    [House Hearing, 112 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

      COMMERCE, JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR
                                      2012
    =======================================================================

                                    HEARINGS

                                    BEFORE A

                               SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE

                           COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS

                             HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                          ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
                                  FIRST SESSION
                                    ________

        SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES

                        FRANK R. WOLF, Virginia, Chairman
     JOHN ABNEY CULBERSON, Texas           CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania
     ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama           ADAM B. SCHIFF, California
     JO BONNER, Alabama                    MICHAEL M. HONDA, California
     STEVE AUSTRIA, Ohio                   JOSE E. SERRANO, New York
     TOM GRAVES, Georgia
     KEVIN YODER, Kansas

     NOTE: Under Committee Rules, Mr. Rogers, as Chairman of the Full
    Committee, and Mr. Dicks, as Ranking Minority Member of the Full
    Committee, are authorized to sit as Members of all Subcommittees.
                 Mike Ringler, Stephanie Myers, Leslie Albright,
                        Diana Simpson, and Colin Samples,
                               Subcommittee Staff
                                    ________

                                     PART 8
                                                                       Page
     National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).............    1
     National Science Foundation......................................  143
     Office of Science and Technology Policy..........................  233

                                       S

                                    ________
             Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations

    PART 8--COMMERCE, JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS
                                    FOR 2012

      COMMERCE, JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR
                                      2012
    =======================================================================

                                    HEARINGS

                                    BEFORE A

                               SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE

                           COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS

                             HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                          ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
                                  FIRST SESSION
                                    ________

        SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES
                        FRANK R. WOLF, Virginia, Chairman
     JOHN ABNEY CULBERSON, Texas           CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania
     ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama           ADAM B. SCHIFF, California
     JO BONNER, Alabama                    MICHAEL M. HONDA, California
     STEVE AUSTRIA, Ohio                   JOSE E. SERRANO, New York
     TOM GRAVES, Georgia
     KEVIN YODER, Kansas

     NOTE: Under Committee Rules, Mr. Rogers, as Chairman of the Full
    Committee, and Mr. Dicks, as Ranking Minority Member of the Full
    Committee, are authorized to sit as Members of all Subcommittees.
                 Mike Ringler, Stephanie Myers, Leslie Albright,
                        Diana Simpson, and Colin Samples,
                               Subcommittee Staff
                                    ________

                                     PART 8
                                                                       Page
     National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).............    1
     National Science Foundation......................................  143
     Office of Science and Technology Policy..........................  233

                                       S

                                    ________
             Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations
                                    ________

                         U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

     66-828                     WASHINGTON : 2011

                              COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS

                        HAROLD ROGERS, Kentucky, Chairman

     C. W. BILL YOUNG, Florida \1\        NORMAN D. DICKS, Washington
     JERRY LEWIS, California \1\          MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio
     FRANK R. WOLF, Virginia              PETER J. VISCLOSKY, Indiana
     JACK KINGSTON, Georgia               NITA M. LOWEY, New York
     RODNEY P. FRELINGHUYSEN, New Jersey  JOSE E. SERRANO, New York
     TOM LATHAM, Iowa                     ROSA L. DeLAURO, Connecticut
     ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama          JAMES P. MORAN, Virginia
     JO ANN EMERSON, Missouri             JOHN W. OLVER, Massachusetts
     KAY GRANGER, Texas                   ED PASTOR, Arizona
     MICHAEL K. SIMPSON, Idaho            DAVID E. PRICE, North Carolina
     JOHN ABNEY CULBERSON, Texas          MAURICE D. HINCHEY, New York
     ANDER CRENSHAW, Florida              LUCILLE ROYBAL-ALLARD, California
     DENNY REHBERG, Montana               SAM FARR, California
     JOHN R. CARTER, Texas                JESSE L. JACKSON, Jr., Illinois
     RODNEY ALEXANDER, Louisiana          CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania
     KEN CALVERT, California              STEVEN R. ROTHMAN, New Jersey
     JO BONNER, Alabama                   SANFORD D. BISHOP, Jr., Georgia
     STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio           BARBARA LEE, California
     TOM COLE, Oklahoma                   ADAM B. SCHIFF, California
     JEFF FLAKE, Arizona                  MICHAEL M. HONDA, California
     MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida           BETTY McCOLLUM, Minnesota
     CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania
     STEVE AUSTRIA, Ohio
     CYNTHIA M. LUMMIS, Wyoming
     TOM GRAVES, Georgia
     KEVIN YODER, Kansas
     STEVE WOMACK, Arkansas
     ALAN NUNNELEE, Mississippi

     ----------
     1}}Chairman Emeritus

                   William B. Inglee, Clerk and Staff Director

                                      (ii)

      COMMERCE, JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR
                                      2012

                                  ----------

                                               Thursday, March 3, 2011.

              NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION (NASA)

                                    WITNESS

    CHARLES F. BOLDEN, JR., ADMINISTRATOR

                        Chairman Wolf's Opening Remarks

        Mr. Wolf. Good morning. The hearing will come to order and
    the record will be open.
        We want to welcome everyone to today's hearing on the
    fiscal year 2012 budget request of the National Aeronautics and
    Space Administration.
        Our witness today is Major General Charles Bolden, the
    Administrator of NASA.
        We thank you for being here.
        Last night looking through all the material for the
    hearing, I reread your bio, and I just want to say I appreciate
    your distinguished service to the country. I notice your son is
    a Marine Corps aviator, and I want to thank you and thank him
    for the service. Thank you very much.
        Last year at this time, we were in the early stages of what
    turned out to be a very lengthy and contentious debate about
    the future direction of NASA's human spaceflight program. I
    think everyone was hoping that the enactment of the NASA
    authorization bill would put an end to the programmatic
    uncertainty and conclude the debate, but that really has not
    been the case.
        Instead the debate has shifted to whether NASA can
    effectively implement the direction provided by the
    authorization, and that places the budget squarely in the
    middle of the discussion. No amount of authorizing language can
    hold NASA to a particular goal or commitment if that language
    is not backed up by a budget that adequately funds those
    obligations.
        But fully funding everything that was authorized is not a
    feasible possibility in the current fiscal environment. We saw
    that on the CR the other day on the Weiner amendment, which cut
    from this committee I think it was 300 and some million
    dollars, whatever the exact number.
        And so when you look at those circumstances, you really
    cannot have everything.
        Instead, NASA will be forced to look across its programs
    and make some very hard choices. You have done that to some
    extent with your fiscal year 2012 request, which holds the NASA
    agency-wide total to its fiscal year 2010 level, more than $700
    million below the authorized amount. In order to work within
    that total, you have chosen to fund some programs significantly
    below previously projected levels.
        Congress has asked a lot of NASA and we need to seriously
    consider whether we can afford to simultaneously maintain our
    human exploration program, support the extension of the Space
    Station, continue with planned science missions, advance
    commercial spaceflight, and engage in NASA's many other
    activities.
        My disagreement with NASA comes in the decision making
    about what budgetary tradeoffs are necessary to make. Your
    request has chosen to sacrifice progress on the development of
    the Space Launch System and the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle. The
    levels in your budget for these activities virtually guarantee
    that NASA will not have core launch and crew capabilities in
    place by 2016.
        Our failure to meet that goal will further erode our
    international standing in human spaceflight, which I think is
    beginning to take place, eventually ceding our prominency to
    places like Russia, China, India, or others. That is just not
    an outcome that I think is really good for the country.
        I know these are complicated issues and we can spend a lot
    of time on them.
        And this, Mr. Bolden, is really not directed toward you. I
    think until this Administration, and the President step forward
    and deal with the fundamental important issues in the
    entitlements, whatever concerns will be expressed by you or
    anyone in the audience or anyone in the country about these
    budget cuts cannot really be solved.
        We are fundamentally trying to balance the budget on 15 to
    17 percent of the pie, maybe even less. The President put
    forward the Bowles-Simpson or Simpson-Bowles, whoever you want
    to put first, Commission. It had the support of Tom Coburn, who
    I have a great respect for and even more respect for after he
    voted for it, and Dick Durbin, who used to serve on this
    committee and who I have worked with over the years.
        Nobody will ever remember except Dick Durbin, because I
    remind him periodically, but I was the deciding vote on
    eliminating smoking on airplanes. And I remember my side and
    the tobacco industry went after me. Virginia was a big tobacco
    state. And so to Senator Durbin's credit, he also supported the
    Bowles-Simpson Commission.
        There was an editorial in the Washington Post yesterday by
    Ruth Marcus, who I read constantly, saying ``Where's Waldo'',
    meaning the President. We are waiting for the President to come
    forward. Leadership is doing what President Reagan did on the
    Social Security issue, or what President Clinton did coming
    forward to deal with the fundamental entitlement issues.
        There is a Simon and Garfunkel song called ``The Boxer''
    that says, ``man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the
    rest.'' We cannot disregard this. Groups come in to see me and
    say, ``Mr. Wolf, you are cutting this.'' But I voted for the
    package that came out because we have to begin somewhere. We
    have got to deal with the entitlements.
        I appreciate your service to the county. I was very
    impressed when I actually read your bio. You never mentioned
    those things to me, and I just wanted to be totally prepared.
        The way to deal with this problem is to come together in a
    bipartisan way and link arms the way that Senators Durbin and
    Coburn and Chambliss and Mark Warner are doing. If we do not
    deal with the overall entitlement issue, and I speak now as a
    grandfather of 15 and father of five kids, fundamentally this
    Nation will begin to reach a tipping point.
        People are going to be concerned that we are cutting this,
    we are cutting that. But until we deal with the fundamental
    reality of the entitlements, we will never be able to resolve
    this issue.
        So you might tell the President, I do not even think he
    even knows who I am, but Mr. Wolf said, ``if you do not deal
    with these entitlement issues, no one can complain about the
    budget cuts on any area unless they then come forward and say
    what they are prepared to do.''
        I have said I am prepared to step forward and support the
    Bowles-Simpson Commission, although there are things in there
    that I do not like and I would attempt to change. But coming up
    for a vote up or down, I would be there with those who want to
    save this country by dealing with this fundamental issue.
        I will go to Mr. Fattah.

                    Ranking Member Fattah's Opening Remarks

        Mr. Fattah. And let me thank the Chairman and thank him for
    his leadership and for this hearing, and welcome the
    Administrator.
        Later on this evening, the President is going to reach out
    by phone and speak to the crew of the Discovery and
    congratulate you and the staff at NASA for such a great
    achievement given Discovery's last mission.
        You know, the chairman has made some very courageous votes
    over his life here in the Congress and that is just one that he
    mentioned about ending smoking on airplanes. And I think that
    the President's decision to proceed with a Debt Commission was
    a courageous one. The report is one that I feel very favorably
    about, that if we could get it to a vote and, yes, you could
    tinker around the edges, but that we as a country do need to
    come to grips with this.
        The other thing is that the public has to come to grips
    with something, which is that we have to make investments and
    we have to make sacrifices. When NASA was created, the country
    was not doing as well as we are doing today, but we have made
    sacrifices for space exploration and NASA has been a beacon of
    hope for the country and has created a lot of aspirations among
    our young people in terms of math and science. And I think that
    we have to make sacrifices.
        In fact, when you look at whether the President's
    commission or whether you look at the majority CR, neither one
    of them cut NASA as much as the public would cut NASA if given
    a chance. And I think that those of us in a leadership position
    have to say that the public is wrong. That is to say that we as
    a country have to invest, and we invest in technology. And NASA
    can be and should be always the leading technology entity in
    the world.
        I want to tell you that in terms of the budget request, I
    am very happy to see that in Exploration, there is a
    significant increase. Your leadership of the agency in a whole
    host of areas has made a tremendous difference.
        And your bio is quite impressive. Your work at NASA is
    quite impressive, and the breakdown of the budget request in
    which we have the lion's share of the dollars in human
    spaceflight because I think that is the thing that excites the
    country.
        Obviously there is much more work that you do, and people
    in the Gulf Coast benefitted during the BP spill because of the
    work of NASA in being able to track where this oil was going.
    There are lives that probably were saved in Haiti because of
    the work in terms of what you do in terms of science. So there
    are a lot of great things that we can be proud of.
        I think those of us in the Congress have to speak
    forcefully on the need for our country to continue to invest in
    science. We, as the world's only superpower, have to invest in
    this area, plus we have others who want to join us in this
    ranking in terms of superpower who are making significant
    investments. And we cannot afford to be caught short. A lot of
    benefits here on earth have been created through the work of
    NASA in all range of activities, medical, science, and also in
    industrial activities.
        And so I am happy to have you. I look forward to your
    testimony. And I think that on a bipartisan basis, that you
    have both in the Chairman and myself and other Members of the
    committee a lot of support for the work that NASA is doing now
    and will do in the future.
        And the Administration has put forth a very aggressive
    program in terms of aiming our sights outside of Earth's orbit
    in terms of human flight. And I think it is a challenging
    mission, but I think that is what we should be doing. We should
    be challenging ourselves to develop the technology to move in
    even greater ways than we have to date.
        So thank you, and welcome.
        General Bolden. Thank you very much.
        Mr. Wolf. Thank you, Mr. Fattah.
        Administator Bolden, your full statement will appear in the
    record, but you can proceed as you see appropriate.

                    Administrator Bolden's Opening Statement

        General Bolden. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman----
        Chairman Wolf and Ranking Member Fattah and other Members
    of the committee. Let me, first of all, to the Chairman and
    Ranking Member, let me congratulate both of you on your new
    leadership roles, and I want to thank you both for all that you
    do as well as all the Members of the committee for the long-
    standing support that all of you have given to NASA.
        As is obvious from both of your opening statements, we have
    a common passion for space exploration and the benefits it
    brings our Nation. As you take on new responsibilities, I look
    forward to our continuing work together in the same collegial
    fashion as we have done in the past.
        I would like to take just a moment to note the absence in
    the House in general of one of your colleagues, Congresswoman
    Gabrielle Giffords, who continues to undergo rehabilitation in
    Houston following the assassination attempt on her life. Not a
    day goes by that I personally do not think about and pray for
    Gabby. All of us in the NASA family continue to pray for her
    speedy and full recovery.
        Today it is my privilege to discuss the President's fiscal
    year 2012 budget request of $18.7 billion for NASA. Despite the
    President's commitment to fiscal constraint, I am pleased that
    we are proposing to hold funding at a level appropriated for
    2010 which, of course, continues to be our spending level under
    the Continuing Resolution.
        This budget request continues the agency's focus on a
    reinvigorated path of innovation and technological discovery
    leading to an array of challenging destinations and missions
    that engage the public.
        Mr. Chairman, you and other Members of the Committee--
    Subcommittee should have a package of six charts that looks
    like this. I hope you do because I will be referring to them
    periodically. So, if there is anybody who does not and would
    like to get one, I think we may--it just does not have that
    cover on it. And the cover is not important at all anyway, so I
    will hold them up as we get there.
        The Authorization Act of 2010 gave NASA a clear direction.
    We are moving forward to implement the details of that act with
    this fiscal year 2012 budget. The President's budget for NASA
    funds all major elements of the Act while supporting a diverse
    portfolio of key programs.
        Because these are tough fiscal times, we also had to make
    some difficult choices. Reductions were necessary in some
    areas, so we can invest in the future while living within our
    means.
        This budget maintains a strong commitment to human
    spaceflight and the development of new technologies. It invests
    in the excellent science, aeronautics research, and education
    programs that will help us win the future. It carries over
    programs of innovation to support long-term job growth and a
    dynamic economy that will help us out-innovate, out-educate,
    and out-build all others in the world.
        Along with our budget proposal last week, we published our
    2011 Strategic Plan, and hopefully, that has been made
    available to everyone. If not, we can get you that.
        NASA's core mission remains unchanged. It is the same as it
    was at our inception in 1958, and this mission supports our
    vision that is in the Strategic Plan, which essentially says to
    reach for new heights and reveal the unknown, so that what we
    do and learn will benefit all humankind.
        Just this past week, we launched STS-133 on the Shuttle
    Discovery, one of the final three Shuttle flights to the ISS.
    Along with supplies that will support the Station's scientific
    research and technology demonstrations, Discovery is delivering
    a robotic crew member, Robonaut 2 or R2.
        The Glory Earth Science Mission will launch from California
    this week, tomorrow morning as a matter of fact, on a mission
    to help us better understand Earth and its atmosphere and the
    variables affecting our climate.
        Our Space Program continues to venture in ways that will
    have long-term benefits and there are many more milestones in
    the very near term.
        Yesterday, in fact, it was the day before yesterday, we
    announced three new program offices to carry out future work.
    NASA brings good jobs and bolsters the economy in communities
    across the Nation.
        I do not think you have the overall budget chart, so I am
    going to skip that. You know what it is because it was
    presented to everyone when I rolled it out, but it breaks down
    the $18.7 billion, but it provides the scope of our activity in
    the year 2012.
        Our priorities in human spaceflight in the fiscal year 2012
    budget request are to maintain safe access for American
    astronauts to low Earth orbit as we fully utilize the
    International Space Station; to facilitate safe, reliable, and
    cost-effective U.S.-provided commercial access to low Earth
    orbit for American astronauts and their supplies as soon as
    possible; to begin to lay the groundwork for expanding human
    presence into deep space, the Moon, asteroids, and eventually
    Mars through the development of a powerful evolvable heavy-lift
    rocket and multipurpose crew capsule; and to pursue technology
    development to carry humans farther into the solar system.
        These initiatives will enable NASA to retain its position
    as a leader in space exploration for generations to come. At
    the same time in our other endeavors, our priorities are to
    extend our reach with robots and scientific observatories, to
    learn more about our home planet and the solar system, and to
    peer beyond it to the origins of the universe; pursue
    groundbreaking research in the next generation of aviation
    technologies; and carry out dynamic education programs that
    help develop the next generation of science, technology,
    engineering, and mathematics professionals. That's a lot, but
    NASA thrives on doing big things. We have vastly increased
    human knowledge and our discoveries and technologies have
    improved life here on Earth.
        There has been some concern that NASA is abandoning human
    spaceflight. This simply is not true. I think you all do have a
    copy of our charts that look like this but show you a pie.
        [The information follows:]

        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        General Bolden. The reason I give you these few charts is
    that it will show you that contrary to what is conventional
    wisdom, human spaceflight in this budget constitutes a
    significant portion. It is 44 percent of NASA's proposed
    budget.
        If you take the chunk out that deals with what it costs me
    to operate NASA's centers and do other things, human
    spaceflight represents an even larger piece, and it is actually
    57 percent of NASA's budget. So I would say that I would not
    call that shrinking away from human spaceflight when over 50
    percent of the budget is going to human spaceflight.
        [The information follows:]

        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        General Bolden. The final chart that I hope you all have is
    one that just takes human spaceflight, and it breaks it down
    into where that money is being spent. We devote some resources
    to closing out the Space Shuttle as you will see in this very
    small chunk. As the centerpiece of human spaceflight and the
    critical anchor for our future deep space exploration, the
    International Space Station actually gets the largest portion
    of funds at about 40 percent. The next generation of vehicles,
    the evolvable heavy-lift rocket and the Multi-Purpose Crew
    Vehicle received 39 percent of human spaceflight budget.
        Our continuing efforts to facilitate commercial access to
    space received a significant boost in this budget; however,
    that still represents the second smallest piece of the human
    spaceflight pie, at about 12 percent.
        [The information follows:]

        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        General Bolden. I want to commend my NASA workforce both
    civil servants and contractors across the Nation for their
    dedication to our missions during this time of transition and
    change. These workers are our greatest assets, and they make us
    proud. They fully understand the risk of exploration and
    welcome the challenge. They will be the ones making tomorrow
    happen.
        These are exciting and dynamic times for us at NASA. The
    challenges ahead are significant, but so are our opportunities.
    We have to achieve big things that will create a measurable
    impact on our economy, our world, and our way of life.
        I thank you for allowing me to make my opening statement
    and I look forward to your questions, Mr. Chairman.
        [The information follows:]

        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                    MATCHING NASA'S MISSIONS WITH ITS BUDGET

        Mr. Wolf. Thank you, Mr. Administrator.
        In the current fiscal environment, we will have to consider
    the possibility that NASA has too many missions for the amount
    of money that is available. If we continue to divide a
    relatively static NASA budget between an ever increasing number
    of programs, we will just perhaps ensure that there is not
    enough money to execute any of these programs.
        Do you agree with that assessment?
        General Bolden. Mr. Chairman, these are tough times. And we
    have had to make tough choices and the FY 2012 budget that the
    President and I have submitted reflects those tough choices. So
    I think we have submitted a budget that will allow us to carry
    out the programs that the Congress and the President have asked
    us to do.
        Mr. Wolf. If we were to take another look at NASA's various
    programs and responsibilities with the intention of reducing or
    deferring some of the lower priority activities, where would
    you recommend that we start?
        General Bolden. Mr. Chairman, because I think we have taken
    a very thorough look at where we stand under the Continuing
    Resolution of the FY 2010 spending level and that the
    President's Budget for FY 2012 essentially represents a
    continuation of that Continuing Resolution with some
    adjustments, I would not propose any cuts.
        Mr. Wolf. How about moving money around?
        General Bolden. Mr. Chairman, we did move some money. We
    propose moving some money around because of priorities,
    readjusting priorities. When the President submitted his FY
    2011 budget, the world was different. Our fiscal situation was
    different. I don't think any of us in this room thought it was
    different, but everybody came to, I hope everyone came to the
    realization that we are in dire straits as a Nation
    economically, and so what we did with developing the FY 2012
    budget was we looked at what our priorities are.
        My number one priority is safely flying out the Shuttle
    right now. Very close to that is providing for safe access to
    the International Space Station over the next 10 years because
    the President and the leaders of all of our international
    partners have agreed that the International Space Station as
    the anchor for human exploration should be on orbit for another
    10 years, and in order to maintain the Space Station as we
    operate it today, I have to be able to get cargo and crew
    there.
        Because the Shuttle will stop flying in June, the only way
    that I will have until I can bring aboard a commercial access
    to Low-Earth Orbit for crew will be the Russians. They are an
    incredibly reliable partner, but I do not think anybody in this
    room wants to go for the next 10 years having to rely on Russia
    to take American astronauts to orbit.
        So we made an adjustment in the balance within the FY 2010
    budget. We complied with the elements of the 2010 Authorization
    Act, but I took a look at it with the people that I really
    respect in my agency, and we decided that in order to ensure
    that we would have a commercial capability for both cargo and
    crew as early as possible, I needed to put a little bit more
    funds in there than was in the Authorization Act. That is how
    we got to the $850 million for 2012 and subsequent years. That
    is far lower than what we originally needed and still believe
    we need to be certain that we will bring this program on board,
    but we think we can make that work.

                       DUPLICATION AMONG FEDERAL AGENCIES

        Mr. Wolf. I believe your Earth science programs support
    valuable work, but I am concerned that we are consuming a
    significant portion of the budget to fund those activities when
    other agencies have sufficient authorities and abilities to do
    some of the same things.
        Do you believe there are activities currently funded in
    Earth science that could be adequately performed instead by
    NOAA or USGS or the National Science Foundation or entities
    that they fund? For projects that support those other agencies'
    missions but still require NASA's assistance, could they or
    should they contribute more funds toward NASA's expenses in
    order to free up NASA's resources for its own unique
    activities?
        General Bolden. Mr. Chairman, because these are such
    difficult times, we took a look at where we were in all aspects
    of our budget. Everything that we do in Earth science is unique
    to NASA. We have looked and there is no duplication across
    agencies. Everything that we do with weather, for example, we
    manage programs that use weather satellites under NOAA's budget
    that then we take to orbit, make sure that they are operating,
    and we turn them over to NOAA.
        So when I look at our budget, I do not think there is
    duplication.
        My concern about allowing other people to take the Earth
    science projects that NASA does is that money will not go with
    that, and so the requirements that go with those projects will
    not be able to be met.
        It is just like giving me operational control of NOAA
    projects. If I do not get money, that means those projects do
    not get done. So moving projects back and forth among Federal
    agencies where there is presently no duplication does not
    represent a solution. What it represents is just another way to
    get rid of some of the critical programs that we have in Earth
    science right now.
        Mr. Wolf. Well, I do not agree with you there. I think it
    would allow you to have more money to go and do what you are
    doing.
        I heard the other day that Senator Coburn and I think
    Senator Durbin had asked for an in-depth GAO analysis. The
    first initial report came out and identified duplications, I
    think, of $200 billion.
        Are you part of that report? For instance, GAO said there
    are so many manpower training programs. I forget how many, and
    I am not going to guess because I may be inaccurate. Is GAO
    looking at NASA? Are you part of the Coburn request to see if
    there is duplication?
        General Bolden. Mr. Chairman, we are a part of all the GAO
    studies. Actually, I understand what you are saying, and there
    was a previous GAO study and I will take it for the record to
    bring you the exact--I do not think they gave any statistics,
    but there was a definitive GAO study done on whether there were
    duplications between NOAA and NASA, and that study said they
    found no duplications between NOAA and NASA in the Earth
    science work that we do and the climate research that we do and
    the weather research that we do. The study that I think you
    refer to for Senator Coburn, and I was not aware that that was
    at his request----
        Mr. Wolf. Yes.
        General Bolden [continuing]. But I have seen that one as
    recently as this past week.
        Mr. Wolf. Right.
        General Bolden. That one dealt with education, everything
    across the spectrum of government, and I would agree that there
    is duplication.
        Mr. Wolf. Is NOAA part of that report?
        General Bolden. NOAA and everything were a part of that,
    but GAO had previously said that there was no duplication
    between NASA and NOAA in our Earth science efforts.
        Mr. Wolf. Okay.
        General Bolden. There is no duplication between NASA and
    the U.S. Geological Survey in our Earth science programs. We do
    the satellites. We do the program management for development of
    the satellites and NOAA and the USGS, we recently signed a
    memorandum of agreement with USGS for them to take over
    Landsat. We do not spend any money on Landsat other than the
    administrative cost of managing the program of developing,
    building, and testing the Landsat satellite to make sure that
    it is okay before we hand it over to USGS. So I do not think
    there is any duplication, but I will take it for the record.
        Mr. Wolf. Well, if you can. Maybe the staff can contact
    Senator Coburn's office to see what the range of the GAO study
    is. And they indicated that there were further reports about
    ready to release, so we should see if NASA was part of that.
        The report that you referenced, what was the date of that?
        General Bolden. Congressman, I think that was a 2000----let
    me take it for the record. I think it was a----
        Mr. Wolf. Sure.
        General Bolden [continuing]. 2009 GAO study, but I will
    have to----
        Mr. Wolf. Okay. Why don't you submit it for the record.
        General Bolden. I will do that.
        [The information follows:]
                     duplication in earth science portfolio
        In 2009, the GAO conducted a study to ``determine whether NASA's
    programs . . . are duplicative with other activities of the federal
    government.'' [GAO-10-87R, Oct. 15, 2009] The GAO study reported ``No
    Duplication Found in Earth Science Portfolio'' and ``NASA provides a
    unique role in Earth Science that is leveraged by other federal
    agencies.''
        NASA carefully informs and coordinates its Earth Science programs
    with NOAA and USGS both through regular bilateral meetings and through
    interagency coordinating groups such as the US Global Change Research
    program. NASA is vice-chair of USGCRP with responsibility for
    integrated observations. Broadly speaking, NASA conducts leading-edge
    research in Earth system science including climate change, while NOAA
    is working to expand its weather prediction capability to climate time
    scales and USGS is working to understand land surface change (including
    water and biota).
        NASA and NOAA coordinate their weather and climate activities via
    regular meetings between NASA's Earth Science Division and NOAA's
    National Environmental Satellite Data and Information Services (NESDIS)
    office, including development of research to operations transition
    plans. NASA's Joint Agency Satellite Division oversees NASA efforts to
    develop and launch NOAA's satellites on a reimbursable basis. NASA and
    USGS coordinate their land surface change research activities at the
    analogous level, and NASA's Joint Agency Satellite Division is working
    with USGS as the latter assumes the lead role for the Landsat program.

