of monitoring stations to high-speed computing, and the
models run on high-speed computers in order to be able to
translate monitoring data into accurate forecasts. We are
putting very heavy emphasis on that because the livelihoods,
the economic well-being, and the health of the American people
depend on accurate weather forecasts, as you note.
Ms. Bonamici. Absolutely. And my time is about to expire.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I yield back.
Vice Chairman Rohrabacher. Thank you very much. And for a
new Member of the Committee, you are certainly an active Member
of the Committee, and I have noticed that very much over the
last month. You have got something to say.
All right. And next, we have from the home State of
California, Mr. Takano.
Mr. Takano. Takano.
Vice Chairman Rohrabacher. Takano, pardon me.
Mr. Takano. You are forgiven.
Vice Chairman Rohrabacher. But he comes from a district
very close to my own, so you may proceed.
Mr. Takano. I thank my distinguished colleague, who hails
from an area 45 miles to the south and west.
So Dr. Holdren, welcome. My question relates to--I had the
privilege of visiting during the most recent spring recess the
Dryden facility, now renamed, I think, Neil Armstrong facility
out at Edwards Air Force Base and was able to take a look at
the collaboration between NASA and, I believe, it was Boeing or
one of the aerospace firms.
You know, a lot of talk about the involvement of government
and private industry in manufacturing, but there was some
research jointly being done on a new type of aircraft, and
there is some promise of this aircraft being significantly more
fuel efficient. I can't remember the name of the--the aircraft
looks like somewhat like a triangle, like a flying wing. I
forget the name of it. But can you just comment on how critical
this sort of joint research with--between industry and NASA has
been to develop our aerospace industry in this country and
keeping it ahead?
Dr. Holdren. The short answer is that NASA is working the
aeronautics domain, and its partnerships with the private
sector have been extremely important. You know, a striking
thing that people are aware of is that the fuel economy of jet
airliners has improved by an enormous factor over the last 35
years. The fuel consumption per seat mile is now much less than
half in modern aircraft of what it was 35 years ago, and that
is the result, in a very substantial measure, of NASA's
aeronautics research in their partnerships with the private
sector. We are seeing that moving forward in the kinds of
projects that you visited at the Neil Armstrong facility.
I said before that we need to be very careful when we think
about NASA's budget and imagine that the only element of NASA's
budget that matters is human space exploration or robotic
probes or space telescopes. Those are all enormously important
and we support them, and we support them to the extent that our
overall budget permits, but it would be a big mistake to allow
NASA's programs in aeronautics to wither. It would be a big
mistake to allow NASA's programs in Earth observation to
wither.
Mr. Takano. Dr. Holdren, if I am not mistaken--and this may
not be either one of our areas--but it seems to me that the
building of large commercial aircraft is an important part of
America's balance of trade. It is a major export for us. And it
seems to me that there has been an intricate interlocking
between government/industry, and I see some of my colleagues on
the other side of the aisle often criticizing the government
for being involved in picking winners and losers in the domain
of, say, alternative energy. But this seems to be an example
that all Americans would agree has been very vital.
I am struck that the aeronautics budget is a very small
part of the overall NASA budget. Is there any thought the
Administration might want to increase this budget line?
Dr. Holdren. Well, we are constantly looking at the
balance, as I said in response to some other question, it is
challenging because there is not enough money overall to do
everything that we should be doing. I mean, I have said in
other forums already this year--I think this President's budget
for fiscal year 2014 is a good budget for science and
technology under the fiscal circumstances we face, but it is
not the budget that I would want to have in better times.
And in better times, there would be more money for human
space exploration, there were be more money for planetary
science, and there would be more money for aeronautics. I am
not going to second-guess on the fly the current balance in
NASA, which was carefully arrived at over the long sort of
interactive process that I described, but as a general matter,
I think society would benefit if we could invest more in this
and many other domains--
Mr. Takano. Well, very quickly because I know the
distinguished Chairman is interested in our competition and
potential rivalry with the People's Republic of China. Do we--
and they rapidly are trying to develop their own aviation and
aeronautics industry. Do we know how much by comparison that
they are investing in research in this area?
Dr. Holdren. We do have some data on the pattern of Chinese
research investments. I could get back to you on that.
Mr. Takano. Sure, please.
Dr. Holdren. I don't have it on the top of my head what
they are investing in this area. It is clear that we are still
well ahead. That is where I would like to stay.
Vice Chairman Rohrabacher. Thank you very much.
Next, we have Mr. Veasey from Texas.
Mr. Veasey. Dr. Holdren, thank you. I wanted to ask you a
specific question about advanced manufacturing. There was a
really good article last year in the Wall Street Journal about
German companies coming over to America to train workers here
to work very highly skilled manufacturing jobs, jobs such as,
you know, various machinist type jobs, robotics specialists.
One of the things that we talk a lot about here in Congress and
people are talking about nationally--you have talked about it--
is STEM education, which is very, very important.
But I do believe that there are a lot of kids that are
graduating from high school that don't necessarily have a STEM
background, but they are ready to get to work if they can find
a good job. And last year, about 600,000 of these highly
advanced manufacturing jobs went unfilled, largely because the
kids graduating from the high schools didn't have the skill set
to go work some of these jobs that start off at $22, $24 an
hour. Can you talk a little bit about the Administration's
long-term goal for sort of revitalizing, you know,
manufacturing in this particular area and how it fits into the
budget?