        Mr. Wolf. And then we ask the staff to be in touch with GAO
    and also with Mr. Coburn's office to see if NASA or NOAA or
    USGS were a part of that. We are not looking to take away. We
    are looking to see if there is a function of yours that someone
    else can do, not to take your money away, but to allow you to
    have more money to do what you think is important.
        General Bolden. Congressman, if I can----
        Mr. Wolf. Sure.
        General Bolden. Just for Mr. Ringler, I think it is GAO 10-
    87R dated 15 October 2009. So that was the one specifically
    dealing with duplication between NASA and NOAA.

                            NEW EXPLORATION PROGRAM

        Mr. Wolf. Okay. One other question, and then I will go to
    Mr. Fattah.
        When the NASA authorization was signed last year, the
    Administration assured us that it would fully implement the new
    exploration program. Only five months later, however, NASA is
    proposing to fund the new exploration program more than $1.2
    billion below its authorized level.
        How do your reconcile your stated commitment to the program
    with the budget request?
        General Bolden. Congressman, we have made an effort to stay
    within the budget as defined by the Authorization Act and the
    fact that we are operating under the 2010 funding level and
    expect that we will not be operating anywhere above that.
        Again, safety to crews is critical, particularly safety of
    the crews on the International Space Station. So it required me
    to look at how I felt I could balance the portfolio in human
    spaceflight to continue the development of a viable, a
    realistic deep space exploration program while not putting at
    risk America's access to Low-Earth Orbit and the International
    Space Station in the time that I need that.
        I need for commercial entities to be able to deliver cargo
    to the International Space Station by 2012. They are on target
    to do that right now. I have enough supplies on the
    International Space Station. Provided we successfully get the
    next two Space Shuttle missions off, we can go through 2013 and
    if, you know, if for some reasons, the commercial entities did
    not deliver, we would be okay.
        I then need to get crew there and I want to get the crew on
    American-made rockets. I do not want to have to take them to
    the International Space Station on Soyuz through the life of
    the International Space Station through 2020. And so I think
    that by 2015, 2016, we will have active operating commercial
    entities that will be taking crews to the International Space
    Station. That is quicker than I could have gotten there had I
    done it the old NASA way.
        Mr. Wolf. Okay.
        General Bolden. So we are putting forth a genuine effort to
    produce a heavy-lift launch vehicle.

                             90-DAY PROGRESS REPORT

        Mr. Wolf. In the 90-day progress report on the
    implementation of the authorized exploration program, NASA
    stated that it might not be able to meet the goals of the
    authorization within the schedule and budget parameters
    established in that bill.
        You did not provide, however, an estimate of what you
    believe would be necessary. Using your standard budget and
    schedule estimating procedures, what does NASA believe will be
    needed to implement the authorization, and how does that
    compare to the budget plan put forward in your request?
        General Bolden. Congressman, because the authorization was
    below the level that the President had proposed in his FY2011
    budget and because we all realize that fiscal times have
    changed and we have got to live within our means, we decided
    that we would take a look at two things. One, can I transition
    existing Constellation contracts to the new MPCV and Space
    Launch vehicle; that is a legal and procurement question. I am
    pretty close to being satisfied that, yes, we can do that with
    maybe some limitations.
        The second thing I had to determine, okay, if I can do
    that, is it affordable and is it sustainable. I could do it and
    get a vehicle the first time out, but then I have shot
    everything I have, and I cannot produce a second, third,
    fourth. I cannot produce a sustainable exploration program.
        So I want to give you a realistic program that is
    affordable and sustainable, and that answer, we will have for
    the Congress this summer sometime.
        Mr. Wolf. Mr. Fattah.

                     ADMINISTRATOR BOLDEN'S ACCOMPLISHMENTS

        Mr. Fattah. Thank you, Administrator. Let me join the
    Chairman in thanking you for your significant service to our
    country.
        You flew over a hundred combat missions in Vietnam?
        General Bolden. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Fattah. You led our Marines into Kuwait as the
    commanding general?
        General Bolden. I did not do that, sir. I served with
    Marines in Kuwait between the two wars. I was happily flying
    space shuttles when my fellow Marine generals led our troops
    from Kuwait into Iraq in the Gulf War. I did not serve in the
    Gulf War.
        Mr. Fattah. Okay. But on the Marine Corps side, you were in
    the astronaut office?
        General Bolden. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Fattah. And you were on the mission that launched the
    Hubble?
        General Bolden. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Fattah. So I just wanted to put those on the record
    because the Chairman had referred to your great bio, so I took
    a minute to take a look at it.
        General Bolden. Sir, that is all history.
        Mr. Fattah. I got you. But history is important for us to
    reflect on.
        I saw your appearance yesterday before the authorizing
    committee. And I could imagine that that was somewhat of a--
    reminded you of some of your previous duties, I guess, in some
    respects. So it is challenging to come up here to the Hill----
        General Bolden. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Fattah [continuing]. And deal with the various
    committees of jurisdiction. Our committee has responsibility
    for money.
        General Bolden. Sir, if I did not believe in what I am
    doing, I would be back in Houston.

            IMPLEMENTING THE AUTHORIZATION UNDER THE BUDGET REQUEST

        Mr. Fattah. I understand. Our committee deals with money.
    The authorizing committee deals with the authorizing issues.
    And the Congress has passed an authorization bill that allows
    you to move forward on the President's new missions for NASA.
        General Bolden. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Fattah. So the Congress has sanctioned the fact that we
    are going to now work towards human spaceflight and to space
    outside of Earth's orbit. And that is going to be a challenging
    moment. That is why you put together a set of programs to move
    in that direction.
        Also, the Administration and the President and NASA have
    decided that you want to believe enough in American business to
    commercialize crew missions back and forth to the Space
    Station.
        General Bolden. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Fattah. That is correct?
        General Bolden. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Fattah. And so this Commercial Crew Program is a belief
    in American business that we could take what NASA has been
    doing for decades now.
        General Bolden. That is a firm belief that American
    industry can do what I have been doing.
        Mr. Fattah. Right. The Shuttle mission is almost 300
    flights, right, and you have 133 right now?
        General Bolden. Right.
        Mr. Fattah. But that is still a lot.
        General Bolden. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Fattah. Now, you were retired, though, and moved in
    this commercial area, right?
        General Bolden. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Fattah. So the work that you see and the budget that
    you are presenting for next year would follow the path of what
    has been authorized by the Congress, the work that Senator
    Nelson and the authorizing committees did to come to an
    agreement to move forward.
        And this reflects your best judgment about what the cost
    would be?
        General Bolden. Sir, it does.
        Mr. Fattah. All right. Now, as we grapple with the
    allocation, because I think absent such a limited allocation,
    you would have broad-based support on this committee to do
    everything we could to help you move forward, the Chairman is
    interested and I am interested in where there may be
    opportunities to delineate more clearly missions between NASA
    and, for instance, NOAA, and whether or not, particularly in
    the satellite area, there is some area to--and, you know, since
    you are operating in space all the time, I mean, you got a
    Shuttle mission up today, you got a launch tomorrow with--is it
    Glory?
        General Bolden. It is Glory, yes, sir.
        Mr. Fattah. Right. And you still have, on Mars, Opportunity
    and Spirit moving around. You have a lot going on in space,
    that space-related things might be better suited at NASA, so
    that is the real question around I think what the Chairman was
    asking about satellites, because I agree that we want to look
    to see whether there is some synergy. We are not trying to
    weaken NASA or NOAA. We are just trying to see.
        And for me, it is not a matter of saving money. I mean, it
    is really a matter of just trying to organize the government
    better because I think if we have to spend more money to have a
    superior scientific advantage in this world, we, as Members of
    Congress, we should be prepared to do that, that this idea that
    we are going to lead this world on the cheap, I think is a
    foolish notion anyway and that our ancestors and forebearers
    did not operate on that notion. They sacrificed.
        So, needless to say, this is the area that we are
    interested in, and it is not a punitive matter between NOAA and
    NASA. We want to look and see what makes sense----
        General Bolden. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Fattah [continuing]. And, you know, see whether or not
    there is some way to proceed. So if you would help us in that
    quest. You know, it is that exploration that we are involved
    in, and we want to learn and see how we can go forward.
        Thank you.
        General Bolden. Yes, sir. Thank you very much, sir.
        Mr. Wolf. Thank you, Mr. Fattah.
        And just for the record, I do not want to be unfair to
    anyone. We try to go according to how people come in but we
    will go to seniority if Members came in together.
        Secondly, I kind of made a decision--and if Members would
    rather me not do it, I would like to hear from you--of not
    limiting any Member on the time that they ask questions.
        I served on one committee once where they had a timer, an
    egg timer. And I felt that the witness knew the egg timer was
    there and could see it and felt ``if I can keep talking, I can
    rope-a-dope this thing so nobody has to answer anything.''
        I apologize to Mr. Yoder because we did not get to you the
    last time, two times ago, but I think it is better that any
    Member can just follow wherever their heart takes them while
    still showing respect for other Members.
        So we are trying to call people based on how they come in.
    If it is really close, we would go to seniority. I know Mr.
    Bonner chairs a committee, Mr. Culberson does, and we have
    ranking members on different committees, so we want to be sure
    that the witness cannot just take up the Member's whole time.
    So that is sort of the reasons we are doing this. And if there
    is a difference of opinion, somebody could just say something
    to me.
        Mr. Culberson.

                             CHINESE SPACE PROGRAM

        Mr. Culberson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Bolden, we are really glad you are there, sir, and
    appreciate your service to the country, both in our military
    and in the Space Program.
        And this committee is arm in arm in ensuring that we
    support NASA and do everything we can to ensure that you are
    able to continue to keep the United States Space Program on the
    cutting edge of the world and a world leader, particularly in
    an era when the Chinese are so aggressively moving to overtake
    us in space exploration, and in so many other ways; and
    becoming our banker.
        The joint operating environment analysis prepared by the
    U.S. Joint Forces Command, and I know this will resonate with
    the chairman, that America's greatest strategic threat is our
    national debt and deficit spending. It is the greatest single
    long-term strategic threat to the Nation.
        They also get into a detailed analysis of the Chinese and
    point out that the Chinese have--the People's Liberation Army
    has more students in American graduate schools than the U.S.
    Military.
        Given that the Chinese are growing in understanding of
    America and our military, the Chinese are following their long-
    standing rule that if you know the enemy and know yourself, in
    a hundred battles, you will never be in peril.
        The Chinese have, according to the--again, this is the most
    recent analysis for looking out into the future by the U.S.
    Joint Forces Command--that the Chinese have a sense that in
    certain areas such as submarine warfare, space, and cyber
    warfare, China can compete on a near equal footing with
    America. Indeed competing in these areas, space, submarine
    warfare, and cyber in particular seems to be a primary goal and
    the force development of the People's Liberation Army.
        And, of course, as our chairman has pointed out many times,
    this committee is going to drive home the point that the entire
    Chinese Space Program is owned lock, stock, and barrel and
    controlled by the People's Liberation Army.
        And I know the chairman has expressed grave concern and I
    know the committee is concerned. And I want to reiterate our
    concern, Administrator, that NASA not cooperate, it is not
    authorized by law, it was stringently opposed, this committee,
    in any shape, form, or fashion with the Chinese Space Program
    because it is owned lock, stock, and barrel, controlled by the
    People's Liberation Army.
        And they are so aggressively working to steal technology,
    break into our computer systems. It is a real source of
    concern. And we are graduating I think a tenth of the
    engineers, Mr. Chairman, and scientists? The Chinese have
    vastly more engineers and scientists working on their Space
    Program than we do, sir.
        And you are as vital a part of America's long-term
    strategic security as, in my opinion, any of the work that is
    being done, for the long-term, that is being done in the
    Pentagon. And God bless them, but you and I think NASA, all of
    us should think of NASA as a part of national defense, as a
    great strategic asset the Nation enjoys and needs to protect.
    And I know the chairman feels that way and you have got our
    strong support.

              NASA'S FUNDING CHALLENGES PRIOR TO THE AUTHORIZATION

        However, this is often forgotten: you started out with an
    immediate disadvantage as soon as you came in because the Bush
    administration never fully funded the vision for space
    exploration, did they, sir?
        General Bolden. No, sir, they did not.
        Mr. Culberson. And NASA is self-insured, of course, right?
    NASA is self-insured for all intents and purposes, so the
    terrible loss of the Challenger and the irreplaceable loss of
    the astronauts in the 1986 disaster, that Congress did not
    appropriate funds to replace the spacecraft, correct?
        General Bolden. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Culberson. And in the terrible 2003 loss of Columbia
    and, again, the irreplaceable loss of the astronauts, no way to
    measure that, but Congress did not appropriate any funds to
    compensate NASA either to buy a new vehicle or to compensate
    NASA for all the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions
    of dollars that were lost as a result of Columbia? You were
    never compensated for the loss of Columbia financially?
        General Bolden. Congressman, I would have to take that for
    the record. I was not in the agency at the time. I was working
    on the periphery, but I think your assessment is correct. But I
    would have to take that for the record.
        [The information follows:]
                     nasa compensation for loss of columbia
        NASA was never compensated for the loss of Columbia and the
    resulting cost for the Space Shuttle Return to Flight (RTF) effort.
    Prior to Return to Flight in 2006, over $1.2B of Space Shuttle funding
    was reallocated to cover RTF costs from funds that would normally have
    been spent on Space Shuttle operations (the Shuttle was not flying),
    Space Shuttle program reserves (intended to cover Shuttle
    contingencies), and the Space Shuttle Service Life Extension Program
    (no longer needed given Shuttle retirement). Another $930M was
    reallocated from other NASA programs--primarily Exploration and
    International Space Station--in FY 2004, FY 2005 and FY 2006, to also
    address RTF costs.
        The only monies specifically appropriated to NASA by Congress for
    the loss of Columbia was $100M in FY 2003 specifically to respond to
    the Columbia accident investigation and recovery.

        Mr. Culberson. And I know my friend from Mississippi, you
    were never paid for all that hurricane damage, right, Jo?
        Mr. Bonner. But I am from Alabama.
        Mr. Culberson. I am sorry. I am sorry. Isn't that terrible?
    Texans are just awful. I mean, if it is north of--isn't that
    awful? Isn't that terrible? I really apologize, Jo. Awful. I
    mean, because north of Red River, east of the Sabine, we just
    lose track. It is terrible. I apologize seriously.
        But NASA was never compensated, all the facilities that
    were damaged by the hurricanes, you were never fully
    compensated, I think, for that either, right?
        Mr. Bonner. I think you are right. And I think there was
    damage that we were not compensated for.
        Mr. Culberson. Massive damage. So in addition to not fully
    funding the vision for space exploration, which--and I think
    Scott, if you give me--this is the same chart that Sean O'Keefe
    did.
        Mr. Chairman, I want to make sure you all get a copy of
    this. This is essentially a sand chart that I know Sean O'Keefe
    prepared at the time the vision first was laid out that showed
    what was necessary in order to maintain not only the vision for
    space exploration, but to keep the american space program on
    the cutting edge for the world. And the, again, lack of full
    funding, loss of the Columbia, and the hurricane damage put you
    seriously behind the eight ball.
        Now we move into the Obama administration and we are
    entering this new era, an age of austerity unlike anything we
    have ever experienced before. And Chairman Wolf has quite
    properly, and I admire him and support him strongly in his
    focus on the urgent need to reform our entitlement programs to
    deal with the urgent threat caused by the national debt, and
    the deficit.
        The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has testified,
    when asked by the Senate, what is the greatest threat to the
    United States' long-term strategic security, he says the
    national debt.
        So you have got all these difficulties you are going to
    deal with and we are going to do our very, very best to help
    you, sir, and the request that you have made. And the President
    has asked to freeze NASA. You have not reached the authorized
    level of funding in the authorization bill.

       CONFLICT BETWEEN PRIOR APPROPRIATIONS BILLS AND THE AUTHORIZATION

        One thing I know that we could do right out of the gate to
    help you would be to clarify immediately the conflict between
    the CR that we are under, which is the one passed under--when
    we were here all together under Chairman Mollohan, which says
    that you shall build Constellation, as I recall, essentially
    statutory language to that effect, right, or am I just--it's a
    prohibitive determination of Constellation.
        And while we are under these CRs it is a continuation of
    that essentially statutory, it is in the statute, I think,
    requirement the--and then you have got the authorization bill
    which says build a heavy-lift rocket and a manned capsule.
        One thing I hope we can do to one of these short-term CRs
    we are dealing with is get you some immediate clarification on
    what that would be--that would be helpful, wouldn't it?
        General Bolden. That would be very helpful----
        Mr. Culberson. That would be a big help.
        General Bolden [continuing]. Congressman.
        Mr. Culberson. And the work that you are doing on--I swear
    I will try to wrap this up. You guys are very gracious.
        Mr. Wolf. Take your time.
        Mr. Culberson. You are very kind. And we are all going in
    the same direction on this, guys.
        Mr. Honda. Probably.
        Mr. Culberson. Yeah. Mr. Honda wants to clarify that. I do
    not want to get him in trouble with his folks back home. But we
    are all arm-in-arm in supporting NASA.
        So if we get you some clarification on that right away so
    that you can comply with the authorization bill which says that
    you are to build a heavy-lift rocket, a manned capsule, and
    test it, right, is essentially----
        General Bolden. The Authorization Act does not require me
    to test. And I will take it for the record, but that is the
    first I have heard that the authorization bill required me to
    fly a test flight on a Heavy-Lift Launch Vehicle. It stands to
    reason----
        Mr. Culberson. Well, sure.
        General Bolden [continuing]. That is what we would want to
    do, but I am trying to be very----
        Mr. Culberson. I understand.
        General Bolden. I will take it for the record, and we will
    come back and let you know if there is a requirement for me to
    fly a test flight, that adds more money. To go to the
    chairman's point, my hope is that I will be allowed to develop
    a heavy-lift launch system and an MPCV and then make the
    decision as to whether we need to fly a test flight or what.
    Otherwise, you have added another cost on top of what is
    already difficult.
        [The information follows:]
                    test flight of space launch system (sls)
        The NASA Authorization Act of 2010 does not require NASA to perform
    a test flight of the Space Launch System (SLS) prior to flying crew on
    the launch vehicle. NASA is still in the early stages of formulating
    the SLS program and as part of that process will determine the
    appropriate ground and flight tests to perform to validate the systems
    performance. The tests will depend on the architecture and systems
    selected for the SLS.

        Mr. Culberson. Well, if it is not a statutory requirement,
    I know that when the bill was written, because we all
    participated in that and discussed it, that it would be common
    sense that you are not going to put human beings on a rocket
    without testing it.
        General Bolden. Sir, it is----
        Mr. Culberson. You all are going to do it.
        General Bolden. We did not fly a test flight on the
    Shuttle.
        Mr. Culberson. That is true. I remember reading about----
        General Bolden. Sometimes you have to accept risk. What I
    have tried to tell everybody is the Nation is averse to risk.
        Mr. Culberson. Yeah.
        General Bolden. The American public, going back to what
    Congressman Fattah said, it is incumbent upon me as the NASA
    Administrator to help the American public understand risk, and
    that if we want to remain the greatest Nation in the world and
    the technological leader in the world, then we have to do some
    things differently than we have done before, and that means we
    have to accept risk, which means we----
        Mr. Culberson. That is true.
        General Bolden [continuing]. Have to think like we thought
    when we launched the first Shuttle.
        Mr. Culberson. That is true.
        General Bolden. Challenger changed everything. We would
    have never flown STS-1 again after Challenger.
        Mr. Culberson. Right. I remember a visit with John Young
    and he said--I remember him telling me that. But to also drive
    home a point that you just made, I remember President Bush
    saying on many, many occasions America has become risk averse.
    And it is----
        General Bolden. But that is the Nation. That is NASA.

                             COMMERCIAL SPACEFLIGHT

        Mr. Culberson. I understand. Let me pass the microphone on
    to my colleagues by asking about the amount of money that we
    are spending on commercial which all of us, and certainly I as
    a free market Jeffersonian conservative, support the idea of
    the commercial sector getting us to low earth orbit.
        What percentage of the cost, for example, as envisioned by
    the budget request and the direction that the President is
    asking you to go, what percentage of the cost of a typical
    commercial flight will be paid for by U.S. taxpayers, 50
    percent, 60 percent?
        General Bolden. When we get to commercial crew or now
    presently under the COTS Program or----
        Mr. Fattah. When we get to commercial crew.
        Mr. Culberson. Yeah.
        General Bolden. When we get to commercial crew, I will have
    to again----
        Mr. Culberson. Ballpark, just ballpark.
        General Bolden. I cannot give you a ballpark figure because
    we have not gotten to the point where I will be this spring
    when I have a formalized acquisition strategy performed.
        Mr. Culberson. Okay.
        General Bolden. And then we can give you that answer.
        Mr. Culberson. Okay.
        General Bolden. Today I do not know that.
        Mr. Culberson. I will follow-up on this in my second round,
    but I am deeply concerned at the dramatic increase in the level
    of funding for commercial spaceflight, I mean, from 39 to 612
    is authorized and you got $850 million in this year's request,
    yet you just told the chairman and just reiterated that you
    cannot even afford a test flight and you do not even know if
    you have got enough to even sustain a heavy-lift rocket. So it
    is a real source of concern.
        And, also, secondly, the President I understand is going to
    make a request, make an announcement sometime in Florida that I
    understand is--he is going to announce that they are going to
    try to move all the manned spaceflight preparation for
    commercial to Kennedy when all of that infrastructure exists in
    the Johnson Space Center, along with all the expertise.
        General Bolden. I think there is a misunderstanding of the
    commercial crew program office at the Kennedy Space Center and
    where we train astronauts. That will not change. Astronauts
    will still live, train, work in Houston, go to wherever the
    vehicles happen to be, whether it is Vandenberg Air Force Base
    or Cape Canaveral or the Kennedy Space Center.
        Mr. Culberson. Okay.
        General Bolden. That is the way we have always done it.
        Mr. Culberson. The last question on this. You will just--
    when the rocket lifts off the pad, the commercial will take
    over from--you will have the same structure you have today and
    that is all the training, all the everything before they lift
    off will be done at Johnson Space Center where we have got the
    expertise and the infrastructure, but the minute they lift off
    the pad, they are under the control of Kennedy?
        General Bolden. That has not been determined yet, Mr.
    Culberson. What I have asked the folks in the astronaut office
    and flight crew operations is to give me an operational
    concept: How do we want to do this. If I do it like the
    airlines, they send a pilot off and he or she goes somewhere
    and trains. The first time they fly an airplane, there are
    passengers in the back seat. I could do that or I could do my
    own training which is what I would prefer to do, but it may be
    more economical for me to allow the contractor to take my
    astronauts to their facility to train. That has not been
    decided yet. That is a part of the operational concept
    development and we are probably a year or so away from doing
    that.
        Mr. Culberson. Well, I know we would encourage you to take
    advantage of the resources, the assets, the strategies. You
    know, you have got all the talent, the expertise, and the
    infrastructure at Johnson and we need to take full advantage of
    that, particularly in an age of austerity when there is no
    money. And we love you and we want to help you, so please do
    not----
        Mr. Bonner. Will the gentleman yield for one question?
        Mr. Culberson. Okay.
        Mr. Bonner. Is Johnson in Arkansas?
        Mr. Culberson. I deserved that. I deserved that.
        Mr. Fattah. I think we just heard an argument for
    government focused efforts versus the private sector from a
    conservative Jeffersonian Republican.
        Mr. Wolf. Mr. Honda.
        Mr. Honda. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        And, Mr. Chairman, I do appreciate your consideration of
    the time and allowing us to take the time. I think that that is
    a nice break from the past.
        Administrator Bolden, being a Marine, I know that risk is
    not something you worry about. I mean, just being a Marine
    Corps person.
        General Bolden. I do worry about it.
        Mr. Honda. Yeah. So I think in terms of training in outer
    space and astronaut training since you have done that, you
    know, I have greater confidence that, you know, you have
    control and oversight on that because I like to fly with pilots
    who are experienced. You know, getting off is important, but
    coming back down safely is important, too, so----
        General Bolden. I agree.

              IMPLEMENTATION OF FUNDING CUTS PROPOSED BY THE HOUSE

        Mr. Honda. And there has been a lot of questions around how
    we spend our money. It seems to me that you have been seeking
    ways to create synergy and make the dollar go further and still
    accomplish the mission.
        I was going to ask you a question about the robotic
    precursors, the tension between technology and heavy-lift,
    human spaceflight interests, the space technology, NASA
    scientists versus outside grants. And I think that a lot of the
    stuff I will come back to later because the question had
    occurred to me as we were talking about more money, less money,
    and things like that.
        We have spent almost 90 hours on looking at our CR in the
    past few weeks. And I want to ask a question about a near-term
    question. What would happen to the completion of the Space
    Shuttle manifest and the long-term need and to the Space Launch
    System and the Multipurpose Crew Vehicle development schedules
    if H.R. 1, the continuing resolution, is enacted and how would
    this impact other NASA activities? What would happen?
        General Bolden. Congressman, we have not evaluated our
    operations against H.R. 1 because it is something that passed
    the House and still has to be determined. But we feel that we
    can fly STS-135 under the budget scenarios that we looked at
    which is the Continuing Resolution, the way we are operating
    right now, and I am confident that we will be able to fly STS-
    135.
        Mr. Honda. Based on your responses to previous questions
    then, my sense is that you are at the very bare minimum in
    terms of trying to get the best bang out of the bucks and
    trying to make everything work and meet some of the objectives
    that we have put out and the President has put out.
        And my sense is that if we enact a $60 billion, $100
    billion cut again, that that would negatively impact all the
    things that you have done and accomplished up to now in terms
    of planning and moving the NASA program forward.
        Would that be an accurate statement?
        General Bolden. Congressman, that is an accurate statement
    because we are working now to remain with the elements of the
    2010 Authorization Act, signed by the President in November. I
    promise you that I will not exceed the budget, and I will do
    whatever I can not to do that. I have also told you that my
    number one priority is safety of my crews whether it is as we
    safely fly out the Shuttle or whether it is safety of the crews
    on the International Space Station. That is a triangle. If the
    budget comes down, that triangle gets smaller, and I am not
    going to jeopardize safety of the crew, so naturally something
    would have to give. But that is not something that I am
    anticipating. I am hoping, as I mentioned yesterday in my
    testimony, that reasonable people can agree to disagree, but
    come to what is best for the country.
        Mr. Honda. And that is, I guess, our role as policymakers,
    but taking into consideration the advice of our experts, that
    we should take that into consideration heavily before we make
    any fiscal decisions again.
        General Bolden. Congressman, I would agree very strongly
    with that. If I lose money for construction of facilities or
    operations and maintenance, then the natural fallout is that
    either I have got to lay people off or I have got to close
    facilities. I do not want to have to deal with that. I would
    plead with everyone as I have done in my visits with many of
    the Members of this committee prior to the hearing to just be
    cognizant of the fact that there are positions you can put us
    in where the only alternative is to lay off more people or to
    close facilities. That is not a decision that I have even
    considered.

                           INTERNATIONAL PARTNERSHIPS

        Mr. Honda. And so we have discussed a variety of scenarios
    in terms of partnerships, international partnerships, level of
    trust. The International Space Station, you have been there.
        General Bolden. No, sir, I have not. I wish I had. I am an
    old guy.
        Mr. Honda. Okay. So have you had interactions with folks
    who had gone to the International Space Station?
        General Bolden. Yes, sir, I have.
        Mr. Honda. Have you had relationships with those astronauts
    from the other countries?
        General Bolden. Yes, sir, I have.
        Mr. Honda. Has those interactions and the cooperation, has
    that been positive and has there been learning on all sides
    where the contributions towards spaceflight knowledge has been
    positive?
        General Bolden. Congressman, I have not served on the
    International Space Station, but when you ask that question, my
    last flight in 1994, I was the commander of the first mission
    to involve a Russian cosmonaut as a member of the crew, and on
    the day that I was told that I was going to be made that
    assignment, I was the assistant deputy administrator here at
    NASA, and I told them to find somebody else. I had no interest
    in flying with any Russian because as a Marine, I trained all
    my life to kill them and I thought they had done the same for
    me. A wiser person at the time said, ``calm down.'' At least
    meet them, have dinner with them, and find out whether you
    really believe that, and I had dinner with two cosmonauts,
    Sergei Krikalev and Vladimir Titov. Vladimir was a veteran
    cosmonaut fighter pilot and Sergei was an incredibly talented
    engineer. That night we talked about families and kids and
    stuff like that, and I said, ``this is going to be good.''
        Mr. Honda. Uh-huh. Have you had experiences with other
    countries that had astronauts up at the Space Station?
        General Bolden. I have probably dealt with maybe not every
    astronaut who has been aboard the International Space Station,
    but most of them in different form and they all--if they sat
    here before you today, they would engage you in the same
    conversation I have had with the Chairman every once in a
    while.
        Mr. Honda. Sure. How about China?
        General Bolden. I have had dealings with the Chinese.
        Mr. Honda. Reaction?
        General Bolden. Sir, you know, my job is running NASA and I
    am intending to do that to the utmost. My focus right now is on
    the crew that I have on orbit and I want to make sure they stay
    safe. I am going to do that.
        It is for the President and the Congress to decide what our
    relationship is with other countries. The President is one who
    believes in international engagement and so when you tell me
    and the President tells me what to do, when the President signs
    his name, I am going to do that.
        Right now I do not deal in ``what ifs.'' I am concerned to
    keep my crew safe, make sure that they are safe for the
    duration of the International Space Station, and I think I can
    do that. I believe with my heart that we can do what you have
    asked me to do.
        Mr. Honda. Mr. Administrator, I appreciate your depth of
    response and I believe that working together on common projects
    like the International Space Shuttle where people from
    different backgrounds and have different histories have a
    chance to work together find that the project and the goals
    sort of become the important thing and our history fades, you
    know, in the past and we create new futures and new
    expectations. And scientists, teachers are probably the ones
    that are the cutting edge with our young people.
        General Bolden. Exactly.
        Mr. Honda. Us politicians are probably the ones that have
    the hardest time letting go. I know I am one of them. But I
    just wanted to say for the record that I believe you when you
    say that we have a system right now that is tightly knit and
    set up so that we get the best bang for our bucks. And the kind
    of cuts that we are looking at right now only drive us
    backwards and become less efficient and fall further behind on
    our goals.
        And on the national debt, the debt is a result of the way
    we take care of our fiscal picture and so, you know, if we do
    not do that right, some things we have to make an investment
    for the future. And I think at times, we are our own worst
    enemies in many ways. And the history has proved that out.
        So with your experience and your background, I take your
    judgment and your plans and your admonitions seriously. And I
    do appreciate that and I appreciate your service to this
    country, a man who has proven himself both as a military
    person, as a civilian, and as an administrator for NASA which
    is, you know, aeronautics is a big word in NASA. I do not want
    to see that leave. I do not want to see the Administration
    leave either, but you have provided the best direction that I
    have seen in the ten years I have been here and knitting the
    things together and being diplomatic to folks like myself in
    your responses. So I just want to say thank you for your
    service and your work.
        General Bolden. Thank you.
        Mr. Wolf. Mr. Dicks.

                             SHUTTLE DISPLAY SITES

        Mr. Dicks. I deeply appreciate my good friend from Alabama
    returning the favor.
        Mr. Bolden, you and I have had several discussions over the
    phone on the future, what is going to happen to the Discovery,
    Endeavour, and Atlantis when they end their service. And we
    know that the Enterprise is at the Smithsonian. I used to chair
    the Interior Appropriations Committee. I have a very strong
    feeling for the Smithsonian.
        But we also have a great place out in the State of
    Washington at the Museum of Flight which is run by Bonnie
    Dunbar, a former astronaut. And the museum is the largest
    nongovernmental, nonprofit air and space museum in the country,
    hosting 450,000 visitors a year. The museum serves more than
    120,000 K-through-12 students each year and has 22 programs
    that are aligned with state and academic standards. The museum
    is fully accredited by the American Association of Museums. And
    their geographic consideration is supposed to be taken into
    account.
        I also urge the White House to take into account the
    geographic diversity in selecting Shuttle display sites. The
    western United States I hope will not be overlooked. And you
    know, of course, about the Boeing Company out there, and the
    northwest is home to more than 25 astronauts. Two Washington
    State astronauts, Commander Dick Scobee and Colonel Mike
    Anderson, gave their lives in service to their country.
        And I would just like you to give us an update on where we
    stand on this, what is going to happen to these shuttles and it
    is very important to our State.
        General Bolden. I would be very glad to, sir. There is an
    ongoing process. It has actually been underway since before I
    became the Administrator, and I kind of tweaked it when I came
    in, a process by which I have a team that is evaluating the 29
    requests that came in to get an orbiter. I have asked that team
    to bring that to a head, to a focus so that I can announce a
    decision on the 30th anniversary of the flight of STS-1,
    Columbia.
        Mr. Dicks. When is that?
        General Bolden. April 12th.
        Mr. Dicks. Coming right up here.
        General Bolden. Coming right up, sir. The chairman is
    smiling. I hope that is good.
        Mr. Dicks. So are we still operating under the criteria
    that the recipient has to come up with, like, $26 million? Is
    that still----
        General Bolden. That is correct, sir. I should explain the
    funding required to get an orbiter was arrived at by looking at
    how much it costs NASA to perform the safety on the vehicle.
    There are a lot of volatile components in the Shuttle, a lot of
    dangerous components. We have to remove main engines, put
    simulated main engines on, remove the Orbital Maneuvering
    System engines, put simulated engines on, and all of that means
    that NASA has to produce replicas of real things, and that
    costs money. So when I asked what it was, it is about $28
    million or somewhere in that neighborhood, so that is including
    the cost of transportation. So I think if I am not mistaken, it
    is in the neighborhood of $10, $11 million for transportation
    and then the rest for preparation of the vehicle.
        Mr. Dicks. Thank you very much.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Wolf. Mr. Bonner.
        Mr. Bonner. Mr. Administrator, Alabama has already given
    our friends from Washington State a big gift last week, so I do
    not know if we are on that 29 list of cities or states, but I
    would just say probably for Ohio and for Kansas and for
    Pennsylvania and Arkansas and Texas and all of the others, we
    just want to make sure that decision is fair.
        General Bolden. That decision will be fair, sir.
        Mr. Fattah. Mr. Administrator, if the gentleman would
    yield, I think the fairest way to do this would be any State
    that does not already have a NASA facility of any kind might
    be, like, at the first cut on these lists.
        Mr. Bonner. I was hoping we would go in alphabetical order,
    but regardless----
        Mr. Fattah. I am trying to build public support for space
    funding, you know.

                        NASA OVERALL MISSION AND VISION

        Mr. Bonner. Mr. Chairman, if there is no objection, I have
    got a few questions I would like to get in the record for the
    Administrator. He was generous enough to visit our office the
    other day and I appreciated that visit so much.
        Appreciate as everyone does your patriotic example for the
    rest of us, young and old alike. You are truly an American hero
    and we are grateful that you are serving your country again at
    this important time at NASA.
        We talked earlier. We had a chance to visit briefly about
    NASA's overall mission and vision. And I confided that some of
    us are getting of age where we remember all sitting around the
    TV set in our living room and everyone gathering with great
    interest in what NASA was doing and whether it was the moon or
    the early days of Shuttle.
        I think we are in the Ag hearing room. I have been in this
    hearing room, but it looks like from the pictures on the wall
    that that is where we are.
        And one of my requests has been frequently with your
    predecessors as well back when I was on the Science Space
    Subcommittee of the Science Committee was we need to make sure
    that the American people understand what NASA's mission is
    today, what NASA's relationship to food safety or to medicine
    or to chemical breakthrough or the other wonderful things that
    NASA has played a role in in terms of science and healthcare.
        We need to make sure that the citizens of this country, the
    taxpayers of this country, and the people who have a soft spot
    in their heart for NASA that they understand what NASA 2011 is
    doing as opposed to NASA in the 1960s or 1970s.
        So just two questions and the others will be in the record.
    But the first one is, could you restate, and forgive me if you
    did it in your opening testimony, what in your view is NASA's
    core mission today? Does that differ from your goals for NASA
    as it relates to the Administrator or from your perception of
    what the President and those in Congress who support NASA might
    be?
        General Bolden. Congressman, I believe NASA's core mission
    is unchanged since the 1958 Space Act, and that is to enable
    the Nation to reach beyond the bounds of Earth into deep space,
    so that we understand more about our planet and that we can
    make life better for people here on Earth.
        As you and I talked about your concern for Red Tide and
    other kinds of things, and I mentioned the fact that in our
    Earth science programs, while we go to space to look back and
    learn things about our planet. We are on the International
    Space Station now, and some of the experiments that are ongoing
    that you and I did not have an opportunity to talk about, we
    are doing plant growth experiments that will greatly improve
    our ability to produce food for people here on Earth in places
    that right now it is very difficult to do that.
        We sponsor with the Agency for International Development a
    program that is called Servir. It is located in three countries
    around the world. The first one was in Panama, second in
    Nairobi, Kenya, the third I opened in October in Kathmandu,
    Nepal. These take Earth science data from a 30-year archive and
    put it together with current Earth science data and help people
    in those three regions of the world do what NASA does for
    people here in the United States. It helps with crop planting,
    developing flood and drought models, and that is being done for
    East Africa, for Central and South America, for eight nations
    in Eurasia. That is really important. NASA does the same thing.
        When I look around, you talk about water purity. We hosted
    a conference at the Kennedy Space Center last fall that was
    just on water purity where people were there from all over the
    world, and NASA can do that.
        That may not be considered to be a core mission, but
    interestingly when you go back to the 1958 Space Act and you
    read what it says NASA is to do, the first thing is to perform
    Earth science. I mean, it is Section 102(d)(1) in the National
    Space Act, and the first thing is not flying humans to space.
    It is to steward the Earth, and we do that, we have found that
    we do it better when we are able to put humans outside earth's
    environment and help us look back so that we can interpret what
    we see better.

                           MATH AND SCIENCE EDUCATION

        Mr. Bonner. And as a follow-up to that, since there is
    probably no agency in government that is more closely
    identified with leadership in math and science and inspiring
    young children to grow up to want to be an astronaut or to want
    to be an engineer or doctor or physicist, than NASA, can you
    tell us a little bit about how your budget this year delves
    into the area of math and science education as it relates to
    the country itself?
        General Bolden. Sure. Our budget which this year is $138
    million or so or proposed to be tries to focus on three levels
    of education: postgraduate, collegiate, and then secondary and
    primary school.
        When I became the Administrator, we decided we would also
    try to really focus like a laser as people say on intermediate
    school, middle school. That is the summer of innovation that we
    brought about which is really trying to get students and
    teachers in middle school to fall in love with math and science
    and technology.
        I had the privilege of visiting with the Chairman. He is
    big in education, and he puts his treasure into a school that
    is in the region of the district, and we went there and I was
    able to do something as an astronaut or former astronaut. I was
    able to go with the chairman and present the kids with
    something that they would not otherwise have an opportunity to
    do.
        We are not the Department of Education. I do not want to be
    the Department of Education, but I have incredible content. I
    have incredible employees who ask me every day how we can find
    a way to justify their going out to a school. Because of
    restrictions that we have and how we account for their time,
    they are frustrated because they know that they can help
    encourage kids to become interested in math and science. And we
    do that a lot.
        The Marshall Space Flight Center is incredible in what they
    do. They have a worldwide competition that is called a ``Moon
    Buggy Competition'' and I know you know about it. We are about
    to be overrun by foreign teams because they get into this
    stuff.
        Mr. Culberson read the assessment that came from an old
    friend of mine, General Mattis, who is now the commander of
    U.S. Central Command. But that study was done when General
    Mattis had U.S. Joint Forces Command and he is an intellectual
    and a person who understands the importance of education.
        What we do at our NASA center is I have the most incredible
    workforce, so let's try to use it.
        Mr. Bonner. I just think that as we go through this gap of
    where we will not be taking Shuttle up for or will not be
    taking Shuttle up and we are going to be waiting until the next
    opportunity comes for us to once again be in the driver's seat
    on this, knowing the challenges that we have been presented and
    that then we are going to in turn present to you in terms of
    squeezing that dollar farther and farther, anything you can do,
    and I think this would be consistent with the chairman and
    probably other members of this committee's view, is there
    anything we can do to make those investments so that children
    today can see a brighter future through the lenses and the
    opportunities of programs like what you are talking about with
    middle school?
        I do not want to sacrifice the collegiate or postgraduate
    or the other areas, but that is important for us, I think, to
    give our children and our grandchildren what our forefathers
    gave us.
        But thank you again for your great service to our country.
        General Bolden. Sir, thank you very much.
        Mr. Bonner. Thank you, Chairman.
        Mr. Wolf. Mr. Schiff.

                               PLANETARY SCIENCE

        Mr. Schiff. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Thank you, Administrator, for being here. Really appreciate
    the fine work you do. And as my colleagues have said, we have
    just great respect and admiration for your long career and it
    is a pleasure to see you again.
        I want to raise a couple issues that first concerns a
    decrease over the next five years in funds for planetary
    science. We are awaiting the planetary science decadal results
    next week. That will provide priorities from the scientific
    community.
        Several of us on the committee including my colleague, Mr.
    Culberson, have an interest in ensuring that the exploration of
    the solar system continues to be a focus at NASA. And I know
    this has been a tumultuous time. We want to make sure that
    programs that provided some of NASA's greatest successes like
    the Mars Exploration Program, the missions to the outer planets
    continue to receive attention and support.
        How do you plan to continue that tradition given the
    decreases in the planetary science budget?
        General Bolden. Congressman, we are anxiously awaiting the
    outcome of the planetary science decadal survey as are you.
    That will help us define where we go in the next two decades in
    terms of planetary science.
        We have a number of missions that are on the book right now
    that we intend to fly. We think that they are adequately
    funded, those that are far enough along, we have them well
    planned, but we will be challenged to do everything that the
    decadal survey asks us to do as we always are.
        But, we have the Mars Science Laboratory which I know you
    are very familiar with. It is scheduled to launch the end of
    next year and should get to Mars in 2012. That will be an
    incredible step forward because we will be able to then take
    samples and analyze them on the surface of Mars.
        It is a big thing for NASA. It is the largest vehicle that
    we will have ever sent to another planet other than the Lunar
    Lander. It is the size of a small house or a big car. And then
    we have GRAIL and Juno, two other missions that are going to go
    in the planetary science series that are on cost and on
    schedule. So we are confident that we will be able to manage
    with the budget that we have put forth.
        Mr. Schiff. Well, I just want to express my continuing
    support for that investment. Through some of the darkest hours
    of the Manned Spaceflight Program, these planetary missions
    have provided continued inspiration. The number of visits
    online to view some of the images from Mars, for example, are
    in the billions and it is just extraordinary.
        One of the things that I think unifies us around the globe
    is watching these exciting discoveries that come out of the
    planetary sciences. So I want to encourage our continued
    investment in that area.

                       COMMERCIAL SPACEFLIGHT, CONTINUED

        The budget submission has $850 million for commercial crew.
    That is a bit more for commercial crew than was authorized in
    the authorization bill last year, but far less than the
    commercial crew funding proposed in the budget submission last
    year.
        My understanding is that the current budget is designed to
    get crew flying the Space Station by 2015 which would keep our
    dependence on the Russians to a minimum. I know I am not alone
    in here in wanting to return flying American crew on American
    rockets as soon as possible.
        If the Congress rejects this budget or cuts commercial crew
    funding down to $500 million a year, how much longer will it be
    before we can tell the Russians and their increasing fares that
    we no longer need their services?
        General Bolden. Congressman, any reduction in spending
    means that we have to accept more risks. My idea would be that
    we end up with at least two companies that have produced
    vehicles that we can rely upon to get crews to Low Earth Orbit
    so I have some redundancy. With less funding, it jeopardizes
    the chance that I will be able to have multiple companies
    providing that service so it increases the risk.
        I do not think it would take away our capability of having
    commercial capability to get to Low Earth Orbit, but it
    increases the risk of having that capability be sustained and
    reliable, if you will.
        Let me correct one thing that I may have said earlier that
    might be a little bit confusing.
        Mr. Schiff. Mr. Administrator, in addition to increasing
    the risk, wouldn't it also very potentially result in an
    increased delay in the sense that if you are not willing to
    accept the additional risk to the crew, it may take longer to
    meet the safety standards that you set if you cannot make this
    investment?
        General Bolden. Congressman, I do not worry about it
    increasing the risk in terms of safety. What I do worry about
    it doing is increasing the cost because if I have to rely on
    one provider, I am now back into a monopoly and so just as I
    would be with my international partner, the Russians. If there
    is only one provider, that one provider sets the price and
    then, I do not have anywhere to go.
        That is not the cost savings that we look for in going to
    commercial entities. The reason that I want to go to commercial
    entities and I wanted to put a minimum of $850 million forward
    is because it takes multiple candidates forward, so that it
    stays competitive. You take the competition out and maybe they
    will be very patriotic, but that is unlikely. So the cost will
    go up.

                         LEVERAGING PRIVATE INVESTMENT

        Mr. Schiff. Let me ask you something related. This
    December, we saw an amazing achievement in Florida with the
    successful launch of SpaceX's Falcon 9. For less than $600
    million, the company designed and built a rocket and capsule,
    flew them into space, returned the capsule successfully to the
    earth.
        Of the $600 million, only 298, less than half, came from
    NASA. The rest was raised privately. So this was accomplished
    for about $300 million which is a pretty amazing bargain for
    NASA. And obviously that leveraging the private investment was
    pretty key.
        Can you talk a little bit about how much private investment
    you expect to leverage in the future and what greater
    capabilities that will give NASA by virtue of the fact that if
    you are able to leverage private funds for certain missions,
    you can devote more of NASA's resources to doing other things.
        General Bolden. Congressman, you stated it better than I
    could. My total investment as a partner with SpaceX and Orbital
    in the COTS Program and in SpaceX's first demonstration, I am
    investing less than $300 million, and we will get a capable
    system that can carry cargo to orbit as opposed to anything
    that I could have produced.
        So it was a fixed amount based on a Space Act Agreement
    that we signed with Orbital and SpaceX. That is not like a
    cost-plus contract or anything where the cost varies for me. I
    know how much I am going to pay. In the future, when we go to
    commercial crew, once we have an acquisition strategy in place,
    that will help us to decide what type of contract we will enter
    into with the commercial entities, whoever they are.
        Ideally, I would like to have a fixed-price contract so
    that I know how much money I am going to pay up front. If I end
    up paying $3 billion for one of the two carriers to go, that is
    a great savings on what it now costs me to own and operate a
    system that takes people back and forth to Low Earth Orbit. So
    it frees up money for exploration.
        The reason I am so confident that we can do what we say we
    can do with the 2012 budget is because of the ability to
    leverage on the partnership with commercial entities, where it
    is their responsibility to go out and raise additional funds to
    supplement what the government has to pay as a part of the
    partnership.

                                SPACE TECHNOLOGY

        Mr. Schiff. Let me ask you a little bit about NASA as a
    technological agency. All of us have reaped the fruits of
    NASA's technological prowess in our lifetimes. Unfortunately,
    as an excellent editorial in Space News last week pointed out,
    NASA's investment in space technology has shrunk from ten
    percent of its budget in the 1970s to two percent today. That
    is not enough for NASA to stay an agency focused on the future.
        Let me just pull one of the most pointed quotes from the
    editorial. ``We spend billions of dollars on launch vehicles
    and capsules, but without immediate investments in space
    technologies, they will have nothing to launch and no place to
    go.''
        Do you agree with that sentiment? How important is the
    space technology research budget to NASA's mission to explore
    the solar system?
        General Bolden. Congressman, the space technology research
    budget is vital. The reason that is a billion dollar increase
    over what was in the Authorization Act is because that is
    almost bare bones.
        We have a technology roadmap. Congressman Fattah referred
    to it earlier. We have a technology roadmap that Bobby Braun,
    my chief technologist, has laid out and it is now under
    evaluation by the National Research Council. We think that is
    very viable. That roadmap has been in place for decades. The
    reason it has been in place for decades, as you cited, the
    Nation has not chosen to make that investment.
        NASA took money away from space technology and technology
    development every time we needed a source of funding. We are
    not going to do that in the future. That is a commitment I made
    to the President. That is a commitment I made to this Congress.
    If we are going to be able to explore beyond Low Earth Orbit,
    then we need to have certain capabilities that do not exist
    today, and they will come from space technology.

                            DESDYNI RADAR SATELLITE

        Mr. Schiff. I just have one last question I wanted to ask
    you. NASA's previous budget projections had NASA's science
    programs increasing, particular Earth sciences. That was
    similarly an important investment in our future. But I want to
    talk about one particular satellite that is delayed in the
    budget proposal consistent with the recommendations of the
    National Research Council's Earth science decadal.
        NASA's DESDynI Radar Satellite was an essential component
    of top priority tier one research and recommended for launch
    this decade. This will, once launched, contribute support to
    mitigation assessment response after catastrophic natural
    hazards like earthquakes, volcanos, floods, fires, et cetera,
    which is obviously a very important topic to my State of
    California as well as my colleagues on the Gulf Coast.
        Given the critical importance of these measurements to
    scientists, first responders, and governors, how can NASA
    ensure there is sufficient funding allocated to keep DESDynI
    Radar Satellite on an appropriate development path for launch
    this decade based on the phase one studies occurring in 2011
    and subsequent developments in 2012? How much funding would we
    need in 2012 to meet the next milestones in project development
    as well as solicit support from international partners on the
    mission?
        General Bolden. Congressman, I will get back to you. I will
    take it for the record. But if I can get a budget for 2011,
    that keeps the Earth Science Program on a course to intercept
    what we have said we need in 2012.
        [The information follows:]
         deformation, ecosystem structure and dynamics of ice (desdyni)
        The more constrained fiscal environment has necessitated hard
    decisions by the Agency. The DESDynI radar mission is currently in the
    pre-formulation phase and has completed the Mission Concept Review. The
    FY 2012 budget request provides sufficient resources to engage
    potential international partners on the radar mission, and NASA will
    evaluate whether contributions from partners can allow development for
    launch near the end of the decade within the overall Earth Science
    Division budget constraints. In addition, NASA will work to identify an
    international contribution of the lidar portion of the mission.