Dr. Holdren. Congressman Veasey, that is a great question,
and it is one that we have been working on very hard. A couple
of components to it: one, we have a program around redesigning
the high school experience in this country so that kids
graduating from high schools are better prepared for some of
the highly skilled jobs of the 21st century. We are also
working with community colleges and partnerships between
community colleges and the private firms, the industries in the
same region with the community college to develop community
college curricula that prepares students for precisely the jobs
that exist in the companies in their particular regions. This
is an extremely important part of our overall STEM ed strategy.
Mr. Veasey. Do you see in the future it being talked about
more? And I understand why people want to talk more about the
STEM and why that has gotten the attention that it has gotten,
but I think that this is an area--and I think that you would
agree--that we should, you know, definitely encourage our young
people to--and even parents to sort of think about more.
Dr. Holdren. I completely agree, and the President agrees.
Mr. Veasey. Thank you.
Vice Chairman Rohrabacher. And we have Ms. Wilson from
Florida.
Ms. Wilson. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a follow-up a little
bit to Mr. Veasey's concerns. I am concerned about the
reduction in informal science education activities and budgets
in many agencies including NSF. A lot of these hands-on
afterschool activities are what get very young children excited
about science. I am a former school principal and that is
important.
Can you elaborate on the new role of the Smithsonian in
coordinating informal STEM education efforts under the STEM
reorganization proposal? Is there an existing office and staff
who will--new capacity--where new capacity have to be built at
the Smithsonian? How much of the 2014 request of $25 million is
for capacity-building versus for direct funding of the programs
transferred from the mission agencies?
Dr. Holdren. Congresswoman Wilson, I can actually provide
you those numbers in detail. I was just in touch yesterday with
the folks at the Smithsonian who are running this effort. There
is an Assistant Secretary for Education and Outreach in charge
of this effort. They have actually gone through a very
extensive process to develop their ideas about how this $25
million would be used. I actually have a detailed breakdown of
the numbers, how much goes to information technology, how much
goes to revitalizing education activities, broadening access,
excelling in related research.
But they have a series of goals. The first goal is around
the creation of content in programs. That means working with
these agencies that historically have been providing the kinds
of activities you are talking about to improve the content and
the programs in these domains. The second goal is to develop
and maintain the infrastructure to deliver that content,
including creating a portal for the transfer of knowledge about
these kinds of activities as accessible to everybody. The third
goal is creating community teachers and student agency
partnerships that will create learning communities that figure
out how to do this better. The fourth goal is evaluation of
these efforts.
And they have already at the Smithsonian existing
activities in all of these categories which they are going to
build on and expand. So it really is a well-thought-out effort,
and it is an effort in which they are already in touch with
most, if not all, of the agencies that have been engaged in
some of these smaller programs that are being consolidated.
Ms. Wilson. Thank you.
Vice Chairman Rohrabacher. Well, thank you very much. And
first of all, I would like to thank Dr. Holdren for his
valuable testimony and the Members have asked some questions.
We are hopeful that they will be--some of their requests will
be complied with in writing and as soon as you can. It might
take some time, but, you know, even the question I asked, it
would take some time to compile.
But we thank you for being here and giving us your frank
opinion. Would you--Ms. Johnson, would you like to have a
closing statement? Go right ahead.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I just wanted to say that there are questions that I will
be submitting. I want to thank you, Dr. Holdren, for being
here, but it leads to questions I will be submitting for the
record.
Vice Chairman Rohrabacher. Thank you very much. And if any
other Members of the Committee have additional questions, we
will ask that you respond to those questions in writing. And
the record will remain open for two weeks for additional
comments and written questions.
Just a couple little things--I can't help myself, just a
thought. Of the 13 agencies that we are talking about in terms
of climate change research, we are spending $2.7 billion over
those 13 agencies for climate change research, and we are only
spending $80 million for weather research, just a thought.
Okay.
The other thing is that many of us are concerned that peer
review--and Eisenhower warned us about this in his farewell
address, that peer review in the science community can become
clique review and that we have an academe--and I know when
Henry Kissinger was asked about how horrible the spirit of the
beating down your opponent was in politics, he said, well, it
is nothing like academe. And, you know, you have these things
both in the academic world and then the political world where
we need to respect each other's opinions, and we need to
realize that, you know, we are not calling anybody names by
simply focusing on what we believe is important.
For example, you talked about the fuel consumption per mile
of our airplanes, and I think that is an important part to make
up. And I know that you are very proud of the research that has
taken place by our government. Some of us look at it and go,
oh, the fuel consumption per mile, maybe that has something to
do with the deregulation of the airlines that it would seem now
that our airplanes are full, when before deregulation they were
flying with 10 percent of their seats--10, 20, and 30 percent
of their seats vacant.
So it--you know, it all depends on how you are looking at
something. But both sides are right obviously. Both sides have
an assessment. Our airlines are becoming more efficient.
And so, anyway, I want to thank you for presenting your
side and the Administration's side of this, and your answers
have been enlightening and provocative.
And with that, I say that this hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:05 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
Appendix I
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Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
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Appendix II
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Additional Material for the Record
Letter to Hon. Dana Rohrabacher, Chairman, Subcommittee on Oversight
and Investigations, Committee on Foreign Affairs, From Charles F.
Bolden, Jr., Administrator, National Aeronautics and Space
Administration
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