        So, when all of you ask me what is the impact of decreased
    funding in 2011, we really need a definitized budget for 2011
    because everything in 2012 is contingent upon what the Congress
    finally appropriates for 2011. If the amount appropriated in
    2011 is significantly less than where I am right now at the
    2010 levels, then 2012 becomes very problematic.
        DESDynI right now is back to its original projected launch
    date which is after 2020. You may remember when I talked to you
    when I became Administrator and we submitted the President's
    2011 budget request we were really happy because it was going
    to enable us to pull DESDynI, CLARREO, a couple of other Earth
    science satellites forward by as much as a year or two. Now
    that we are living under the 2010 Continuing Resolution and it
    looks like the funding level is not going to be better than
    that, then we are back to where we were when I became the NASA
    Administrator and not trending well, if you will.
        Mr. Schiff. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Wolf. Mr. Austria.
        Mr. Austria. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        And, General Bolden, thank you for your service to our
    country. Thank you for your service as Administrator to NASA
    and for being here today.
        I was not going to put this pin on, but after Mr. Dicks'
    comments, I had to put a pin on here that says land a shuttle
    in Ohio so Ohio is properly represented. We have got a million
    foot exhibition area called the National Museum of the Air
    Force as you are well aware of and over a million visitors in
    the Midwest and we would like to see the Midwest represented.
    So I had to get my two cents in on that.
        But thank you for being here today.

                       MODIFICATION OF CURRENT CONTRACTS

        And, General, let me ask you first, as you are probably
    aware, the NASA authorization calls for the modification of
    current contracts. Specifically the language I am referring to
    in here, and I will read it, is, ``In order to limit NASA's
    termination liability costs and support critical capabilities,
    the administrator shall, to the extent practicable, extend or
    modify existing vehicle development and associate contracts
    necessary to meet the requirements.''
        My question is, do you plan to continue to modify the
    current launch vehicle and crew capsule contracts as directed
    by the authorization bill or do you see where this scenario of
    these current launch vehicle contracts would not be modified?
        And I know there has been a significant investment over the
    last six years in moving forward this. Is there a scenario
    where that would not move forward? And I am concerned
    specifically about the tens of thousands of highly skilled
    positions that are involved there and closing hundreds of vital
    aerospace facilities. Those are positions that you just cannot
    go back and replace with that skill level.
        General Bolden. Congressman, we are working under the
    direction of the Authorization Act, and we are remaining within
    the fundamental elements of the Authorization Act. We are still
    looking at whether or not the existing contracts under the
    Constellation Program for both what will become an MPCV and
    what will become a Space Launch System whether existing
    contracts for the rocket itself and the crew carrier can be
    transitioned over to these new programs.
        I may have misled some earlier. I think I led you to
    believe that we were closer to this determination than we
    actually are. We are relatively comfortable that the Orion
    contract could be transitioned over because Orion version
    whatever it is was built, was designed as a deep space
    exploration vehicle.
        The Constellation Ares Launch System is not as clear cut
    and so we are still evaluating from two perspectives. One, the
    legal standpoint and, two, the procurement regulation
    standpoint. So it is left to be determined whether we can make
    that transition.
        If it is determined that those transitions are possible,
    then my second hurdle is to determine whether it is affordable,
    and that is where I am presently working with industry to help
    them understand and help me determine how, if we are going to
    convert those contracts, can we do it within the limits of the
    existing budget, within the limits of the 2010 Authorization
    Act and the President's proposed budget for 2012.
        Mr. Austria. Administrator, when do you see that
    determination?
        General Bolden. I should be able to bring a report to the
    Congress this summer. We provided the 90-day report which was
    an interim report. In that report, we said we would be back to
    the Congress by the summer with a determination as to whether
    or not those contracts can be converted if it is affordable
    and, if not, how are we going to go through a competitive
    process to determine where we go. We are just not there yet.

                 GLENN RESEARCH CENTER AND PLUMB BROOK STATION

        Mr. Austria. Administrator, let me ask you also as far as
    what do you see is the future for NASA's Glenn Research Center
    in Ohio and also the Plumb Brook Station. You know, they play a
    very important role and where do you see the future as far as
    your plan moving forward with those type of facilities?
        General Bolden. I think Ray Lugo, the Director of the Glenn
    Research Center, has probably met with you on a number of times
    and Ray and I both agree. Glenn is postured very well under the
    funding levels of 2012 budget.
        One of the things that adds confusion to the mix is we
    recently announced, two days ago, we announced three major
    program offices, that for the SLS at Marshall Space Flight
    Center, the MPCV at Houston's Johnson Space Center, and
    commercial crew at the Kennedy Space Center.
        There is a common misconception that where the program
    office lies is where the money is spent. That is not the case.
    Glenn does not have a program office for any of these programs,
    but Glenn actually sees a healthy input of funds that will go
    into their community for technology development and for other
    programs. It is to be determined now that we have a program
    office for these three major programs, they can begin to decide
    what is needed to support a program and that is where the
    centers will find out what their level of work is, what their
    task orders are under a particular contract for a program. We
    could not do that prior to actually making these program office
    assignments. So that was a critical step for us as we did day
    before yesterday.

                     DUPLICATION IN CLIMATE CHANGE PROGRAMS

        Mr. Austria. And let me, General, ask you also, we talked a
    little bit earlier, I know the chairman brought it up as far as
    duplication of services with different agencies, and you said
    the reports that you have seen that there is no duplication as
    far as climate research as far as Earth science programs,
    weather research.
        And I want to just get a better understanding of this, if I
    can, because when you look at, you know, NASA's involvement in
    weather and climate change, you have also got the Department of
    Defense, for example, mainly through the Air Force Weather
    Agency spends a considerable amount of resources on weather
    forecasting, gathering significant intelligence on space, and
    the climate global environment. And then this data is provided
    to their joint warfighters, DoD, decision makers, national
    agencies, and allied nations. Similarly you have got NOAA that
    is spending a significant amount of resources on weather
    satellites, atmosphere research, and climate change research.
        I guess whose mission is this? Is it NASA's mission or is
    it NOAA's mission to do this type of research and how do we go
    back to the taxpayers and explain that this is efficient? You
    know, what specifically are you doing different that we need a
    third government agency to be involved in this type of weather
    data collection or research?
        General Bolden. Congressman, NASA and NOAA have had a 40-
    year partnership where we handle the program management
    responsibilities for their satellites. We produce them. We fly
    them to orbit. We check them out and then we give them to NOAA
    because NOAA establishes the technical requirements, and it
    comes out of NOAA's budget, not NASA's budget.
        Earth science is NASA's responsibility. The things that I
    talked about earlier with Mr. Bonner about climate, drought and
    flood models, crop planting and those kinds of things, that is
    Earth science that falls under NASA's purview in cooperation
    with other agencies of the government.
        So that is why I continue to say there is no duplication in
    what we do. I do a lot of program management for satellites,
    but I do not pay for those satellites. They do not come out of
    the NASA budget. We will produce Landsat satellites for the
    U.S. Geological Survey. That will not come out of NASA's
    budget. That will be reimbursable work.
        When you talk about DoD, NOAA, and NASA were involved in a
    partnership on something called NPOESS that was supposed to be
    a global weather satellite for DoD and the civilian entities.
    That has now been broken into two. But NASA had no money in
    NPOESS. NASA was the provider of instruments and the satellite
    for the DoD and NOAA, and that has now been broken off, and we
    are still partnered with NOAA to try to produce the JPSS, the
    Joint Polar Satellite System, but that is a NOAA project paid
    for and budgeted in the NOAA budget.
        Mr. Austria. Sure. And, you know, from where we are
    sitting, we are trying to provide the best efficiencies for the
    taxpayers to their dollars. And when you have three agencies
    out doing this, I appreciate your explanation because it is
    important that we are not duplicating services, that you are
    working together, and that it makes sense from a taxpayer
    standpoint that we are being efficient with their dollars by
    having three agencies doing this type of research.
        General Bolden. You are exactly right, and we are even
    making an effort inside NASA. All this happens because
    government is so stovepiped, always has been. The President has
    told us, not asked us, has told us through the National Space
    Policy that came out last summer that we are going to knock
    down the stovepipes and agencies are going to begin to work
    together. Interagency collaboration is a really, really big
    part of the National Space Policy that the President released
    last summer, and so we are trying to do that.
        Inside NASA, we are trying to do the same thing. If you
    looked at us several years ago, the science directorate, may
    not even talk to the human spaceflight people because they
    jealously guarded what they had. Today that is not the case.
        Ed Weiler, Bill Gerstenmaier, Doug Cooke and Bobby Braun,
    the chief technologist, sit together quite a bit and they
    collaborate on, okay, we do not have the money we used to have
    and we are not going to get the money we used to have. How do
    we optimize the amount of money we are going to get so that
    science, human spaceflight, and technology development can all
    provide some input and get the best for the American public?
    That is where we are going. That is how we based our funding or
    our funding request in the 2012 budget.
        Now, if you make me do things the way we have always done
    them, then the 2012 budget does not stand a chance of working.
    The big premise in the 2012 budget was we were going to do
    things differently. We were going to rely on commercial
    entities to take people and cargo to Low Earth Orbit, not NASA.
    We are going to rely on technology development to define the
    way that the heavy-lift launch vehicle and the crew vehicle
    evolve over decades actually until we finally put humans on
    Mars, at some point in the future.
        The vehicle that takes humans to Mars is not going to be
    the vehicle that takes humans to an asteroid in 2025 because we
    will learn, we will develop new technologies at every increment
    and we have to be able to do that or we are not going to get
    anywhere.
        Mr. Austria. Administrator, thank you very much. And if you
    would like to wear a pin, I have got extra pins here, you are
    welcome.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Wolf. Thank you, Mr. Austria.
        Normally we would go back and forth, but Mr. Serrano was
    kind enough to let us go to Mr. Yoder. Mr. Yoder was the first
    person here. And two hearings ago, he never even got any time.
    So I appreciate that Jose. Mr. Yoder.

                    JUSTIFICATION FOR SPENDING MONEY ON NASA

        Mr. Yoder. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am happy to
    learn from the questions of my colleagues, so I appreciate the
    opportunity to ask a few myself today.
        Administrator, thanks for your service. I have been reading
    your bio here during the questioning and you have a long,
    lengthy history of service. And certainly I would expect your
    return to work with NASA probably is not only from your deep-
    seated passion for service but your belief in the mission. And
    I assume it is a very exciting position for you as you can
    envision where we want to take this program and the
    possibilities. I just would believe that is a very exciting
    place to be.
        With that then, I wanted to ask you a couple questions
    about, maybe some macro questions here if you can help me out
    with a couple things. When we go home and visit with our
    constituents and they talk about the national debt and they
    talk about the overspending in Washington, and we have heard
    comments this morning regarding the greatest security threat to
    our country, can you help me with some points on how we justify
    spending money with NASA? There ought to be something I know
    you can share with us.
        And beyond that, how do we justify as we deal with
    competing efforts to capture resources in this city, not just
    from a perspective of, well, this is why our mission is
    important, but this is why it may be more important than other
    things we are doing in the budget because that is really the
    essence of what we need to be doing in Washington is not only
    just talking about what is good about certain programs but how
    we prioritize?
        I have been in Washington seven or eight weeks now and I am
    one of the new Members of Congress. And this is the only
    experience I have been in where we can sort of spend as much
    money as we want and there is really no concern over time, over
    decades and decades for the bottom line.
        And so we got to get away from this idea of this is why our
    program is important and move towards a this is why it is more
    important than other things we are doing in the budget. And do
    you feel that if we have to fight for resources that money
    should come out of other programs into your budget and why?
        General Bolden. Congressman, first of all, I do not think
    money should come out of any other programs into my budget. I
    am not encroaching on anyone else. I do not want to go there.
    But I would say if you want examples of things that you can
    tell your constituents on what their tax dollar is going for,
    let me give you two areas.
        Aeronautics is one that I do not get to talk about very
    often, and Glenn Research Center is key. The Boeing 787, which
    I think everybody knows about the Boeing 787, if you look at it
    and you look at the engines, the GE engines have a funny
    looking cell on it. The back end of it is what is called a
    Chevron nozzle. That was developed in the early 1990s at the
    Glenn Research Center, and they just were persistent. They kept
    letting industry know it was there. General Electric and Boeing
    decided for the 787 that they would pick that up and use it. It
    decreases pollution. It decreases noise. It increases the
    efficiency on the engine.
        We are working through the Ames Research Center and Langley
    Research Center with the FAA on NextGen, the Next Generation
    Air Transportation System. We have developed software and
    programming for something that is called constant descent and
    arrival. We have run tests in the Denver Airport, Continental
    and United Airlines, where they have demonstrated that the cost
    savings to them following the NextGen system is in terms of
    millions and maybe even billions of dollars.
        When I talk about these concepts that save fuel usage, for
    example, my Associate Administrator of Aeronautics told me that
    based on what we have seen in our tests, the amount of fuel
    that would be saved in some of our new systems, if we got one
    percent of that savings to industry reimbursed to NASA, it
    would take care of my aeronautics budget.
        So those are the kinds of things that I would, if I came to
    your area, I would tell your constituents.
        If I looked at Earth science, which is always questioned,
    we do water monitoring in the western United States. Water is a
    critical commodity. We have fought wars in that part of our
    country, you know, among ourselves over water. Water is a
    valuable commodity and we are doing water research for the
    western United States. There is an alliance of states out there
    and we are contributing to that.
        So those are the kinds of things that I would offer to
    constituents who said what I am getting back for my dollar to
    NASA.
        Mr. Yoder. Well, and I think those are helpful for a couple
    good examples. I do want to suggest, though, that one of the
    things we have to do in this town is decide what our priorities
    are going to be and we do have to decide whether our dollar is
    going to go into your program or whether it is going to go into
    many of the other priorities of this government. So I encourage
    you to not only pitch why.
        I mean, we hear from folks every day. They come into my
    office. They come into committees. This is an important value
    to our country. Very few folks come and argue that it is not an
    important value.
        So how do we grade our dollar invested into NASA versus our
    dollar invested into education or to highways or to social
    services? And that is the challenge I think that we have to
    engage in here. And so that is difficult and uncomfortable
    because your drill is to pitch NASA.
        But it is helpful to us if you can pitch it, at least to
    me, if you can pitch it in a way and why and a dollar invested
    here is maybe not perceived as a short-term benefit as getting,
    you know, food to hungry people, but long term, the value is so
    great that we cannot ignore the mission.
        So we have got to be able to--because I think it is an
    incredible mission and the mission statement, you know, reach
    for new heights and the unknowns so that what we do and learn
    will benefit all mankind. That is a pretty all encompassing
    statement. That covers a lot of ground benefitting all
    humankind. And so we need those tools, or I do at least, to be
    able to pitch how we are doing that.

                             NASA'S LONG TERM GOALS

        And I guess my second question would be, again on the
    macro, what is the vision? We have talked a lot about specific
    things we are doing in the 2012 and you mentioned 2025 being
    able to go to an asteroid a second ago. What is the 50-year,
    100-year vision? I know that is really hard to do, but I assume
    when you get up in the morning, one of the passions is seeing
    where this could go.
        And recently, in recent years we have seen new satellite or
    I guess new data related to planets and other solar systems.
    You know, I cannot speak for the rest of the committee. When I
    grew up, you know, we talked about the planets in our own solar
    system and tried to learn, you know, the ordering and all those
    things. But now it is so broad.
        And how expansive does this get and where do you see things
    going in 50 years?
        General Bolden. Congressman, space is the ultimate high
    ground. If I go to where Mr. Culberson is, I am not interested
    in controlling that high ground, but I want to be there so that
    whoever is there with me is there as a partner or at least I
    can keep them from doing something untoward.
        If I have the capability of putting humans on another
    planet, if I have the capability of putting humans on Mars, I
    can look even deeper into our solar system and even beyond. To
    some people, they say, okay, but that does not feed little
    kids. It does. Everything we do in order to reach these new
    heights brings about some technology that we did not have
    yesterday.
        I love to give people the example of something very simple.
    An emergency medical ambulance, an EMT and an ambulance that
    goes to Anacostia to get a gunshot victim, if you will, if you
    want to be stereotypical, which I hate, but that is what you
    see on the news. That gunshot victim gets, one little patch put
    on his or her chest that has no wires to it. By the time that
    gunshot victim gets into whatever hospital they take him, the
    doctors have all the vital signs. They know what kind of
    condition they are in. They know where to put him in triage and
    they can save a life.
        The same thing on the battlefield. Because of things we
    have done to go to the Moon, we are able to save soldiers,
    marines, coast guardsmen and sailors because we have
    technologies that were developed for other reasons, but they
    come back to Earth.
        That is what we mean when we say we reach for the unknown.
    We do not have a clue what we are going to find when we
    explore. If we did, it is not exploring. We could decide, okay,
    there is no value there, I am not going there. We are not that
    smart yet. So we explore, and every time we explore, we
    discover something that we did not have a clue.
        When I took my flight on STS-60, I discovered a lot about
    me as a human being with other people. That is why we do it.

                            INFRASTRUCTURE PLANNING

        Mr. Yoder. Yeah. I can see your passion for it and I
    appreciate it. And I think it is one of those things that
    inspires Americans to great heights and it is more than just
    being a consumer-driven society where we consume products on
    this planet. It is about finding our ultimate destiny.
        And so it is pretty amazing and I appreciate the fact that
    you are leading that effort. And thanks for sharing your vision
    in doing that.
        I want to ask you some micro questions now, just a few
    things that in reading some of the materials. We had the
    inspector general in some weeks ago and I was just reading
    through his report. And I am sure you have seen it. I just want
    to get some of your response to these things so we know how
    these things are being resolved.
        There was an issue, and one of the things we are trying to
    figure out in Washington in saving money is, is there unneeded
    property or unneeded land, buildings, things that we could
    sell, I think the President even spoke about this in the last
    few days, that we could sell to try to save the country money.
        And I noted here that it says NASA is the ninth largest
    Federal Government property holder, controlling a network of
    5,400 buildings and structures, that the 2008 management plan
    shows that 10 to 50 percent, that is a pretty big range, 10 to
    50 percent and 30 to 60 percent, 10 to 50 percent of warehouses
    and 30 to 60 percent of laboratories are underutilized. And it
    says that there is agency-wide deferred maintenance.
        And I guess I would ask you just to comment on that. And
    are there things we can do to consolidate?
        I was in the state legislative process and appropriations
    process there and we found if we do a little auditing, we could
    take agencies that had multiple buildings and convince them
    that they could operate things under less buildings, save
    money, even though it was uncomfortable for the agency to do
    that.
        Are there some uncomfortable things that we are avoiding
    here? How do you resolve this?
        General Bolden. Sir, because of our system of government,
    there are always uncomfortable things that we avoid. However,
    we have a facilities master plan that is being developed where
    we are looking across the agency at all of our infrastructure
    and trying to determine what is excess, what is underutilized.
    We are trying to look for partnerships within industry. We are
    looking for partnerships with other agencies so that we get the
    best of the facilities available and optimize their use.
        We have the first iteration of that facilities master plan
    that has been completed, but it is work ongoing. And it will go
    on forever probably. We will never be ideally sized, but we
    keep working on it.
        Mr. Yoder. Well, do you think there are some buildings that
    can be sold in order to try to save money in order to fund some
    of these larger destiny functions we are trying to focus on so
    we are not wasting money?
        General Bolden. I am hoping that when the facilities master
    plan is completed, the first iteration of it, that I will know
    whether there are some facilities that can be closed.
        We have already taken one step, one small step. We had an
    ARC Jet Facility at the Ames Research Center and an ARC Jet
    Facility at the Johnson Space Center. An ARC Jet Facility for
    somebody who may not know generates a lot of heat. So, if we
    want to evaluate the effect of a hole on a tile on the Space
    Shuttle, we put in an ARC Jet Facility and simulate what it is
    going to be like during reentry, and we have had to use that in
    the last few years.
        We felt we did not need two ARC Jet Facilities. So we went
    in and did a study and we determined that, yes, that is true.
    So, I have directed that we close down the ARC Jet Facility at
    the Johnson Space Center, transfer those capabilities or those
    assets to the Ames Research Center out in Mountain View,
    California so NASA will have one ARC Jet Facility. That is an
    example.
        Mr. Yoder. I appreciate that example. And for me, it shows
    me that you are interested in trying to find savings within the
    agency. And so I would encourage you to do things like that as
    I consider how I would vote on measures and where we would
    prioritize things.
        I want to spend money with agencies that are being very
    efficient with the resources we are already giving them and
    reward good behavior and good efficiency and not reward folks
    who are not.
        So as you go down that road, I think if you can find ways
    to show Congress that you are finding savings internally and
    becoming more efficient because I know you do not want to waste
    dollars either, you want folks on mission.

                          COST AND SCHEDULE ESTIMATES

        And then, finally, and I appreciate the chairman's
    indulgence to have some time this morning, the final question I
    had for you is something that I see a lot of reports we get and
    it is something that is really hard to explain back home.
        It is very frustrating, in fact, when we talk to folks at
    home about government spending. They assume that there is a lot
    of bureaucratic waste, that there is a lot of abuse, that there
    is a lot of opportunity for overruns and expenses.
        And one of the things I noted in the inspector general's
    report, it says that NASA has historically struggled with
    establishing realistic cost and schedule estimates for its
    science and space exploration projects. And it shows an example
    of the Webb telescope. And it says that its estimated cost of
    $1.6 billion scheduled for launch in August of this year. The
    plan launch date is now June 2014. The estimated cost has
    exceeded now $5 billion.
        And the independent review of the program released in
    November 2010 cited problems with budgeting and program
    management rather than technical performance. And that sounds
    like a management failure from our own people in terms of how
    we are managing these programs.
        And so I would ask you just first are you concerned about
    that reputation?
        General Bolden. Sometimes I think there is a conspiracy to
    make me continually say how angry I was when I found out about
    James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). And I will repeat that:
    nobody was as angry as I was. However, that is, I cannot do
    anything about where we were when I found it.
        Mr. Yoder. Absolutely.
        General Bolden. However you are absolutely right, and when
    we discovered the condition that JWST was in from a budget
    standpoint and a management standpoint we made some changes in
    the management structure. Not only did NASA make changes in the
    management but we got together with our prime contractor and
    they made changes in their management. Because it was agreed
    there were problems on both sides.
        We are doing a bottoms up review right now. James Webb was
    baselined just before NASA turned to something that we now call
    Joint Confidence Level (JCL) process, where we take a look, we
    have independent assessments on our cost and schedule. GRAIL
    and Juno are two satellites that we talked about a little bit
    earlier. GRAIL and Juno are coming in on cost and on schedule
    because they were subjected to the JCL process, where we had
    independent assessments as to what our real cost is going to
    be.
        We have a habit in NASA of falling in love with our plan
    and our estimate. We are finding that the worst person to ask
    that is the principal investigator or the program manager, and
    so we now go outside and we get independent assessments. I am
    confident that we are going to find that our track record on
    cost and schedule containment is going to rapidly improve as we
    see more and more projects fall under the JCL.
        Mr. Yoder. Well I appreciate your focus on that. And
    certainly as we continue dialogue over the years and your
    service continues I hope that when we have a chance to do this
    again you will see good progress in this area. And it is just
    so frustrating to read things like this and try to explain
    those back home. And when an article comes out, you know, it
    appears that Congress is not doing its job on oversight. And so
    it is one of those things that I think really challenges the
    trust that this country has in that its tax dollars are being
    spent wisely. It makes----
        General Bolden. If I can ask your indulgence for one,
    thirty seconds, what I do need for people to understand is the
    critical importance of the James Webb Space Telescope. I do not
    want to leave anyone with the impression that it is a bad
    project. It is, as all the independent assessments have said,
    technically it is very sound. We are taking actions now to
    contain cost and schedule so that we can launch James Webb. The
    promise that it has for the world, not just the nation, is
    absolutely incredible.
        If you look at what Hubble has done in terms of
    publications, changing textbooks, everything, the curve went
    like this. We project that JWST will just jerk it to the
    inside. It is going to be ten hundred times better than Hubble.
        Mr. Yoder. Well and I, that is all good, and I appreciate
    that, and I am glad that project is moving forward. But the
    concern related to the actual management of our own people and
    our effect on causing things to be mismanaged and therefore
    costs raised, it is tough to explain outside of this building.
        General Bolden. Yes, sir. I understand.
        Mr. Yoder. So keep doing, keep working hard on that. And
    your efforts to improve quality and management of the dollars
    we are giving is so critical to reinforcing support for your
    agency. And I appreciate your comments. And Chairman, I
    appreciate the time this morning.
        General Bolden. Thank you.
        Mr. Wolf. Mr. Serrano.
        Mr. Serrano. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I apologize for being
    late, but like so many members I was at another hearing. Where
    I will just say that the EPA Administrator was not being
    treated with the same kind of respect----
        General Bolden. She is a regulator.

                               SHUTTLE TRANSITION

        Mr. Serrano. Exactly. Besides NASA, like NOAA, have a
    reputation of being agencies that people like and are excited
    about. And notwithstanding budget cuts and the needs for
    balancing budgets, we know the importance.
        Let me ask you a question. With the cancellation of the
    space shuttle program there will be folks unemployed, there
    will be folks moved to other areas, will those folks be
    absorbed? And Mr. Chairman, a reminder of something you and I,
    you know well because I have asked this question over the
    years. But one of our country's best kept great secrets is the
    fact that every time one of our space flights go up, you know,
    there are a lot of folks on the ground who are recruited from
    the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez. And I single out
    Mayaguez because that is where I was born. You know, I have got
    to do a little shout out. So it is a two-pronged question. What
    happens to the folks that are there now? And secondly, what
    happens to that great recruiting program that you have had
    there for so many years which has really made an impact on how
    those folks view the federal government, NASA, their role
    within the United States. When you live within a territory, and
    I do not want to get into that issue, sometimes I think you
    ask, you know, where am I? Well the folks you recruited out of
    Mayaguez have always known where they are, and their families
    know where they are and what role they play in the greater good
    of our country. So what happens to folks in general? What
    happens going forward to the recruitment program?
        General Bolden. Congressman, the best news story on the
    shuttle is it was not cancelled. It was a close-out that was an
    orderly close-out that began in 2004 after the Columbia
    accident, the President decided that we should phase the
    shuttle out and move on to a next generation to access to
    space. So, we have had a very rigid transition program in place
    for people to move from the space shuttle program into newer
    programs, or other programs.
        When you talk about young people from Puerto Rico I have
    had the privilege of meeting many of them. A lot of them come
    to the Goddard Space Flight Center. So, they are still as
    excited as they ever have been because a lot of them are in the
    Earth science arena. A lot are in our science and technology
    arena. Some of them are working for Dr. Bobby Braun.
        Mr. Serrano. Right.
        General Bolden. So they, they would push me to go faster
    than I am going in the development of commercial crew for
    access. They would push me to go faster than we are going in
    exploration, human exploration, but they are patient because
    they recognize that we are limited by budget. But they are
    incredible.
        Mr. Serrano. Right.
        General Bolden. Every time I meet them I have always asked
    them, why do I have so many young people from Puerto Rico here
    in this place? They said, ``because we want to explore.''

            SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING, AND MATHEMATICS (STEM)

        Mr. Serrano. It is interesting how sometimes recruitment,
    it reminds me of something Mr. Fattah and I have discussed on a
    totally different subject but one of my favorite subjects,
    baseball. There was a camp in Puerto Rico once, and some kid
    got up, this is the truth, thirty years ago. And said, ``What
    is the quickest way to the major leagues?'' And the coach says,
    ``Do not ask that silly question.'' And the American, the scout
    from the States said, ``Catching. Nobody wants to catch.'' And
    then you have got Posada, and Pudge Rodriguez, and Benito
    Santiago, and it was on, and on, and on. And everybody became a
    catcher.
        In the States and in the territories NASA does a wonderful
    job in STEM education. And it is so important. I have seen it
    in the schools in the South Bronx, I have seen it in other
    areas, it is just wonderful. Not only the educational programs
    but the visits also from NASA are always so important to our
    community. With budget cuts in that area already seen, what is
    the future of those programs? What is the future of that
    involvement? Because it is really key. And I have been
    listening to Presidents, and Governors, and Speakers for 37
    years of public life making statements at the beginning of the
    year. I have never heard a speech where one piece stuck to me
    so much as when the President said this year we need to
    continue to be innovative. We need to continue to invent.
    Americans do that well. And we know that NASA has played a
    major role in that. Where do you see that going?
        General Bolden. Congressman, I see us continuing to be as
    energetic about education as we always have been. And you know,
    the President makes an incredible point that the nation that
    out-educates wins. If you do not do that then you become
    second, third, fourth. I listened to something this morning, I
    think we are fifteenth in reading, seventeenth in science, and
    twenty-fifth in math. You know, not many of us would stand for
    our local baseball team being at that category, and yet we are
    willing to let our kids fall to those levels. NASA will
    continue to do what we do.
        I cannot say enough about my employees. We are so good in
    education because they give of their time and their talent, and
    they do not get paid for it. We are the biggest supporter of
    the FIRST Robotics program in the nation. No one does as much
    for FIRST Robotics as does NASA. We have, I will get the number
    wrong, but it is probably three hundred and some odd teams
    around the country. This is international competition. I
    mentioned the Marshall Space Flight Center sponsoring the World
    International Dune Buggy Competition. These are things that
    employees do out of their own pockets.
        So we have budgeted to a level that we believe will help
    sustain the President's Educate to Innovate program, will help
    in the Race to the Top, will help in the First Lady's program
    of education. Everything that we know we need to do for
    education NASA is going, we are going to be able to support
    with the budget that we have put forth.

                               NEAR-EARTH OBJECTS

        Mr. Serrano. Let me for my last question bring you back to
    the Island of Enchantment, and that is with the Arecibo
    Observatory. As you know, in some cases it has almost been
    scheduled to close. And then you have folks who write about
    this issue who say it is a vital service, we need to continue
    to make sure that we study the possibilities of foreign bodies
    hitting Earth, and what that would mean at that moment or for
    the future of our planet. And so there seems to be a
    contradiction, whether with those folks who would want to close
    it down and those folks who claim that it is not just something
    you close down, it is something you grow because it is that
    important.
        Obviously to the folks there, not only the actual
    observatory, but the symbolism of it being there, has always
    been important. What is the state of the Arecibo Observatory,
    do you know?
        General Bolden. Congressman, at the present time Arecibo is
    incredibly valuable in helping with our assessment of Near-
    Earth Objects (NEOs) and threats to the planet. The future, I
    cannot tell you what it will be because people who are really
    serious about the threat from NEOs would tell me that our money
    might be better spent if we put something in orbit around the
    planet Venus and let it look back across Earth because we would
    pick up more NEOs that way. WISE, which we recently finished
    collecting data on found thousands of previously unknown Near
    Earth Objects. So Arecibo is an important part in that network
    of instruments that look for near Earth objects. So, you know,
    we continue to use it.
        Mr. Serrano. Okay. Well thank you for your honest answer.
    Thank you. Thank you, sir.

                             COOPERATION WITH CHINA

        Mr. Wolf. Thank you, Mr. Serrano. We have a whole lot of
    questions going. But I wanted to address the China issue that
    came up. The CR that passed the House carries language that
    says, ``none of the funds made available by this division may
    be used by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration or
    the Office of Science and Technology Policy to develop, design,
    plan, promulgate, implement or execute a policy, program,
    order, or contract of any kind to participate, collaborate, or
    coordinate in any way with China or any Chinese owned company
    unless such activities are specifically authorized by a law
    enacted after the date of enactment of this division.''
        Some people say, ``Well, you know, what are you talking
    about?'' I just want people to know what I am talking about. I
    think there is an economic issue. There is a moral issue,
    because man does not live by bread alone. And there is a
    national defense issue.
        I quoted Simon and Garfunkel, ``a man hears what he wants
    to hear and disregards the rest.'' When you are getting sort of
    warm feelings about China, keep in mind the People's Liberation
    Army has a program that will, for $55,000, execute someone in a
    prison and sell you a kidney. That is a reality. We have the
    pictures, we have the facts. If you are Catholic, there are
    about 30 Catholic bishops that are in jail or under house
    arrest. To me that is pretty significant, but maybe some people
    have different views. There are hundreds of Protestant pastors
    in jail, as well as house church leaders. I went to China two
    years ago before the Olympics. We had a dinner set up. Every
    house church leader who was scheduled to come was arrested that
    night except for one, and he was arrested the very next day,
    and pummeled, and beaten.
        Hu Jintao, who President Obama gave a state dinner for, is
    the one who put together the program for cracking down in
    Tibet. I have been to Tibet. We snuck in with a trekking crew
    years ago. They have destroyed the country, they have bulldozed
    the country. So as you get your warm feelings about China, keep
    in mind they have the Nobel Peace Prize winner in jail, and his
    wife cannot even get out of her apartment to move around town.
        In addition, there are cyber attacks. The IG testified a
    couple of weeks ago, and there are a number of cyber attacks
    attributed to China. For the record, could you furnish how many
    cyber attacks by China there have been against your computer
    system?
        [The information follows:]
                             chinese cyber attacks
        NASA does not specifically associate incidents on the basis of
    country of origin. Of the thousands of incidents tracked in 2010, a
    much smaller number of incidents (less than 100) involved cyber attacks
    specifically targeting sensitive NASA assets. Of those, roughly 15-20
    included gross indicators suggesting a foreign China association.
        The NASA Office of Inspector General does seek prosecutions for
    general computer crimes and has worked in concert with other Federal
    agencies to bring cases to the attention of the foreign governments
    when they are able to be identified.
        NASA is implementing enhanced cyber security processes and tools to
    better identify and mitigate specific targeted cyber attacks against
    the Agency. We believe these efforts will not only improve our security
    posture but will assist in collaborating across government to defend
    against cyber attacks.

        Next there is Darfur. The President cares. The Congress has
    spoken out against the genocide in Darfur. I was the first
    member of Congress to go to Darfur with Sam Brownback and China
    has been the number one supporter of the genocidal government
    there. The Antonov bomber is funded by China. The Soviet HIND
    helicopter is funded by China. The weapons that the Janjaweed
    carry when they come into villages and kill the men, rape the
    women, take the kids away, come from China. China has the
    largest embassy in Khartoum.
        I love the Chinese people. The fact is, when most of the
    dissidents come into the country, they come through my office.
    I personally believe that this government in China is going to
    fall. I believe that what you are seeing taking place in
    Tunisia, and Algeria, and Egypt has so frightened China that
    they are blocking the Jasmine Revolution on the internet. They
    are so spooked in China that they are blocking Ambassador
    Huntsman's name from showing up. They are frightened. Because
    they know they are running a dictatorial government, and they
    know that the Chinese people want freedom, and love freedom,
    and are going to rise up. In 1986 very few people thought that
    the Berlin Wall was going to fall. Ronald Reagan did. He said,
    ``Tear down that wall,'' and he did certain things. I think
    this government is going to fall. And I think in my lifetime we
    will see freedom and democracy for the Chinese people. Then,
    when we see that and the administration comes up and says,
    ``Let us have this exchange program with the democratic people
    of China,'' I will be at the top of the list. I will say, ``Let
    us get them on. Let us be involved.''
        But we cannot forget the kidney program, Catholic bishops,
    Protestant pastors, the plundering of Tibet, what they are
    doing to the Muslims and the Uighurs. What they are doing to
    the Uighurs in China is brutal. The leading Uighur dissident,
    Rebiya Kadeer, who lives out in northern Virginia, her two kids
    are in prison. No one says anything.
        And so that is why we have this language. And I will fight
    to the death for this language. We do not want these joint
    programs because I know what they are doing and they are spying
    against us. And so when we get all warm and fuzzy about China,
    remember how in Nazi Germany during the 1936 Olympics they took
    down the signs. They did not let people know the Holocaust was
    taking place, and not many people wanted to speak out about it.
    Bad things are happening in China now, too.
        Even if we are talking about jobs, I saw in the Wall Street
    Journal, that General Electric just signed a contract with the
    avionics operation in China to develop an avionics program that
    will put Boeing out of business in a few years. So that is why,
    as long as I have breath in me, I will speak on this issue of
    China. I think it is a moral issue, I think it is an economic
    issue, I think it is a national security issue. And I love the
    Chinese people. I am looking forward to, when the revolution
    begins, getting on an airplane and flying over there and being
    with them. Then China would be our friend as Germany is
    currently our friend, and Japan is currently our friend, and
    Russia is becoming our friend. But until we see China stopping
    the spying and cyber attacks, and the crack downs, and the
    torture of the Chinese people, we cannot participate. We can't
    give their government that opportunity whereby they can compete
    with us and do some of the things that hurt their own people.
        So that is why this China issue is so important here. But,
    let me get to some of the other issues on the questions.

                       MULTI-PURPOSE CREW VEHICLE (MPCV)

        The members of the contracting community who will develop
    and build the launch system and the crew vehicle have told us
    that the program goals are achievable within the parameters set
    in the authorization. Have you looked at the data they are
    using to reach this conclusion? And if so, what assumptions are
    they using that differ from your own?
        General Bolden. Are you talking about the Orion conversion
    to MPCV? Congressman, we are actually working with the
    contractors even as we speak to help determine whether or not
    we can make the transition from the Orion contract to the MPCV,
    and then how do we make it affordable if that can be done? So
    we are working with them. Hopefully the data is the same
    because that is where we get it through our program office from
    the contractor. So I would hope that we are all citing the same
    data.

                      CONSTELLATION SPENDING UNDER THE CR

        Mr. Wolf. Okay. The NASA IG issued a letter in January
    stating that the provisions of the current CR are causing NASA
    to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on aspects of the
    Constellation program that might otherwise have been cancelled
    or scaled back. Many people have interpreted this letter to
    mean that NASA is wasting that money. NASA has not made the
    final architecture determinations yet for the new exploration
    program, so is it premature to say that any particular program
    element is definitely unnecessary? Could you please state for
    the record whether you agree with the characterization that the
    current CR is causing NASA to waste money? Do you agree or
    disagree with the IG?
        General Bolden. Congressman, I disagree that we are wasting
    money and I think we sent a letter to that effect. However, I
    do agree with the IG that the soonest possible relief from the
    restriction of terminating the Constellation program, then the
    better off we would be because it causes difficulty in managing
    how you control assets.
        Mr. Wolf. Now there is language that is in the CR, that is
    still pending, because it did not----
        Mr. Culberson. Prohibition, it is cancelling Constellation.
        Mr. Wolf. But does the fact that there is House-passed
    language to address this not give them any flexibility at all?
    Would there be, and I am just asking, a way of doing the
    language in the next CR extension that could give you the
    ability to do what you think is appropriate, even though it is
    not a final CR? I will talk to the staff.
        General Bolden. Yes, sir. Congressman, whenever the
    language is changed, and I am freed up to terminate the
    program, we will do so wisely and in an orderly manner. But
    right now, the money that we spend under the Constellation
    contracts are money that--it is the way that I directed, that
    we spend money on things that are useful for future programs.
    Programs that we see we will need for heavy-lift launch
    vehicle, for MPCV, for technology development. If they fit that
    category, then we have asked that we continue to spend the
    funds on that. But not spend it on something that we know has
    no use, and that is what we are trying to do to the greatest
    extent possible.

                       COMMERCIAL SPACEFLIGHT, CONTINUED

        Mr. Wolf. Okay, I have a number of questions on commercial
    crew, which we will submit for the record. One you have covered
    with regard to the $350 million requested over the authorized
    level. With the requested fiscal year 2012 money, NASA expects
    to fund a third round of proposals to advance potential
    commercial vehicles to the preliminary design review stage.
    While this is significant, it is still a long way from having a
    functional vehicle that can serve as our primary transport to
    the Space Station. When do you expect the first commercial
    crewed flight to take place? Will this require NASA to extend
    its current contracts with the Russians to provide interim
    transportation? And in addition, what is it costing us per
    flight with the Russians? What was the negotiated price? How
    did we reach that? I think you made a very good point earlier.
    If they are the only car dealer in town, you have got to buy
    your car from them. And so do you expect the cost to continue
    to escalate the longer it goes? Do you see any sign that they
    are moving to change that? Is it a fixed contract? Can you just
    sort of wrap all that into an answer?
        General Bolden. Congressman, I am not at liberty to talk
    about the specific dollar values because there is ongoing work
    right now to finalize the agreement that would take us out to
    2016 to be able to buy seats on Soyuz if necessary.
        My belief, going back to your first question, the
    commercial entities have told us that three years from the date
    of signing a contract to produce a human, a commercial crew
    vehicle, then they would have the ability to deliver. So, that
    would mean if we are able to go on the schedule we are on right
    now, we are talking 2015-ish before we have our first crew
    vehicle. That is about four years from now, four, five years if
    you go to the end of it, which is significantly less than where
    we were before. I am confident we can do that, provided we get
    the funds to keep a competitive process going. When I say I had
    to stay within the budget, and I want to keep my crews safe,
    and I want to live within the constraints, the major elements
    of the Authorization Act, I looked at what I needed to do to
    buy down risk on commercial crew, and that was invest some
    money over the amount that was in the Authorization Act. And
    that is where the $850 million estimate came from. That allows
    me to keep at least two contractors in the competition when we
    finally get to the end.
        Mr. Wolf. I do not want you to share your cards necessarily
    with regard to the Russians, but what is the cost of the first
    trip?
        General Bolden. Congressman the present, I think, let me
    take it for the record. Because I think, I know the present
    contract is in the neighborhood of $50-some-odd-billion a
    flight, a seat. But that includes training, facilities----
        Mr. Fattah. You mean $50 million a seat.
        General Bolden. What did I say? Did I say----
        Mr. Fattah. You said billion.
        General Bolden. Oh, no, no, no. Not billion. I am sorry.
    No, we do not, but I will take it for the record, sir. Because
    we need to let you know what it is that we are paying for.
        [The information follows:]
                        contract cost for seats on soyuz
        The most recent modification to NASA's contract for Russian
    services, including crew transportation and rescue using the Soyuz
    spacecraft, was signed in March of 2011. The modification had a value
    of $753M, and provides services through June 30, 2016. The modification
    covers comprehensive Soyuz support, including all necessary training
    and preparation for launch, flight operations, landing and crew rescue
    of long-duration missions for 12 individual space station crew members.
    The contract will provide for the launch of six people in calendar year
    2014 and six more in 2015, as well as their return to Earth in the
    spring of 2016 after a six-month stay aboard the station. This results
    in an average cost of about $62.7M per seat, which also includes other
    associated services and some minimal cargo on Soyuz.

        Mr. Wolf. Do we have to pay luggage, like in the commercial
    airlines, less for carry on?
        General Bolden. No, sir. But we do, but it does, there are
    costs that we have that we pay when we pay the Russians that we
    would not pay a commercial entity because we would be paying
    them for seats and some other services. The contract that we
    have with the Russians is for an extensive amount of support--
    --
        Mr. Wolf. But what about the second and third? How does
    that quite work out for the next time?
        General Bolden. We are still living under the agreed upon
    amount through--I need to get back to you, sir. I do not want
    to give you a date. It is like 2014 or so we are under----
        Mr. Wolf. Okay.
        General Bolden [continuing]. We are under an amount that is
    defined already. The contract that we are working on with the
    State Department, and if we get approval, will go through 2016.
    But I will get you----
        Mr. Wolf. Okay, if you could have----
        General Bolden. I will get you that information.
        [The information follows:]
                                 seats on soyuz
        The most recent modification to NASA's contract for Russian
    services, including crew transportation and rescue using the Soyuz
    spacecraft, goes through June 2016.

        Mr. Wolf. If you could have your staff----
        General Bolden. But we are not, I can tell you that unless
    something changes we will not be able to give you the
    negotiated amount right now because the contract has not been
    finalized. I am told that it is just not available.
        Mr. Wolf. Is this a positive thing for the Russians, too,
    though? Sometimes somebody in a business deal can become so
    greedy that they are holding out, and all of a sudden the other
    person walks away. Do they not also need this revenue to
    continue to do certain things that they are doing, too? Is
    there an equal benefit in some respects?
        General Bolden. The Russians are a valuable partner, and
    they have been a valuable partner throughout the life of the
    International Space Station. They have provided access to Low-
    Earth Orbit in the International Space Station when we had
    none, after the Columbia accident. So there is great value in
    remaining in this partnership, all of the partners, all five of
    the major partners. When you talk about the European Space
    Agency, fifteen growing to twenty-some-odd, everyone benefits
    from this partnership. Everybody wants to remain a member of
    the International Space Station partnership. So there is value
    in it for everyone.
        Mr. Wolf. Much of the flexibility in the development
    schedule for commercial cargo has been eroded over the past two
    years, and there is a strong likelihood that more problems and
    delays will arise as work continues. Given this likelihood, how
    confident are you that the remaining milestones will in fact be
    completed on time? And what are your contingency plans for a
    delay in the commercial resupply capability? How is this risk
    reflected in your budget?
        General Bolden. Congressman, the budget is good as it
    stands right now. We sized that budget so that we would be able
    to have available cargo delivery under the CRS system by early
    2012. That does represent some delays along the way, but we are
    confident that we will have cargo availability from two
    carriers by early 2012.
        Orbital still has to fly their first flight. But Orbital, I
    must remind everyone, is a very reputable, very experienced
    company. Has been around since the 1980s, 1990s, has flown 155
    successful missions with satellites of all kinds. They have
    flown 100 percent successful missions for NASA, in the Minotaur
    vehicle which we hand to them for processing after we get it
    surplus from the Department of Defense.
        SpaceX has had one incredible flight when they launched
    Falcon 9 and Dragon back in December. So everybody right now is
    marching along at a pace that makes me comfortable that we will
    have commercial capability to deliver cargo reliably to the
    International Space Station in the early 2012 timeframe.

                             SPACE STATION SUPPORT

        Mr. Wolf. Okay. Leading to the Space Station in the next
    question, the decision to continue supporting the Space Station
    through 2020 costs about $3 billion a year. This is money which
    could otherwise be used to meet exploration goals, increase
    aeronautics research, or do other important activities. If we
    are going to sacrifice those opportunities in order to support
    the Station, we need to be sure that we are getting our money's
    worth, and that means making sure that the Station is being
    fully used for its intended research purposes. What is the
    current research utilization rate of NASA's share of the Space
    Station? And how do you expect that rate to change as we
    progress through fiscal year 2012?
        General Bolden. Congressman, I would have to go back to my
    opening statement and remind everybody of one thing. I think I
    used the term yesterday. The Station is the new Moon. The
    International Space Station is the anchor for all future
    exploration on the part of not just the United States but our
    international partners. So, if we lost the International Space
    Station we are dead in the water. We do not have a place in
    microgravity that is available for us to do the types of
    research and development that we need for new capabilities that
    enable an exploration program. So that is how valuable the
    International Space Station is.
        That was what caused me to change my mind about the size of
    distribution of funds. I have to have an exploration program.
    But if I do not have an International Space Station that is
    crewed and supplied, and by the commercial entities. Because
    that is the decision that was made, it was actually made in
    2004. And I would have to say, I generally do not complain
    about the past because that is water under the bridge. The
    decision was made in 2004 to rely on commercial entities for
    access to Low-Earth Orbit and it was ignored. There was no
    money put toward it. My predecessor was, to my knowledge, was
    the first to really start putting money toward a commercial
    entity, but it was half-stepping.
        President Obama has said, ``Look, we cannot get there
    unless we carry out what previous administrations decided was
    necessary.'' So we are going to get there, and the commercial
    entities are going to be a vital part of that partnership that
    gets us there. But, if I lose the International Space Station
    that will set up exploration, any type of exploration, human
    exploration for decades.

                             CREW TIME FOR RESEARCH

        Mr. Wolf. Following up on that, astronauts on the Station
    have a variety of demands on their time, including daily
    operation and maintenance work and crew health sustaining
    activities. While these are clearly necessary, they reduce the
    amount of time available for actually conducting research. When
    we talk about reaching a goal of 100 percent research
    utilization, what does that actually mean in terms of the
    number of hours spent per day on research?
        General Bolden. Congressman, let me take it for the record
    to give you the hours per day. But the balance of crew time, at
    least the last time I was talking to somebody about it, was two
    of the crew members are generally considered to be the
    ``maids'', if I can use that term. They will not like that, but
    they will rotate duty in maintaining the Station. The other
    four will be totally involved in research, and that is the way
    we will operate the Station.
                             crew time for research
    Background on how NASA tracks crew time for research
        Because the planning and execution of space missions is complex,
    crew activities are tracked in great detail, including their personal
    time and break time. A normal crew day includes 6.5 hours of scheduled
    work tasks, 1 hour for lunch, 2.5 hours for exercise and hygiene, 50
    minutes for daily planning conferences, and 70 minutes for work and
    plan familiarization and procedure review, 2 hours of pre-sleep
    (including 1 hour for dinner), 8.5 hours of sleep, and 1.5 hours for
    post-sleep (including 50 minutes for breakfast). When NASA reports
    ``crew time for research,'' this only counts those scheduled work tasks
    from the 6.5 hour block that is for research activities. Important
    research data collected during the exercise period, and much of the 70
    minutes of work familiarization and 50 minutes of daily planning
    conferences, is also part of conducting research each day.
        Scheduled work tasks include research and facility work; assembly
    work; maintaining life support systems; vehicle traffic operations,
    such as docking, undocking, loading and off-loading; internal and
    external maintenance; medical operations; on-board training; and other
    routine activities such as news media interviews, equipment audits,
    computer maintenance, inventory management, tag-ups and communications
    system testing. Crews generally work five days a week, but on weekends
    they have many housekeeping duties, so they effectively receive only
    3.25 hours of unscheduled time on Saturdays, and 7 hours of free time
    on Sundays.
        Crew time reporting is also split among the three NASA and
    international partner astronauts (called U.S. Operating Segment, or
    USOS, crew members), and the three Russian cosmonauts. NASA integrates
    and plans the time for the USOS crewmembers, though the entire crew
    works as a team in maintaining and operating the ISS.
    Amount of crew time for research
        The strategic target for research crew time during ``full
    utilization'' is an average of 35 hours per week for the three-person
    USOS crew, with a similar target for the Russian segment cosmonauts. As
    ISS shifts from assembly to the research mission through 2011, the
    Program is approaching this target and expects to reach it in 2012.
    This is equivalent to 7 hours per day of a 5-day workweek for formally
    scheduled hands-on USOS research activities; the Russian segment has a
    similar target. Research activity in future years should continue to
    increase as ISS operations grow more efficient through activities
    funded within the ISS functionality budget, part of the FY 2012
    President's request.
        It also should be recognized that crew time is just one component
    of research, since much of the research is being accomplished by
    facilities working automatically being tele-operated from control
    centers around the globe. Experiments on the Station are designed
    specifically to minimize the amount of crew interaction required. For
    example, one recent physical sciences experiment used 9.5 hours of crew
    time for installation, but supported more than 6,000 hours of
    experiment operations.

        What will change in the near term, as soon as we are able
    to announce a non-governmental organization (NGO) that will
    assume responsibility for the evaluation and selection of
    research and experimentation to be flown on the Station, some
    time no later than this summer will be that NASA will get out
    of the business of evaluating and selecting the experiments
    that go on board. That will be handled by a nongovernmental
    organization. And at some point down the road----
        Mr. Wolf. Who will that be?
        General Bolden. We do not know yet. It is a competition
    right now that is underway. And so someone will take that over.
    Ideally where we would like to get will be to the point where
    even NASA experimentation and research is folded into the
    evaluation----
        Mr. Wolf. What is an example of that?
        General Bolden. Oh, what would be an example?
        Mr. Wolf. Yeah.
        General Bolden. For example, the salmonella vaccine that is
    under development right now is about to enter human test. That
    would have been, if we had a non-governmental organization,
    that research would have been selected by this non-governmental
    organization.
        Mr. Wolf. But when you say non-government, just give me an
    idea of----
        General Bolden. Oh, the Hubble Space Telescope, the Space
    Telescope Science Institute is an NGO. It is, if you go up to
    the campus of Johns Hopkins there is the Space Telescope
    Science Institute, and they handle the scheduling, they handle
    everything for the Hubble Space Telescope. We have NASA
    astronomers who vie for time, but we do not physically run the
    operation of Hubble. That is a, I would classify that as an
    example of----
        Mr. Wolf. Okay.
        General Bolden [continuing]. Sort of a non----
        Mr. Wolf. Who is going to make that decision?
        General Bolden. Bill Gerstenmaier, who is the Associate
    Administrator for the Office of Space Operations, is the
    selecting official.
        Mr. Wolf. And when is that expected?
        General Bolden. I talked to him as late as yesterday and he
    told me probably early summer.
        Mr. Wolf. And who is competing for that?
        General Bolden. Who is competing?
        Mr. Wolf. Yeah.
        General Bolden. Sir, let me take that for the record. I do
    not----
        Mr. Fattah. Open solicitation, Mr. Chairman, right now.
        Mr. Wolf. It is?
        General Bolden. Yes.
        Mr. Fattah. Online----
        Mr. Wolf. How many have applied?
        General Bolden. Congressman, let me get back to you. I do
    not have that information.
        [The information follows:]
                       cooperative agreement notice (can)
        NASA posted the Cooperative Agreement Notice (CAN) for the ISS
    National Laboratory non-governmental entity on February 14, 2011. Due
    to the competitive nature of the selection process, NASA is not able to
    provide the names of respondents, but by March 4, when notifications of
    intent were due, the Agency had received eight responses.

        Mr. Wolf. If we could just know, if it is public record,
    who has----
        General Bolden. Oh, it is a matter of public record now.
    Who the, I will get back to you because I do not know whether
    the bidders, you know, the competitors are known publicly. It
    is like any competition that we do.
        Mr. Wolf. Sure.
        General Bolden. It is like any competition. But we will get
    that to you.
        Mr. Wolf. Okay.
        The authorization act requires NASA to provide initial
    financial assistance to the nonprofit lab manager. Does your
    budget request include funds for that?
        General Bolden. The budget request for 2012 includes the
    funds to start the nonprofit----
        Mr. Wolf. And how much is that?
        General Bolden. Congressman, let me get back to you. I will
    take that for the record. I do not know exactly what that is.
        Mr. Wolf. And do all the entities competing know what that
    is? How do you make a bid if you do not know what the budget
    will be?
        General Bolden. Congressman, the way that contracts are
    generally handled is that we look at a reasonableness factor so
    that we let the bidders know what we think the range is for
    pricing. We give them that range. And I, you know, my guess is
    we have done the same thing here. So anybody that bids outside
    that range probably----
        Mr. Fattah. Mr. Chairman, the solicitation indicates about
    $15 million a year would be available for an entity to manage
    this laboratory on----
        Mr. Wolf. Now where did that $15 million come from? Or was
    that in just sort of a----
        General Bolden. Congressman, I will get back to you. I will
    get back to you on the specifics of that. That was developed in
    the Office of Space Operations Mission Directorate.
        [The information follows:]
                              national laboratory
        NASA is currently conducting a competitive acquisition for a
    cooperative agreement with a non-profit organization to manage the ISS
    national laboratory component of U.S ISS utilization. In accordance
    with statutory requirements under the NASA Authorization Act of 2010
    (P.L. 111-267), 50 percent of the U.S. share of ISS utilization
    capacity will be made available for use by organizations other than
    NASA under the National Laboratory initiative. The President's FY 2011
    and FY 2012 budgets for ISS include $15M per year for this ISS National
    Lab non-profit organization. The $15M per year level was determined
    during development of a reference model for the organization. NASA
    believes this is an appropriate level to both operate a small non-
    profit organization and set aside approximately $3M of the $15M for
    strengthening of the basic research grants. It's important to note that
    this was a reference model for cost-estimating and scope determination
    purposes. While the $15M per year remains the current funding
    allocation for the cooperative agreement, the proposals and final award
    will determine what portion remains available to strengthen the grants
    component. After the final award, NASA will assist to identify areas to
    reduce overhead costs as appropriate. In addition, NASA will encourage
    the non-profit organization to become a self-funded organization as it
    matures in future years.

        Mr. Wolf. Okay. Well we have a number of other questions.
    Mr. Yoder asked about James Webb, and we have a number there,
    too. We will have a number of questions on the launch vehicle
    also.

                                  AERONAUTICS

        On aeronautics, I looked at your chart here. Aeronautics is
    really almost an orphan. Has anyone ever thought you ought to
    change your name?
        General Bolden. Congressman, the reason that I have opted
    to put as much into aeronautics as we have, and it is not
    nearly enough, is because I want to return the big ``A'' to
    NASA. NASA is the National Aeronautics and Space
    Administration.
        Mr. Wolf. No, I agree with you. Believe me, you have my
    total and complete support. The aeronautics program is not as
    highly visible as many of NASA's other missions, but it has an
    outsized impact on the American economy and on the everyday air
    travel experiences of regular Americans. Have you done any
    economic impact studies to measure the return on investment
    provided by the aeronautics program to the American aviation
    industry?
        General Bolden. Congressman, I have, and one of the ones I
    attempted to cite for you, was our new airplane engine concept
    that we have been working with American industry. That is where
    we have found, and industry agrees, that there is potential to
    reduce about 40 percent of the fuel consumption in the engines
    that we are, engine technology that we are helping them
    develop. That is where I got my number.
        We looked at 19.6 billion gallons of jet fuel were used in
    2008. If you take that at $3 a gallon that is $58.8 billion
    just for jet fuel in 2008. If I got back, so if they realize a
    40 percent savings on that and you gave me 1 percent of it I
    could run my aeronautics budget right now at $588 million.
        Mr. Wolf. Well they are talking about $4 a gallon by the
    end of the----
        General Bolden. Then that makes it even better, sir. But
    that is an example of the economic return on NASA's minimal
    investment of taxpayer dollars.
        Mr. Wolf. Could we get more of that? Because I am a strong
    supporter of doing what we can. It would pain me to see GE sign
    the contract with the Chinese to develop their avionics system,
    and to take jobs away from Boeing. In essence, they are selling
    the rope that they are going to use to hang Boeing. And yet,
    the President picked Immelt, head of GE, to be his big jobs
    man. This was a jobs program for China. So I want aeronautics
    to be here. I want it to be more American.
        Which leads to the next question. Where are the jobs? That
    is the mantra of everyone in both parties. Where are the jobs?
    Jobs give men and women dignity and money for their families,
    but also keep America number one economically. We seek no
    domination of power, we seek freedom and liberty. Ronald Reagan
    said the words in the Constitution were a covenant with the
    entire world. I want American to be number one for those
    reasons. Not for money, but for freedom and liberty and
    democracy.
        So when NASA develops new aeronautics technology, and
    matures it into the point that it can be transferred to the
    industry, how do you ensure that the benefits of that
    technology go first to American aviation companies?
        General Bolden. Congressman, the best way we can do it is
    to continue our cooperation with U.S. industry the way that we
    do.
        Mr. Wolf. Have you ever thought about bringing all of the
    aviation industry people together for a conference to say,
    ``Okay, where are you going? And where would you like to be?
    How can we participate to develop a partnership?'' I know there
    are some in this Congress that say there can be no partnership
    between government and the private sector but other countries
    are doing it. Have you ever thought of bringing everyone
    together, or maybe you do, and saying, ``Where are we today?
    What would you like to be doing? What should we be doing? Maybe
    we are going to plus this up. Maybe we are going to do more.''
        General Bolden. Congressman, that is the way we determine
    what our aviation portfolio is. Dr. Jaiwon Shin, who is my
    Associate Administrator for Aeronautics, goes to the industry
    and asks them what is it that NASA should do for you? That is
    how we know that they want us to work on engine technology.
    They do not, for example they do not want us to work on
    development of alternative fuels. They want us to work on the
    development of engines that can use anything. Water, junk----
        Mr. Wolf. In the interest of time, I am going to go to Mr.
    Fattah. Could you have Dr. Shin come by?
        General Bolden. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Wolf. I do not know that we can do this. But I would
    like to almost write every avionics and aviation company and
    say, ``What is NASA doing that you like? And what is NASA not
    doing that you would like to see them do?'' Because they
    technically are your customers, but they are also the people
    that pay taxes. And so you ought to be doing what puts America
    first. I want to know that there is a connectivity, and not
    because there was a congressman one day that pushed this or
    pushed that. So if he could come by and he could talk to me----
        General Bolden. I will have him do that, sir. He can give
    you background on something, for example, like the continuous
    descent and arrival program that we developed that represents a
    cost savings of about $1.2 billion to the airline industry. We
    had Continental and United participate in tests at Denver----
        Mr. Wolf. Do you think if I asked the people in the
    aviation industry they would say enough money is being spent to
    do what you----
        General Bolden. Oh, they would tell you no way. I hope they
    would. If they tell you that enough money is being spent on
    aeronautics research then I would be very disappointed in the
    industry. I would hope that they would be my biggest proponent
    and my biggest cheerleader, saying that we need to spend more--
    --
        Mr. Wolf. You know, you might tell your friend at the White
    House, Dr. Holdren, that he ought to tell me what he was doing
    in China for twenty-one days. What do you do in China for
    twenty-one days? Who is he meeting with? We do not want the
    Chinese aeronautics industry to surpass Boeing or EADS. So
    maybe we can informally ask a couple of trade associations,
    ``what would you like to see NASA doing that it is not doing?''
    Therefore we are not just taking your person's word.
        I saw the other day, did you see the story, that a Chinese
    company was going to bid to do Air Force One, the helicopter?
        General Bolden. The helicopter?
        Mr. Wolf. Yeah.
        General Bolden. Marine One?
        Mr. Wolf. Yeah, Marine One.
        Did you see that, Mr. Fattah?
        Mr. Fattah. No, I missed that, Mr. Chairman. I would be
    beside myself if we were going to have a situation where Air
    Force One, or Marine One, would be developed by anything other
    than an American company.
        Mr. Wolf. Well I tell you what we should do, then. Maybe
    the Committee ought to carry language prohibiting that. And I
    will tell you----
        Mr. Fattah. I would be in support of that, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Wolf. I am on a resolution with another member from
    your side, which I will talk to you about later, to kind of
    prohibit that. The thought of Marine One being made by a
    Chinese company just would not be good. So I appreciate Mr.
    Fattah. We are both from Philadelphia, we were both raised in
    Philadelphia. What high school did you go----
        Mr. Fattah. Overbrook, the best in the world.
        Mr. Wolf. I went to Bartram. In fact, that was the big
    competition, Bartram and Overbrook.

                             CONTRACTING PRACTICES

        We have some other questions. Let me cover the contract
    issue. And I am going to go to you after this, Mr. Fattah. A
    review by GAO last year found that more than half of NASA's
    biggest development projects had exceeded their baseline
    estimates. The average cost growth was 19 percent and the
    average schedule delay was fifteen months. You instituted a new
    cost-estimating policy in 2009 that was intended to address
    NASA's problem with inaccurate baselines. But due to the
    recentness of the policy change we have not seen evidence that
    it is working. Do you feel confident that this policy will
    noticeably increase the accuracy of your baselines? When will
    you have sufficient data to actually demonstrate that
    improvement? And one other question, so you can round it in--
    under the policy, projects need to be budgeted at a level that
    ensures a 70 percent chance they will be completed within
    budget and schedule parameters, but there is a provision
    allowing exemptions from this rule. In what circumstances would
    you make an exception to allow a project to move forward with
    less than 70 percent confidence in its budget and schedule?
        General Bolden. Congressman, we work under what is called a
    JCL, joint confidence level, that was instituted in 2009. I
    gave the example of Juno and GRAIL being two of the earliest
    projects that were run under that concept, and I am told, are
    coming in on cost and schedule. I am cautioned, however, by my
    experts that we need five, six, seven years to tell whether we
    really got what we said we were going to get. Because operating
    costs is a part of a contract and everything.
        So, but if you look at where we are in development and
    progress to launch for those two projects which came in under
    the JCL, it is working.
        Mr. Wolf. Well your contracting practices have been on
    GAO's government-wide high risk list for more than twenty
    years. And so----
        General Bolden. Congressman, you are absolutely correct.
        Mr. Wolf. Well I guess the question would be, as I go to
    Mr. Fattah, when do you think you will get off of it? Twenty
    years is pretty----
        General Bolden. Congressman, may I, please do not
    misinterpret what I am about to say. My Deputy and my Chief
    Acquisition Officer, who is my Chief Financial Officer, look at
    this every single day because they have to talk to GAO. But we
    are probably never coming off the high risk list because we
    build one-of-a-kind things. Almost every time we build
    something, it is a new experience. What we hope to do with the
    JCL is prove that we can effectively and accurately project
    what cost and schedule are going to be. So, if that is
    successful, you will find us come off the----
        Mr. Wolf. Okay.
        General Bolden. I hope that that would be sufficient for
    GAO to take us off the high risk list. But I am not sure how we
    get on there, to be quite honest. So, other than the fact that
    we do risky stuff.
        Mr. Wolf. Okay. Well, I have other questions on that.
        General Bolden. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Wolf. Mr. Fattah?
        Mr. Fattah. All right, let me thank the Chairman. And when
    these questions of international human rights come up, it is a
    pretty lonely area because a lot of people want to focus on
    more important things, or more business. And I really want to
    make sure that the Chairman understands that the fact that he
    is unrelenting on this question of improving human rights in
    China is not lost on me, and is appreciated I am sure by many
    even if it is a lonely pursuit. So I want to thank you.
        And I am going to go out and visit the Jet Propulsion
    Laboratory later on this month, and I am also going to go to
    the Dryden facility. I think it is important, I am a
    politician, so I really do not know much about rocket science,
    you know? And I think that when we have to make these decisions
    it is helpful, it is helpful at least for me to try to get my
    arms around some of the challenges that the agency faces. But
    when I look at this just from a political standpoint and I see
    a little small country like Singapore, they are investing over
    $5 billion this year in their national science foundation. Now
    this is a country with less than five million people in it, in
    the total population. Here we are, we are a nation of 300
    million people. We are trying to win a competition against
    countries, you know, China is, what, a couple of billion
    people? India with a billion people. And, you know, when we get
    to our science foundation we are going to be in the single
    digits, in terms of billions, in terms of the level of
    investment.
        I do not want to join in any of the pursuit around trying
    to round out the numbers, and the cost cutting here and there.
    I think that the argument we need to be making is that the
    country cannot afford to lose this race. That America cannot
    afford to concede space or science to others anywhere in the
    world even if it actually costs us money. That is, even if we
    have to pay to do it, that as American citizens we would have
    to pay taxes so that we do not position ourselves as a nation
    fifty years from now, and a lot of us will not be around, that
    the position, the curious situation for our children and our
    grandchildren, a situation where they are being victimized by
    these human rights abuses that the Chairman is talking about
    because we refuse to make the investments.
        Now we need to be clear about this. We have a situation
    within our schools in terms of earning doctoral degrees in the
    hard sciences, two-thirds of those who earn those degrees in
    our country will not be, they will not be American citizens and
    they will not be staying here. That is to say, they will not be
    applying for citizenship and hanging around. They are going to
    take these intellectual tools and they are taking them some
    other place.
        So I just want to say, I heard the comments from the
    gentleman from Georgia. I am not a Member here who has a NASA
    facility in their state, even though I think we have members on
    the panel from California where there are a number of NASA
    facilities. I know about the important work of the Glenn Center
    in Ohio, and in Texas, Johnson, and all this. My interest in
    this is, and even if I had a parochial interest, I think all of
    our interests have to be focused on the nation's interest. I
    mean, investment in space is not a jobs program. This is a
    question of the survival of our country and prosperity of our
    country.
        So I just think that we have to get focused on what are the
    needed investments. We talk about estimates and, you know, when
    you looked at the estimates for the Capitol Visitors Center,
    what we priced to build something in brick and mortar that has
    now come in two or three times that amount, right? You know, we
    are not trying to put somebody on the moon. I mean, this is
    just a basic brick and mortar structure and we could not get
    close to what it would cost. And Vice President Cheney said
    that the Iraq War was going to pay for itself.
        So I think we ought to be mindful that as we go forward,
    and I think that the Chairman has talked about this in very
    important ways, that we need to be focused on, to the degree
    that we are focused on fiscal restraint we need to be focused
    on the areas of the budget where we are spending money. This is
    not an area where we are spending a great deal of money, even
    though it may sound like a lot of money. But in comparison, it
    is not. I just think that we have to think in longer terms
    about what we are doing, make the needed investments we need to
    make, and we need to get competent administration. And
    obviously you, and the President in his selection of you to
    lead this agency is, you know, is an extraordinary gift for the
    nation, given your background and your leadership policies. But
    we need to give you the tools so that you can function.
        And I am happy to hear that the Chairman says in the next
    CR we are going to try to work out the problem that we created
    between authorizing you to proceed past the Constellation, but
    at the same time requiring you to spend a couple of hundred
    million a month on Constellation. It puts you in a bind. And it
    does not help us make the investments that we need to make. So
    I want to thank you for your testimony.

                                 SPACE STATION

        I have a couple of questions in particular about the Space
    Station. So now we have built this over the last ten years. We
    have had continuous human astronauts on the Space Station for
    ten years, right?
        General Bolden. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Fattah. Over 200 people have been on the Space Station,
    rough number?
        General Bolden. I will get you the exact number. I am not--
    --
        [The information follows:]
                          international space station
        There have been 198 different visitors to the ISS, representing 15
    countries.

        Mr. Fattah. All right. And now it is going to be a national
    lab?
        General Bolden. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Fattah. But it is also the kind of, you say it is the
    platform for our further efforts, and I am interested in that
    part of this. How we see the Space Station, which is about the
    size of a football stadium right?
        General Bolden. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Fattah. Okay.
        General Bolden. About a hundred----
        Mr. Fattah. I tell you I am, you know, and now the Mars
    Rover was about this size, right?
        General Bolden. Yes, sir. Now Mars Science Laboratory (MSL)
    is going to be a lot bigger.
        Mr. Fattah. The first one.
        General Bolden. But Spirit and Odyssey are, Spirit and
    Odyssey are little things.
        Mr. Fattah. Right, I got you. And Spirit we have not heard
    from for a few months, but I bet NASA that it is still going to
    function. So I am in total agreement. So I am just saying in
    terms of perspective, we plan on using the Space Station as the
    base from which NASA would go in terms of its further efforts.
    If you could expound on that for a minute, that would be
    helpful. And I was figuring out about the $3 billion that you
    want to spend. Now $3 billion sounds like a lot of money. We
    are spending that amount, we are spending that in an average
    week in Afghanistan. Just so we are clear as a nation about
    putting these things in some perspective. So if you could help
    us think about what you are trying to do on the Space Station?
        General Bolden. Congressman, let me give you just three
    examples if I can. The first one would be one of the, the
    seventh crew member on Discovery, on STS-133 last week was
    Robonaut 2, a humanoid robot. And Robonaut 2 will----
        Mr. Fattah. Now that was done in partnership with GM?
        General Bolden. That was done in partnership, I was going
    to say, that was a Space Act agreement with General Motors that
    is ongoing. It is not over. And General Motors came to us and
    said, ``We have a need.'' And NASA said, ``We have a need.''
    And so we came together, collaborated with industry. I was
    telling Congressman Clark, who is from Detroit, yesterday, when
    he said, ``I do not have a NASA center. I do not have anything
    that has anything to do with NASA.'' I said, ``Congressman, let
    me send you some stuff because you need to go back into Detroit
    and make people in Detroit proud that they are now on the
    International Space Station.'' Because they are, in the
    presence of Robonaut 2.
        R2 is going to start working this spring to see how we can
    collaborate, how a robot, a humanoid robot, can collaborate
    with astronauts on board. At some point we are probably going
    to, you know, I do not know when, but we will probably put R2
    outside and see how much R2 can do to alleviate putting
    astronauts at risk by having them do space walks. Eventually we
    would like to demonstrate the fact that we do not have to put a
    human on the surface of Mars to build the infrastructure. That
    by the time we send humans there the village will be built,
    because robots will have done that.
        I have got to be able to integrate science, aeronautics,
    human exploration, and technology into one big thing. That is
    what we are trying to do in NASA now. We are looking at an
    integrated picture. We are not doing things the way we used to.
    And that is the message I am not getting across to people very
    well. Because when you asked me why do I believe in my budget,
    and why do I think we can do what I say we can do, it may take
    us longer to do aspects of it. It may take me longer than 2016,
    for example, to have a heavy lift launch vehicle and an
    integrated crew exploration vehicle. I do not know that yet, it
    may, but we are going to get there. Because these are difficult
    fiscal times. And we have had to adjust the budget to fit
    within these difficult fiscal times.
        While, you know, my job, the President has asked me to lead
    the greatest civilian organization in the world, bar none. Keep
    astronauts safe: I am doing that. Explore: we are doing that.
    We do that every single day. We are going to launch another
    satellite called Glory on Friday and it is going to do great
    things.
        I get emotional about this because it is important. And it
    is important for me to be able to articulate how important we
    are to the nation, and how important it is for us to carry out
    the President's plan for education. Because everybody on this
    committee has said this all day long, you know, we are so
    close. As I said in my opening statement, we are all in synch.
    Believe it or not. We may be different parties, or you all may
    be different parties because I am apolitical. But we all talk
    about the same things we want to do. It is just how we get
    there. And because these are very difficult times and we have
    to make very difficult choices I need your support when I make
    a hard choice.

                               HUMAN-LIKE ROBOTS

        Mr. Fattah. So let me see if I can put this together. We do
    not have the technology yet to take a human being to Mars. We
    know we can take an object to Mars, right?
        General Bolden. Oh, yes. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Fattah. We have done that a couple of times.
        General Bolden. We have done that. Right. Hard to do it,
    but we have done it.
        Mr. Fattah. So when we take an R2 and put it on the Space
    Station in part we are thinking about a humanlike robot that at
    one point we may be able to put on Mars to build out an
    infrastructure so that when we deliver a human being there,
    there would be the protection of the infrastructure because----
        General Bolden. Yes, sir. I do not want a human to have to
    go build something.
        Mr. Fattah. Right. And plus the, once you get out into deep
    space there are the radiation challenges, the other challenges
    are much more significant.
        General Bolden. That is human physics.
        Mr. Fattah. So you build, this is like a stepping stone----
        General Bolden. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Fattah [continuing]. To where we are going. Now we do
    not have the technology yet, but four years ago we did not have
    the technology to go to the Moon, or do any of these other
    things, or----
        General Bolden. Well we did at one time but we forgot about
    it.
        Mr. Fattah. Yeah. Or to build a Space Station.
        General Bolden. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Fattah. It took some ingenuity, right?
        General Bolden. Yes, sir.

                              SUPERIORITY IN SPACE

        Mr. Fattah. That is why we know that we are an exceptional
    nation, because we have done exceptional things. So now the
    President has set a much deeper goal for you and we are trying
    to build to getting it done. I just want to conclude with a
    question that gets to the different programs. We have got earth
    science, we have got space exploration, we have got a lot of
    different pieces here. I want to focus a little bit more on the
    purpose of this, right? So I want to just conclude if you could
    help the Committee understand and the country understand what
    it will mean if we forfeit or concede this race for superiority
    in space to others who have untoward interests to our own as a
    nation? What the costs will be to our country?
        General Bolden. Congressman, we are fifteenth, seventeenth,
    and twenty-fifth in reading, science, at math. And I may have
    the numbers not precise. We will fall further behind. We, right
    now every nation looks to us for leadership when I go to the
    International Space Station. Whenever I go to a meeting of my
    international partners, the heads of agency, everybody says,
    ``We need for you to lead.'' If we give that up they will turn
    to somebody else and it may not be somebody we like.
        So, you know, my job is to lead this agency. As I said,
    make sure we do what you and the President tell us to do
    through appropriations and authorizations and that is what we
    are doing. Stay within budget, which is something that people,
    you know, do not think we are serious about but we are really
    serious about it. And make difficult choices. And we have made
    some difficult choices but there will be much more difficult
    choices. When you talk about infrastructure, these kinds of
    things, and then everybody is going to run away from me. I do
    not want you to do that. I want you to help me stand up to the
    scrutiny and, the way you all always do. But I, you know, we
    have got difficult choices ahead.
        Mr. Fattah. Well I want to thank you again. When we finish
    voting today, I am going out to visit a couple of our national
    labs. And I think that this whole area of the country's work is
    vitally important. You cannot disconnect it from educating our
    children, or making sure that we have the agricultural
    capability to feed our population. Running the greatest country
    on Earth costs money.
        General Bolden. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Fattah. I know we have some very well-meaning people in
    the Congress and in the country who want us to cut costs. You
    know, we need to be wise about what we are doing here. Because
    we do not want to cut costs that end up creating a circumstance
    for our nation in which we have cut off our nose to spite our
    face.
        General Bolden. Congressman, may I say one thing? And it is
    just because I have been, I have cut one partner out, and that
    has been industry. We have not had an opportunity to talk to
    them a lot, and I know some of them are here, some of them will
    hear this. I have the best partners in the world in American
    industry, and I have faith in them. And I need to have, I need
    to have other people in positions of leadership have faith in
    them. They once, several of their leaders told me, and I wrote
    it down, a piece of something is better than all of nothing.
        Industry is coming together now. And companies that in the
    past in terms of our contracts would not even think about
    talking to each other, they understand----
        Mr. Fattah. Well let me just say this, because I know we
    have to wrap up. I am for us working with American industry.
        General Bolden. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Fattah. There are cross currents here, though. We have
    to be very careful. And we are going to have to be a little
    different than we have been. Because all this open source
    information, if we are taking American taxpayers' money and we
    are developing technology, I do not necessarily think that that
    technology should then be made available to people who have not
    invested around the world, and then used against American
    industry in competing against us and going after an opportunity
    to build Marine One. I think we do not want to work against our
    own purposes as a nation at the end of the day.
        So we need to have American industry. We also need to have
    some proprietary control over the technology that American
    taxpayers are investing in, in ways that do not put our own
    country at a disadvantage at the end of the day.
        General Bolden. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Wolf. Mr. Culberson?

                               LONG TERM PLANNING

        Mr. Culberson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I could not agree
    with you more strongly, Mr. Fattah, and I will absolutely be
    working with you arm in arm on that. I wanted to, we are
    apparently going to have votes here in a few minutes. And
    Administrator, I really appreciate you being so patient and
    staying here with us. We are really devoted to you, and really
    want to find ways to help you in every way we can to get you
    the money you need to do your job better and also give you some
    longer term support. I was just talking to Chairman Wolf about
    perhaps us getting together to do sort of a joint hearing after
    we get through the appropriations process to talk about the
    long term. How do we make sure, we for example, I know and my
    dear good friend Mike Coats, the Director of Johnson Space
    Center tells me, and that you all are dear good friends. And
    you may be able to tell me more precisely, Administrator. But
    in the time that you have been an astronaut, worked with NASA,
    Mike tells me, because I think your careers are very similar,
    and the time that you have been together----
        General Bolden. We have been together for forty, more than
    forty years. We came together in the summer of 1964.
        Mr. Culberson. 1964?
        General Bolden. In the Class of 1968 at the Naval Academy.
        Mr. Culberson. At the Naval Academy?
        General Bolden. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Culberson. So you were both in, both then saw service
    in Vietnam?
        General Bolden. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Culberson. And then joined the space program, and the
    time that you have been with the space program, did Mike tell
    me that you all have seen the Congress create and then cancel
    over twenty different, major----
        General Bolden. My deputy right now is looking at a study
    that we asked for on programs that were started and stopped and
    it is more than twenty-some-odd. But I would say if you want to
    look at one thing that we did to the end, it is important for
    the American people to note that their investment in the
    International Space Station came to fruition day before
    yesterday. Because we have completed construction of the
    American elements of the International Space Station. So if
    somebody says we cannot do something and finish it, we have
    completed construction of the U.S. element of the International
    Space Station.
        Mr. Culberson. And we are immensely proud of that
    achievement. I want to make sure that Mr. Fattah catches that.
    I was just getting for the record, Mr. Fattah, that the, NASA,
    could you be sure that you repeat that----
        General Bolden. The space walk that we did day before
    yesterday----
        Mr. Culberson. No, before that.
        General Bolden. Oh, before that?
        Mr. Culberson. Yeah, how many programs, how many----
        General Bolden. Oh, there is some twenty-plus programs.
    When we finish the study we can make it available.
        Mr. Culberson. The point is that NASA----
        General Bolden. We are trying to find out why we did it.
    You know, how does it happen?
        Mr. Culberson. We did it to you. Congress did it to you.
        General Bolden. Well, I am not pointing fingers.
        Mr. Culberson. No, I know you are not, I know. But these
    wonderful people that devote their lives to, what is it Captain
    Kirk says? To explore brave new worlds? To explore new worlds
    and go where no one has gone before. We have over the years,
    Mr. Fattah, created and then canceled over twenty----
        General Bolden. Twenty-some-odd programs.
        Mr. Culberson [continuing]. Major rocket programs, space
    exploration programs. Well no wonder you all have had so much
    difficulty over the years, and then inadequate funding. Plus
    they get their hopes up, boom, get their hopes up, boom, work
    on a program, boom. That has got to stop. And you are
    absolutely right about thinking in the longer term. And I want
    to work with you and the chairman after we get through our
    appropriations process. Let us think about having a joint
    hearing in great detail to talk about how we get NASA on a
    predictable, stable funding and planning path that does not
    subject these wonderful people to this up and down. It would
    really, I think, help them immensely. Would it not?
        Mr. Fattah. Sure, that would be great. That would be a
    worthy thing for us to spend some time doing.
        Mr. Culberson. It really would, after we get through all
    the appropriations cycle.
        General Bolden. That would be an incredible gift to the
    nation. I tell everybody what we want to do is something that
    is affordable, sustainable, and realistic.
        Mr. Culberson. Bingo, we are there.
        General Bolden. And if we can do that--
        Mr. Culberson. Well we will help you with that.
        Mr. Fattah. Mr. Administrator, what I want to do is beat
    everybody else. All right? I want to make sure that America is
    Number One. Even if we have to spend beyond what we might feel
    comfortable at a particular moment.
        General Bolden. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Fattah. I still like to be in the lead. I think the
    view is always better from the top, right?
        General Bolden. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Culberson. Absolutely. And I will certainly help you
    with that. National Journal just ranked me as the tenth most
    conservative member of Congress. I am still trying to figure
    out what I did to screw up and only get number ten, but I am
    with you on this. I mean, I voted against the RSC budget for
    that reason, because it severely cut NASA. Law enforcement,
    Chairman Wolf, you and the staff protected NASA in the proposal
    that was submitted. The amendment, there was only one adopted
    that really cut, was Mr. Weiner's that shifted I think cross
    agency money, $300 million over to the COPS program. And we are
    going to work to help make sure to protect that in the CR.

                                 ORION PROGRAM

        Let me ask you a couple of specific questions and then some
    broader ones. Will the Orion program, sir, be canceled or
    transferred into the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle? Just simply
    renamed into the Multi-Purpose----
        General Bolden. Congressman, what we are looking at is
    trying to find if we can transition the contracts for Orion
    into the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle.
        Mr. Culberson. And so----
        General Bolden. And we will know that and we will know, we
    will have an assessment as to whether it is affordable by the
    summer when we give----
        Mr. Culberson. Okay.
        General Bolden [continuing]. Our next report to you guys.
        Mr. Culberson. With this up and down in mind I do not want
    to lose that talented workforce, those wonderful people that
    have put their heart and soul into building the next manned
    space capsule. You are going to keep all those folks? You are
    not talking about any layoffs, or----
        General Bolden. Congressman, I wish I could say that. I do
    not control, and I have told my center directors, do not get
    involved in the business of our contractors. I do not make
    those decisions.

      CONFLICT BETWEEN PRIOR APPROPRIATIONS BILLS AND THE AUTHORIZATION,
                                   CONTINUED

        Mr. Culberson. And the thing that is fouling you up is of
    course you cannot, you have this language, one of these things
    that is fouling you up is the language and the statutory
    requirements. You cannot cancel Constellation, which of course
    includes Orion. And that was signed before the December 10th
    CR. The CR language that Mr. Mollohan did that predates the
    authorization. The statutory language in our appropriations
    bill from last year that Mr. Mollohan put together with all our
    support that says you cannot cancel Constellation, that is
    statute, right?
        General Bolden. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Culberson. And then after that in December there was a
    continuing resolution signed in December that was silent. Oh
    excuse me, the authorization was then signed in October which
    says you are going to build a heavy lift rocket and a manned
    capsule. And the old rule, the statutory interpretation is the
    last statute signed controls. I think this is where you all
    wrapped around the capsule. So we have got to get you some
    clarification pretty quickly.
        General Bolden. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Culberson. And the chairman, I am delighted we are
    going to work on that with the help of Mr. Fattah, all of us
    together, to get you some clarification. What you need is
    clarity so you can follow the authorization, right?
        General Bolden. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Culberson. Okay. That would really help you a lot?
    Immensely?
        General Bolden. Sir, it would. The authorization act
    postured us very well. The President's proposed budget for 2012
    postures us very well. So----
        Mr. Culberson. But you need to follow that authorization.
    It is hard for me as a lawyer to explain how it works.
        General Bolden. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Culberson. I mean, it got me tangled up.
        General Bolden. If I can get relief from the restriction on
    terminating Constellation, that will help.
        Mr. Culberson. And all of those, all that research, all
    that work that you are doing on Constellation to develop a
    heavy rocket, to develop a manned capsule, that all transitions
    very easily into the authorization language to develop a heavy
    lift rocket and a manned capsule, does it not?
        General Bolden. No, sir.
        Mr. Culberson. They are pretty much----
        General Bolden. I am not able to say that. That is what I
    am, I do not want to be boxed into a corner. I am still looking
    at the contracts for Orion and the contracts for the rest of
    Constellation to see if we can legally and within procurement
    regulations move them. If that is the case, then they have to
    be affordable. So----
        Mr. Fattah. Maybe we could clear this up. I think it would
    be safe to say that you see it as being desirable to have the
    least disruption to this workforce----
        General Bolden. Absolutely.
        Mr. Culberson. There you go.
        General Bolden. That is so vitally important as humanly
    possible, but you have to operate within the law.
        I have to operate within the law.
        Mr. Fattah. And with what budget is available.
        General Bolden. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Culberson. And we need to give him some statutory
    clarification as soon as possible.
        General Bolden. Yes, sir.

                    NASA'S IMPLEMENTATION OF DECADAL SURVEYS

        Mr. Culberson. That would be great. Okay. The decadal
    survey is about to come out, very soon. We are about----
        General Bolden. That is correct.
        Mr. Culberson. Throughout the history of NASA, the United
    States being the leader, and number one, we have throughout
    history until very recently always flown the top priority
    mission in the decadal survey in each one of the categories. I
    think, and it is my recollection as an avid student of the
    space program and history, I think that is an accurate
    statement. Until recently NASA----
        General Bolden. Congressman, let me get back to you on
    that. I do not know because when I left NASA in 1994 I did not
    know what a decadal survey was.
        [The information follows:]

        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Mr. Culberson. I have researched it personally and I can
    tell you that we have----
        General Bolden. Yes, sir. I am just, you asked me for an
    answer and I cannot give it to you. Right? I do not know.
        Mr. Culberson. Sure. I can tell the committee I have
    researched it personally. This is near and dear to my heart
    that we----
        Mr. Fattah. That could almost qualify you to be a member of
    Congress----
        Mr. Culberson. Yeah. And it is, the reason I am bringing it
    up, sir, is that I am concerned that, I want to make sure that
    you have got the funding that you need to pursue those top
    priority missions in each one of those categories. Are you
    satisfied that the funding level that the President has
    recommended, that you have in front of you, is sufficient for
    you to fund and fly each of those top priority missions in each
    one of those categories?
        General Bolden. Are you talking about----
        Mr. Culberson. Just the number one missions.
        General Bolden. You mean the one that is coming out----
        Mr. Culberson. Yes, sir.
        General Bolden. Congressman, since I do not know what the
    decadal survey is going to give me I cannot say that. I do not
    know. The FY 2012 budget was put together without any knowledge
    of the decadal survey. So they, provided they come out without
    something that is reasonable, and they use the FY 2012 budget
    in their prioritization, then I would be able to say yes. But I
    have no idea whether they took the the 2011 budget. It used to
    be that the decadal surveys did not pay any attention to the
    budget, and they did what the science community wanted and
    expected us to eat it. At least nowadays, I am told that the
    decadal surveys, the teams are generally pretty judicious about
    looking at where they think the budget is going to be.
        Mr. Culberson. Mm-hmm.
        General Bolden. Now since this one was convened when the
    President, I think it was convened maybe even before the 2011
    budget. But I will get back to you on when it convenes.
        [The information follows:]

        NASA requested the NRC conduct the new Planetary Science decadal
    survey in a letter to the NRC dated December 5, 2008. The Survey
    steering committee held its first meeting in July 2009 and its final
    meeting August 2010. The President's 2011 budget request with its
    outyear funding projections through FY 2015 was the information on
    budget availability the NRC had in hand when planning its approach.

        Mr. Culberson. But what I am driving towards, Mr.
    Administrator, is for the committee, for Mr. Fattah, and
    Chairman Wolf, that for all of us to recognize that we are
    entering an age of austerity unlike anything we have seen
    before. We have got to protect NASA's ability to make sure that
    America has the world's premiere, number one, manned space
    program and unmanned programs. We are all committed to that. I
    want to make sure that we are, as a Nation at least funding the
    top priority missions of the decadal survey. The best source
    for us to look to if we are going to try to prioritize
    planetary missions, missions like Hubble looking beyond the
    solar system, it would be the decadal survey, would it not? I
    mean that is really----
        General Bolden. That is the voice of the community.
        Mr. Culberson. Absolutely.
        General Bolden. Whether it is astrophysics, planetary, or
    whatever, we put a lot of stock into the voice of the
    community. What the community may not know is where NASA sits
    budgetarily.
        Mr. Culberson. Mm-hmm.
        General Bolden. So, that is where we have to prioritize.
        Mr. Culberson. So if we as a committee wanted to build a
    firewall around, of course, only the manned program to make
    sure that we protect it, whether it be Mr. Weiner, or Mr.
    Jordan, our friends on both sides trying to come after NASA. If
    we wanted to build a firewall, the committee, this subcommittee
    wanted to build a firewall around NASA's manned spaceflight
    capability and your unmanned capability, talking about the
    unmanned missions first and robotics. Would not a good firewall
    be to say that NASA needs to, we need to make sure this
    committee preserves the ability of NASA to fund and fly the top
    priority mission designated by the decadal survey in each one
    of the categories?
        General Bolden. Congressman----
        Mr. Culberson. Would that make sense?
        General Bolden. It makes sense. But if you wanted to build
    a firewall----
        Mr. Culberson. That is what I am looking for.
        General Bolden [continuing]. I would say empower the NASA
    Administrator to work with the Congress and the White House
    each year once the budget is established so that we can
    reestablish priorities or readjust priorities----
        Mr. Culberson. No, I understand.
        General Bolden. [continuing]. In accordance with fiscal
    constraints.
        Mr. Culberson. It makes sense.
        General Bolden. If you put a firewall around the results of
    the decadal survey today and the Congress changes everything
    next year, then I am back where I am----
        Mr. Culberson. No, I understand. We would protect you
    statutorily as well. I am talking about protecting you for the
    long term. And we really are going to dive into this, and I am
    going to do my best to work with this subcommittee and the
    authorizing subcommittee so we can flesh this out with NASA's
    input and guidance to figure out a long term glide path that is
    predictable, stable, consistent. You do not have to worry about
    these year to year struggles and you can actually, all of you
    magnificent people that work in the space program, can predict
    with some certainty that you can pay the mortgage, send the
    kids to school, and still go where no man has gone before and
    discover brave new worlds and new civilizations.

                                     EUROPA

        Okay, the Europa mission in particular is a big flagship
    mission. It was in the last decadal survey. It is probably
    going to--almost certainly going to--be the top priority of the
    decadal survey in this mission, in this decadal survey. And I
    mention it to you because I have also found out, you know,
    Europa first of all has more saltwater than the Earth, liquid
    saltwater. They have confirmed that. It has got tidal flexing,
    like when you bend a credit card, that means there is a lot of
    heat down there in the bottom of that ocean where the pressure
    is equivalent to the deep ocean on Earth where we have already
    shown that the plate boundaries have got incredible colonies of
    life. So Europa is almost certainly going to have life. If you
    are going to find life anywhere it is going to be on Europa. So
    the decadal survey has made it a top priority--there is the
    vote. I want to be sure to point out to Mr. Fattah and Mr.
    Wolf, and you may not be aware of this either, sir, that
    apparently in a very recent study that I read in Science--or I
    forget, maybe the journal of Nature--discovered that the water
    ice on Europa being bombarded by the radiation from Jupiter all
    these billions of years, the radiation strips away the hydrogen
    and leaves the oxygen. And then the oxygen is churned back down
    into the liquid saltwater ocean. So the saltwater ocean of
    Europa not only has heat but it has been oxygenated for
    billions of years. Which makes it an even higher priority.
        That is going to be an expensive mission. It is a flagship
    mission. And I wanted to ask you about it. Are you guys
    planning for that, to make sure that we are flying that
    flagship mission to Europa that needs to include a landing----
        Mr. Fattah. If the gentleman would yield for one quick
    second?
        Mr. Culberson. Sure.
        Mr. Fattah. Because you just announced within the last two
    months, right, that you found a number, five or so, Earth-like
    planets----
        Mr. Culberson. Right, beyond the solar system----
        Mr. Fattah. You might want to just respond in general to
    this point and----
        Mr. Culberson. But it would start with Europa.
        General Bolden. Well Congressman I was just going to say
    that the decadal survey when it comes out
        Mr. Fattah. Is that in Texas?
        Mr. Culberson. No, and it is not even flown out of Texas.
        General Bolden. When the decadal results are announced next
    Monday then we will take a look at what they said and we will
    look at how we prioritize it based on where we are in our
    planetary budget.
        Mr. Culberson. But the Europa mission is built in, is it
    not? Have you built in----
        General Bolden. No, sir. You know----
        Mr. Culberson. It was in the last decadal, it is going to
    be in this one.
        General Bolden. Let me get back to you. Because you are
    asking me to verify that we are flying----
        Mr. Culberson. You are upsetting me, dodging that. That is
    a big one. We are really going to be short of money. And we are
    going to need to build a firewall, Mr. Chairman, around these
    decadal survey missions. We cannot cede either the manned
    program leadership to China or anybody else, and we certainly
    cannot cede the leadership in flying these big missions,
    whether it be to the sun, or Mercury. We are about to go into
    orbit around Mercury any day now, right? Is it Messenger?
        General Bolden. Messenger? Yes, Messenger is due to get to
    Mercury----
        Mr. Culberson. In the next couple of weeks.
        General Bolden. It is.
        Mr. Culberson. I think, it is going to go into orbit around
    Mercury. And of course the Webb is, I am glad you got those
    cost overruns, and Mr. Fattah when you visit the Jet Propulsion
    Laboratory----
        General Bolden. We are not there yet, sir. I do not want
    you to overstate what I said.
        Mr. Culberson. Right, right, right. But----
        General Bolden. We are trying. We are going to get them.
        Mr. Culberson. You are doing your best. But it is an
    extraordinarily important mission. And when you go to JPL you
    will meet Charles Elachi, who is another national treasure.
    They do great work out there. But one of the problems they have
    had over the years is they will give, they think by giving,
    over the years giving us low estimates at the beginning of a
    big mission that maybe we are going to fund it. And then the
    estimates, boom, the reality comes in higher. Dr. Elachi has
    told me that they are working hard from their end, and I know
    you are on your end, to give this subcommittee more realistic
    estimates of what these big missions are actually going to cost
    on the front end.
        General Bolden. That is the joint confidence level process
    that I----
        Mr. Culberson. Right.
        General Bolden [continuing]. That I talked about a little
    bit----
        Mr. Culberson. That is critical. That is where a lot of
    these cost overruns come from. I know we are in the middle of
    this vote. I can submit a lot of these for the record because
    we are short of time. And you have been very generous, Mr.
    Chairman, and Mr. Administrator, with your time, sir. Thank
    you.

                                ASTRONAUT CORPS

        Mr. Wolf. Thank you. We have a number of questions we will
    submit for the record. I just wanted you to make one comment on
    one issue. How are you adjusting the size of the astronaut
    corps, and the programs that support the corps, to reflect
    reduced flight opportunities between the end of the Shuttle and
    the first flight of the new exploration program? And the
    missions being contemplated under the new exploration program
    are significantly different than the missions executed by
    Shuttle astronauts. How will the requirements of future members
    of the astronaut corps differ from the requirements of the
    current members?
        General Bolden. Congressman, we have a study that was
    instituted through the National Research Council that we expect
    to get back within months that is going to help us answer that
    question. So I do not have, the study is not complete yet. We
    are looking at what should be the size of the astronaut office,
    what type of support apparatus, whether it is airplanes or
    other things. We are looking at what we need to have to support
    the astronaut office of the future. And I do not have that----
        Mr. Wolf. And when will that be ready?
        General Bolden. Let me get back to you, sir. I am, it just
    escapes my mind right now.
        Mr. Wolf. Okay.
        [The information follows:]
                                astronaut corps
        The National Research Council (NRC) study on the future of the
    Astronaut Corps is due to be delivered in August 2011.

        General Bolden. But I would remind everybody, we just named
    three, the crews for three more increments to the International
    Space Station. So, we are continuing to assign astronauts to go
    to the International Space Station for six month increments for
    the next ten years. So, we still have astronauts who are going
    back and forth to Russia to train and spending these two years
    of their lives investing in getting ready to go to the
    International Space Station. And we just named three new crew
    increments.
        Mr. Wolf. Okay.
        Mr. Culberson. Can I do one more, real short?
        Mr. Wolf. Okay. Sure.

                          ALPHA MAGNETIC SPECTROMETER

        Mr. Culberson. Just real short. I want to ask about the
    final shuttle flight. Administrator Griffin had put on the
    manifest that it was a high energy observatory----
        General Bolden. That is the next flight is AMS----
        Mr. Culberson. And that will be flown?
        General Bolden. That is STS-134.
        Mr. Culberson. And that will be flown?
        General Bolden. And that is the Alpha Magnetic
    Spectrometer. It is now mated in the VAB. I think we did that
    yesterday. So we will launch AMS on the Shuttle Endeavour, let
    me make sure I have got the right one.
        Mr. Culberson. Is that the last flight?
        General Bolden. No, sir. The last flight will be on
    Atlantis in June.
        Mr. Culberson. Okay, thank you.
        Mr. Fattah. Mr. Chairman?
        Mr. Wolf. Go ahead.

                              EDUCATIONAL BENEFITS

        Mr. Fattah. Just to conclude, and I want to thank you, Mr.
    Chairman. We have to go vote. You are relieved of duty. But
    when you led the first Marine Expeditionary Unit into Kuwait,
    you know, there were Kuwaiti kids who were here at American
    universities when Kuwait was overrun by Iraq. And they were
    here studying. You know, the Kuwaiti government provides
    unlimited educational support. These kids can go, if they want
    to get a doctoral degree in nuclear physics, or aeronautics, or
    whatever. So they were here studying. And our young people, you
    were leading them in----
        General Bolden. Congressman you, I do not want to get in
    trouble with General Boomer. I was not there.
        Mr. Fattah. No, no, you were there.
        General Bolden. No, I was not there then.
        Mr. Fattah. But you were leading the First Expeditionary?
        General Bolden. I led the First Marine Expeditionary Force
    forward in 1997. But that was, that was between wars. I was----
        Mr. Fattah. I got you. My point is that these kids from
    Kuwait----
        General Bolden. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Fattah [continuing]. The country our young people were
    protecting----
        General Bolden. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Fattah [continuing]. Have a benefit, and had a benefit,
    an educational benefit that allowed them to pursue their God
    given----
        General Bolden. That is correct.
        Mr. Fattah [continuing]. Intellectual talents.
        General Bolden. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Fattah. That is not a benefit we provide to our young
    people in this country. And I just want us to be clear, we need
    to get our priorities in order as a nation about what we need
    to be doing to prepare ourselves to compete in this world. And
    it is an unfortunate paradox that we could provide the
    resources to protect their country with our young people while
    they provide their resources to educate their children.
        Mr. Wolf. Thank you for your testimony. The hearing is
    adjourned.
        General Bolden. Congressman, thank you so very much.

        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                                              Thursday, March 10, 2011.

                          NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION

                                    WITNESS

    DR. SUBRA SURESH, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION

       Opening Remarks of Vice Chairman Bonner and Ranking Member Fattah

        Mr. Bonner. Good morning. Chairman Wolf is testifying at
    another hearing and we expect him here in just a few minutes.
    In the meantime, he asked us to go ahead and get started.
        I had the pleasure of introducing myself to the witness
    earlier. My name is Jo Bonner. I am from Mobile, Alabama, and I
    am pleased to serve as vice chairman of the Subcommittee.
        I would like to welcome everyone to the hearing today on
    the fiscal year 2012 budget request of the National Science
    Foundation. Our witness is Dr. Subra Suresh, the Director of
    NSF.
        Sir, thank you so much for being here with us today.
        Dr. Suresh, you are sitting before a subcommittee which I
    hope you know is very supportive of your agency and its mission
    to advance the country's scientific research and educational
    enterprises.
        Our national struggles in these areas have been well
    documented, most notably in the 2007 report entitled ``Rising
    Above the Gathering Storm.''
        Unfortunately, in spite of the increased visibility of the
    problem, it appears we have made very little lasting progress
    in reversing some of the trends that were outlined in that
    report. In fact, an update of ``Gathering Storm'' issued just
    last year concluded that our situation has only gotten worse.
        We have an enormous challenge ahead of us. We are facing
    unrelenting competition from other countries that are highly
    motivated to overtake our position as the global leader in this
    global economy. And we have to face that competition while we
    are still dealing with a very slowly recovering economy, one we
    hope continues to recover, but I think by all accounts is the
    worst recession since the Great Depression.
        It is clear to Members on both sides of the aisle that NSF
    will play a key role in meeting that challenge and helping to
    push the United States back to the forefront of technical
    innovation.
        Your ability to play that role obviously depends on the
    size of the budget at your disposal, and that is what we are
    here to discuss today.
        The NSF budget request for the fiscal year 2012 is $7.8
    billion. It represents, as you know, a 13 percent increase over
    your last enacted appropriation. That is a significant new
    investment, particularly given the constraints on the larger
    federal budget.
        Just as a quick aside, I came to Capitol Hill in 1985 as a
    young staffer for my predecessor in Congress. At that time, the
    deficit was $1.8 trillion. Now it is over $14 trillion.
        And as we all know, just the other day, it was reported
    that the deficit for February was $223 billion. So our Nation
    truly is struggling with serious financial challenges in front
    of us.
        But as I said earlier, the NSF is so important to our
    mission as a Nation.
        Within your total request, you have a number of significant
    new program proposals as well as some suggestions for where NSF
    can or should scale back its involvement.
        I know I will have some questions for you, as will the
    Ranking Member and others who will be coming. There are several
    committee hearings taking place at this time, so please do not
    take offense at Members coming and going throughout the
    morning.
        In a moment, Dr. Suresh, we will have you give a summary of
    your written testimony and then we will proceed with the
    questions.
        But before we do that, I would like to turn to my friend,
    the gentleman from Pennsylvania and our Ranking Member, Mr.
    Fattah, for any opening remarks he would like to make.
        Mr. Fattah. Thank you very much.
        And I want to thank the chairman. And it is a pleasure to
    see him in the chair even though this is not his formal role on
    this committee, but our chairman will be here momentarily. I
    was watching him testify before a hearing in the Homeland
    Security Committee.
        But let me welcome you. It is good to see you again.
        I agree with the chairman that the national debt is a very
    important priority. In fact, next week, I am going to be
    offering legislation to address the national debt in the most
    forceful way that would have been suggested to this point.
        So I do not minimize it, but I do not see the glass as half
    empty. I see it as mostly full. That is to say, we are the
    wealthiest country in the world. We have well over $900
    trillion in transactions, money moving around in our economy
    every single year.
        The notion that we cannot afford to pay our bills I think
    is a faulty one. Whether we cut one and a half percent of the
    budget this year or something a little less than that, which is
    the debate between the $41 billion and the $61 billion between
    the two parties, is not going to address our debt. It is not
    going to address our deficit. It is really a distraction. We
    spend a lot of time being distracted here in Washington.
        I want to focus on the question of the country's future. I
    think we have this kind of sense that we are a declining power,
    we are broke, we cannot afford to do the things that we need to
    do to prosper as a Nation, that is to educate our children or
    to invest in science and innovation. I do not believe that
    about our country.
        Now, I spent the weekend with some of my Republican
    colleagues. We went out to visit a couple of our national labs.
    I was at Sandia. I was at one of the other nuclear weapons
    laboratories, at Los Alamos. I saw how exceptional our Nation
    truly is. I mean, I saw in the work of these scientists what is
    really being done.
        And when you look through the great work of the National
    Science Foundation, whether it is the over 1,200 scientists you
    have at the South Pole or all of the other investments and
    building blocks, as you call them, in our country's future, I
    think that we should be inspired as a Nation.
        Now, I think that is a paltry sum, that is this $7.8
    billion, even though it is a 12 percent increase, 13 percent
    increase.
        When you look at a country like Singapore with less than 5
    million people, 4.8 million people investing $5 billion in
    their National Research Foundation, making a commitment as a
    nation that takes three percent of their gross domestic product
    and have it in scientific research, it should suggest to a
    Nation like our own that we risk being pushed aside on this
    kind of innovation highway if we are not careful.
        First of all, we cannot be a superpower on the cheap. We
    cannot fight two wars, not pay for it, add it to the debt, give
    away tax breaks to people and not account for it in any way,
    and grow the domestic side of the budget all at the same time,
    which is what we have done over the last ten years and then be
    intellectually surprised that we have a debt or a deficit. I
    mean, it is just that the two do not add up.
        But at the same time, we cannot afford not to make the
    investments in science for our national security, for our
    economy. And I think that the Congress, whoever is in the
    majority, and the other team is in the majority at the moment,
    we owe it to our country to make these investments because as
    we compete with much larger countries like China or India, the
    only way a country of 300 million people is going to be able to
    position itself is through the same decision that Singapore
    made.
        It is a very rational decision that if you are going to
    have a smaller population, then, you have to innovate more. You
    have to educate more. You have to do these things.
        And so I am looking forward to your testimony and I hope
    that as we go through this that we will not try to apply an
    unscientific approach to protecting our country's security
    economically and in other ways, that in some notion that we can
    somehow dumb down our population, do less research, less
    investment, and somehow still stay ahead.
        Thank you very much.
        Mr. Bonner. Thank you, Mr. Fattah.
        Dr. Suresh, your written statement will be made a part of
    the record and now you may proceed with the summary of your
    remarks.

             Director Suresh's Introduction to the FY 2012 Request

        Mr. Suresh. Thank you.
        Chairman Bonner, Ranking Member Fattah, soon to come
    Members of the committee, it is my privilege to be here with
    you today to discuss the National Science Foundation's fiscal
    year 2012 budget request.
        My name is Subra Suresh and I am director of the National
    Science Foundation.
        I came to the United States as a young engineering student
    because it was the world's beacon of excellence in science and
    education. The mission of NSF is to sustain that excellence as
    we continue to lead the way for the important discoveries and
    cutting-edge technologies that will help keep our Nation
    globally competitive, prosperous, and secure.
        The fiscal year 2012 budget request for NSF, as the
    chairman said in his statement, is $7.8 billion, an increase of
    13 percent or $895 million over the fiscal year 2010 enacted
    level.
        NSF's request is consistent with the President's Plan for
    Science and Innovation and with the America COMPETES
    Reauthorization Act of 2010.
        America's economic prosperity and global competitiveness
    depend on innovation that comes from new knowledge, new
    technologies, and a highly-skilled and inclusive workforce. NSF
    has an unparalleled track record in supporting the best ideas
    and the most talented people for over 60 years.
        The fiscal year 2012 budget builds on these past
    accomplishments and provides a direction for future success.
    NSF will strengthen support for basic research in education,
    the building blocks of future innovation while strengthening
    our disciplinary excellence.
        A new NSF-wide investment of $117 million will accelerate
    the progress of science and engineering through the deployment
    of comprehensive cyberinfrastructure. Cyberinfrastructure
    Framework for 21st Century Science and Engineering will explore
    ways to handle the vast quantities of data generated by today's
    cutting-edge observational and computational tools, broaden
    access to cyberinfrastructure, and support community research
    networks.
        Research at the Interface of the Biological, Mathematical,
    and Physical Sciences, a new $76 million investment, will
    explore nature's ability to network, communicate, and adapt and
    apply this understanding to engineer new technologies.
        This program aims to discover new bio-inspired materials
    and sensors and support the advanced manufacturing of bio-
    inspired devices.
        Today's most challenging research problems often bring
    together insights from across computer science, mathematics,
    and the physical life and social sciences. INSPIRE, new to the
    NSF portfolio, is a $12 million investment to encourage
    investigators to undertake the interdisciplinary research that
    is the hallmark of much of contemporary science and
    engineering.
        Because NSF supports research across all disciplines, we
    are positioned to catalyze the new fields and new research
    paradigms that emerge from this cross-fertilization.
        Many NSF activities provide incentives for investigators to
    undertake use-inspired research that translates basic
    discoveries into applications for the benefit of society and
    the economy.
        A $15 million investment in Enhancing Access to the Radio
    Spectrum will pursue innovative ways to use the radio spectrum
    more efficiently, enabling more applications and services used
    by individuals and businesses to occupy the limited amount of
    available spectrum.
        Over the next five years, NSF will receive $1 billion from
    the Wireless Innovation Fund or WIN established with receipts
    from spectrum auctions.
        NSF's support of advanced economics research led to the
    FCC's current system of spectrum auctions that have netted over
    $45 billion for the Federal Government since 1994.
        The Wireless Innovation Fund is expected to provide $150
    million to NSF in fiscal year 2012 for research on cyber-
    physical systems such as smart sensors for buildings, roads,
    and bridges. Many fields are on the threshold of discoveries
    that can establish U.S. leadership in next generation
    technologies.
        In the 1960s and 1970s, NSF's support of mathematical and
    process innovations led directly to rapid prototyping and
    revolutionized how products are designed and manufactured. The
    budget includes $190 million for a new advanced manufacturing
    initiative to pursue innovations in sensor- and model-based
    smart manufacturing and nanomanufacturing.
        Another investment of $30 million in the new interagency
    national robotics initiative will focus on robots that will
    work cooperatively with people in areas such as manufacturing,
    space and undersea exploration, healthcare, surveillance and
    security, and education and training.
        NSF will continue to play a lead role in the multi-agency
    National Nanotechnology Initiative with an investment of $456
    million, $117 million of which will explore signature
    initiatives in nanoelectronics, solar energy collection and
    conversion, and sustainable nanomanufacturing.
        NSF's support for nanotechnology research is already
    producing returns. Over the past decade, NSF nanotechnology
    centers and networks created 175 startups and developed
    collaborations with over 1,200 companies.
        U.S. leadership in science and engineering requires the
    most knowledgeable and skilled science, technology,
    engineering, and mathematics or STEM workers in the world.
    Three new programs in STEM education, each funded at $20
    million, will improve teacher preparation, strengthen
    undergraduate STEM education, and broaden participation of
    under-represented groups in the science and engineering
    workforce.
        People and their ideas form the core of a robust science
    and engineering enterprise, but leading-edge tools are also
    needed to advance the frontiers and train students for the
    workplace.
        The budget sustains investments in major recruitment and
    facilities projects that are already underway.
        To conclude, One NSF characterizes my vision for NSF as a
    model agency. NSF will work seamlessly across organizational
    and disciplinary boundaries to create new knowledge, stimulate
    discovery, address complex societal problems, and promote
    national prosperity.
        Robust NSF investments in fundamental science and
    engineering have paid enormous dividends, improving the lives
    and livelihoods of generations of Americans. The Fiscal Year
    2012 NSF Budget Request will carry this success into the
    future.
        Mr. Chairman and Members of the subcommittee, this
    concludes my testimony. I thank you for your leadership. I will
    be pleased to answer any questions you may have.
        [The information follows:]

        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Mr. Bonner. Thank you very much for that testimony.
        We have been joined by our colleague, Mr. Aderholt from
    Alabama, who also has the pleasure of chairing the Homeland
    Security Subcommittee. And I think he indicated that he
    actually has to go out and prepare for a hearing that is coming
    up, but he may have some questions to submit for the record, as
    will other Members.
        Let's go into a few questions. And I think the first one
    probably should be the fact that we are operating under a
    Continuing Resolution at the present time. We are on a short-
    term two-week extension. We will see where that goes in terms
    of whether we will have to do another one. Hopefully, though,
    Democrats, Republicans, Congress, the White House will be able
    to come to an agreement in the next few weeks so that we can
    have some certainty to finish fiscal year 2011.

                        IMPACT OF CONTINUING RESOLUTION

        How is the CR impacting the work of the NSF at the present
    time?
        Mr. Suresh. I think we are continuing with plans to honor
    commitments. We are spending wisely and carefully. We are very
    mindful of the need for continued workforce development. But it
    is constraining our ability, so there are two aspects to this.
        One is the real impact of it, but equally importantly and
    perhaps more importantly the psychological impact of it on
    students, faculty, and researchers in the country.
        And I would say that we wish we did not have a Continuing
    Resolution. We are working very hard to assure the community
    that we are doing everything possible within our constraints to
    make sure that their activities will continue to be supported
    by NSF while we are looking to the future at the very cutting
    edge in both research work and instrumentation for the
    community.
        Mr. Bonner. You know, it is interesting. I think Mr. Fattah
    would agree. I do not know any Member of Congress that likes
    the CR either. It is one of the hands that sometimes we are
    dealt.
        There may be some additional questions about the balance of
    fiscal year 2011.

           INCREASED FUNDING FOR GRADUATE RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM

        Let me shift, however, to the fact that your budget request
    proposes an increase in funding for the Graduate Research
    Fellowship Program and within that program, an increase in the
    educational allowance and stipend levels.
        My sister is the provost at the University of Alabama so I
    know how important this work is as it relates to graduate
    students throughout the country, at great universities like
    Penn State and Alabama and Brown and others.
        Higher allowances and stipends will certainly make the
    awards more useful to the individual recipients, but increasing
    the per award cost will reduce the total number of awards that
    can be made.
        Why in your view is this increase in the value of each
    award worth the loss of additional fellowship opportunities?
        Mr. Suresh. Thank you for that question.
        I think the Graduate Research Fellowships are an important
    part of what NSF does. Since 1962, NSF has supported 46,000
    graduate research fellows. I have had the honor and privilege
    of supervising more than ten students in two different
    institutions who have received NSF graduate fellowships.
        We have maintained a commitment to keep the increase that
    was introduced in 2010 for Graduate Research Fellowships. So in
    the fiscal year 2012 budget, we will have 2,000 graduate
    research fellows. But at the same time, the cost of education
    allowance has not kept up with the increasing cost of education
    over the past many years. So in the fiscal year 2012 budget, we
    will be increasing it from $10,500 to $12,000.
        Also, the cost of living has gone up quite a bit and
    graduate students already live in many places under substandard
    conditions. So we want to make sure that in the not-too-distant
    future, we also increase the stipend for graduate students so
    that we can address that as well.
        Because all three are important, I think if we do not
    support the students adequately, then their ability to go into
    graduate education is going to be reduced. At the same time, to
    improve the workforce, we have to support enough numbers and
    increasing numbers of graduate students.
        If you look at our budget, we have made some very difficult
    choices. It is not that we are asking for increases. There are
    also six programs that are going to be terminated. There are
    some programs that are being reduced which will impact graduate
    students. And I think this is a mechanism that we are trying to
    find.
        The other mechanism we are looking at, and it is also in
    the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act, is that the graduate
    research funds will be supported through a combination of funds
    allocated to EHR and also to the Research and Related
    Activities category of the budget.

                              PROGRAM TERMINATIONS

        Mr. Bonner. I am going to have some additional questions,
    and I would like to yield to Mr. Fattah, but could you tell us
    about the six programs that you are proposing to eliminate?
        Mr. Suresh. Sure. So of the six programs, the major program
    that will be eliminated will be DUSEL, Deep Underground Science
    and Engineering Lab. The National Science Board, which is the
    oversight body for the National Science Foundation, in its
    meeting in December unanimously and very clearly articulated
    that the model that was proposed for stewardship of DUSEL was
    inconsistent with the mission of NSF and was not acceptable.
        In light of that, the Administration has proposed to
    terminate the fiscal year 2012 budget for DUSEL. So that will
    be one of the programs.
        The other program is the Graduate STEM Fellows in K through
    12 Education or GK-12. GK-12 is a program that was initiated in
    1999. This program has had a rich and successful history. We
    have had some very good outcomes out of this, but NSF always
    funds good things, learns from the experience, gets community
    feedback, and funds for a long period of time.
        But we have to move to new directions as well. So as a
    result of this, we will incorporate the best practices of GK-12
    into other programs as we move forward. We will honor existing
    commitments for GK-12 in 2012, but there is no new funding for
    GK-12.
        The third program is called National STEM Distributed
    Learning program or NSDL and, again, with increasing emphasis
    on cyberlearning and other activities across NSF in different
    portfolios, including in EHR and some of the new programs that
    will come into existence, it was decided that we take the best
    practices of this and terminate this program for fiscal year
    2012.
        The fourth program is Research Initiation Grants to Broaden
    Participation in Biology. Broadening participation is at the
    core of NSF. It is in every activity that we do. And since
    joining NSF, I have made a very firm commitment to broadening
    participation in everything we do.
        So one of the things we decided to do was to take in this
    program and fold it into other activities. And one of the new
    programs that will be initiated in EHR will address aspects of
    this program as well.
        The next one is the Science of Learning Centers. These have
    provided useful input. Now, we have had extensive reviews of
    the successes of these programs and some will continue and
    terminate over time. And those that have served their useful
    purpose, we take the input and then we will wind them down over
    the coming years.
        And the last one is a Synchrotron Radiation Center at the
    University of Wisconsin. This is a 30-year-old center and just
    refurbishing it will not keep us at the forefront of this
    field. So, therefore, it was decided to terminate it.
        Mr. Bonner. Thank you very much.
        Mr. Fattah.
        Mr. Fattah. Let me work from the general for a minute here
    and we will get to some specifics.

             INTERNATIONAL COMPETITIVENESS IN SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY

        The National Science Foundation has invested in the
    research of a couple hundred thousand scientists and a whole
    range of areas that statutorily you have been instructed to do
    basic research in. And this is the only entity of the Federal
    Government that has this singular responsibility in terms of
    basic scientific research.
        You are involved with the National Academies both here and
    in other countries, Germany and the like. I wonder if you could
    share with the subcommittee your perspective on this kind of
    international race in terms of science.
        Let me give you a for instance. The computer was obviously
    developed here, and I would have the chairman note, at the
    University of Pennsylvania in my district. But today if we are
    looking for the fastest supercomputers, they would not be in
    the United States of America. They would be in China.
        And so when you go to talk about simulations, we do not
    have the world's fastest or the greatest computers anymore. And
    you could go over all kinds of areas where we see competition
    successfully challenging America on this front.
        So I was wondering if you could, given your perspective,
    give us a sense about what you think it means to our Nation if
    we allow others to move substantially ahead of us in these
    areas of scientific discovery.
        Mr. Suresh. Thank you, Mr. Fattah.
        As you mentioned, I have been fortunate and very privileged
    to have had the opportunity for a number of international
    experiences. I received my first degree in engineering from
    Indian Institute of Technology and came to the United States.
        I am quite active in a number of academies, the German
    National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of
    Engineering in the U.S., and the Engineering and Science
    Academies in India, and the Science Academy in Spain.
        And you mentioned in your opening remarks about the
    investments that the government of Singapore makes. The
    Singapore government created the National Research Foundation
    on January 1, 2006. In fact, I know the existence of that
    particular entity since the day it was founded. And I had
    interacted quite a bit with that foundation through my
    activities as dean of engineering at MIT.
        And one of the things that is happening now as we face the
    biggest budget constraint since the Great Depression and the
    biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, we are
    also facing unprecedented competition from the international
    arena, from countries large and small.
        I met with a number of colleagues from China who tell me
    that over an already increasing base for research funding over
    the last two decades or so, over the next five to six years,
    there is discussion that China will increase its research
    funding including basic research funding by 50 percent from
    already a high level.
        Singapore, as you indicated, a tiny country of 4.6 million
    people, invests billions and billions of U.S. dollars into
    research. And I have seen the infrastructure go up in front of
    my eyes over the last two decades or so.
        And the concern that I have both from personal experience
    and these observations is that unlike the time in 1977 when I
    came to the U.S., at that time, there was no question in my
    mind where I wanted to go. There was only one place to go and
    that was here.
        And to some extent, some would argue this is still the
    same. But there are growing indications that this may not be
    the same ten years from now if we are not careful. Let me give
    you a few data points.
        Germany, Japan, South Korea spend more money on research as
    a fraction of GDP, non-defense research spending compared to
    the U.S. and they also passed us in 2000. For ten years, we
    have been lagging behind those three countries and they have
    become major forces in science and engineering discovery and
    translation.
        Smaller Scandinavian countries have also surpassed us like
    Finland, for example, and other Scandinavian countries.
    Singapore is on a path to significantly increase research
    funding. So that is one problem.
        The second problem is that we have--let me give you one
    piece of anecdotal information. This is not yet a trend, but
    this is the most compelling data that I have seen. In my
    graduating class in engineering, all branches of engineering
    from an elite national institution in India, there were 250 of
    us in 1977. More than 200 of us had an opportunity to come to
    the U.S. to pursue graduate education. All 200 of us came and
    all 200 of us stayed here. Pretty much all of us became
    American citizens and we joined academia, industry startups,
    created jobs.
        Fast forward 32 years. The most recent year for which we
    have data which is 2009, the same campus, still 250 people,
    only 16 percent of those students chose to come here. Eighty
    percent could have if they tried.
        And one of the remarkable things about the American
    scientific enterprise as a Nation is that this has been the
    unquestioned destination for many, many decades, for more than
    half a century or even longer. And if we lose that, I think we
    are going to have a problem.
        Mr. Fattah. The chairman in his opening statement referred
    to this report that kind of benchmarked what we needed to do to
    stem the tide. We have not done much of that.
        And your sister is a provost. And to talk about graduate
    school, we look at the students who pursue degrees in the hard
    science. Less than a third of them are American students and it
    is decreasing and decreasing whether at the great University of
    Pennsylvania or at the University of Auburn. And this is a real
    challenge.
        Mr. Bonner. University of Alabama.
        Mr. Fattah. Alabama.
        Mr. Bonner. Auburn is that other university.
        Mr. Fattah. So this is a great concern because if we are
    not growing our own or if others are not coming and staying, it
    just positions our country in a very bad way.
        When I went out to visit these labs, I was struck by the
    fact that way back in the 1940s and for every year since, our
    country has made a very significant investment in research. And
    the labs I was visiting had to do with our nuclear weapons. And
    obviously some of the issues were classified.
        But what was fascinating about this was that, in one
    discussion about a much smaller country and what they were
    doing in this regard, I asked how they could afford to do this.
    The response of the person giving the briefing was that, and
    quoting the briefer, their position was they would eat grass if
    necessary in order to pursue this research.
        Now, this was in a much more defense-related posture, but
    the point here is that the question becomes what is our resolve
    as a Nation to make sure that we position ourselves at the very
    front, to win and win consistently. And if we want to do that,
    we cannot afford to abandon our investments in this regard.
        Now, a 12 percent increase in this budget, given the
    financial climate, I guess we can say, is a step forward. But
    when a football team from the University of Alabama and Penn
    State line up, it is compared to what. It is not just what are
    you doing compared to what you did last year. It is what you
    are doing compared to the other teams that you are lining up
    against.
        So we are competing economically with countries that seem
    to have decided that winning is important. And the question
    becomes, since we have historically been winning, whether or
    not we have decided that we no longer want to win and that what
    we would rather do is to do something less than our best.
        And I just think that rather than just the details of the
    budget, that what is important--because we have heard the
    Patent Office in this room say that for the first time in the
    year 2000, the same year that you mentioned, we crossed over a
    rubicon in which the majority of the patents being sought in
    our country are sought by people who are not Americans or not
    American entities, right?
        So, you know, so goes research, so goes to innovation, so
    goes intellectual property, and we know what follows from there
    because then it is taking those products, to the market,
    manufacturing them, and they are going to go other places.
        So we have to really think about how we are going to go
    forward and even in our rush to cut, we need to think that we
    do not want to create a situation where, unlike those who made
    these investments in the 1940s and the 1950s and the 1960s,
    that somehow we want to be the generation of leaders who
    decided to diminish America's place in the world.
        And I think that where the rubber meets the road is at this
    point of innovation. It has nothing to do with party or
    partisanship. If four percent of our population are scientists
    and engineers, we need to make sure that they have the very
    best opportunities to succeed here.
        Mr. Bonner. So that I do not get in trouble with my home
    State, we also have a great university in Auburn. We are the
    only State that I know of that has won back to back national
    championships and has back to back Heisman Trophy winners. And
    we are proud of that.
        But Mr. Fattah raises a good point. In this Nation, we have
    spent a lot of time, probably an inordinate amount of time
    focusing on the achievements on the gridiron or the football
    field and do not put near the emphasis that we should as a
    Nation on the achievements of our scientists and our biologists
    and our engineers. And that is something that I think we can
    all agree is one of the reasons that we are in the position
    that we are in today.

               POTENTIAL DUPLICATION BETWEEN GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS

        Last week, the GAO issued a report identifying areas of
    potential duplication between government programs. You just
    previously identified six programs that you are proposing to
    eliminate.
        One of the report's major findings is that the government
    has 82 distinct programs whose purpose is to improve the
    quality of American teachers. Those programs are divided among
    ten different federal agencies, including both NASA and NSF.
        Do you believe that your teacher quality programs are
    duplicative of those offered by other agencies. Then a follow-
    up question to that is, what kind of government-wide
    coordination takes place to ensure that these programs are
    effectively and efficiently aligned?
        Mr. Suresh. Thank you for that question.
        Mr. Bonner. The real chairman is here now.
        Mr. Suresh. Thank you for the question, Mr. Bonner.
        The GAO report is something that I have looked at. In
    response to your point, NSF's goal in the education arena
    whether it is K through 12 or undergraduate, postgraduate, and
    higher education is that we develop models and practices
    through scientific research, test them out, validate them, and
    they are taken up by other agencies for large-scale
    implementation.
        And as you saw in the six programs that we terminated, we
    continually look at things that are effective, that are not
    effective, so we work very closely with the Department of
    Education.
        There are three new programs that I mentioned in my opening
    remarks that have been articulated for the fiscal year 2012
    budget request. And those are intended to look at what we have
    done well, how to take them and then how to expand them.
        One of the new programs is WIDER and this is essentially
    geared at large-scale implementation for undergraduate
    education. And as part of that, we look at all the existing
    things including things that could potentially be duplicate
    activities and remove them or try to eliminate them.
        I have charged the head of our EHR, Dr. Ferrini-Mundy, who
    is sitting behind me, with looking at how EHR can work with all
    the directors within NSF to bring education to everything that
    we do, not just in one particular unit, but across NSF.
    Conversely how do we take the best practices in education
    across all the different activities and then bring them back to
    EHR.
        So we are very aware of this and we are looking at this.
    And, you know, one of the unique things about what NSF does is
    across the spectrum of fields and from a scientific perspective
    creating models rather than large-scale implementation.
        Mr. Bonner. It may just be pennies on the dollar, but
    whatever you can save in eliminating duplicative programs can
    be invested in other areas of the important work that you are
    doing.
        One of the things, just as an aside, going back to Mr.
    Fattah's comments, I have advocated for years with NASA is that
    they need to do a better job of letting the American taxpayer
    know where their work is making a difference in our everyday
    lives.

                    COMMUNICATING RESULTS OF NSF INVESTMENTS

        You know, when we passed the stimulus bill, some of us
    voted for it, some of us voted against, but all of a sudden,
    you see these road signs all across the country with the emblem
    that this is a project of the stimulus bill.
        I do not know whether NSF is able to brand itself on the
    work that you are doing. I know the good work you are doing is
    paying dividends not just in this country but around the world.
        But I really think that might be something that if the
    American taxpayer is in the grocery store and they are picking
    up a bottle of detergent or whatever and they see your work
    helped lead to the discovery of that ingredient, it just might
    bring a better understanding of your important work. And that
    way, we would not be arguing over whether NSF should have a 13
    percent increase or whether it should be a 25 percent increase.
    The fact is people could have a better grasp of the impact you
    are making on their daily lives. Just a thought.
        Mr. Suresh. You are right on, Mr. Bonner. In fact, these
    very comments resonate very well with the first retreat that I
    held since arriving at NSF. How can we make the work that NSF
    does be available or at least accessible so people can
    understand what NSF does, not just the scientists and
    engineers, but a much broader population.
        So let me mention a few of the specific things that I have
    started in the last few months. First and foremost is improving
    all channels of communication. So I have actually set up a task
    force that within NSF will look at how we communicate the
    outcomes of what we do to The Hill, to K through 12, to middle
    school students, and so forth. This is very important and it is
    increasingly important.
        The second thing is to update the technology that we use to
    do that. And it is not conventional technology anymore. There
    are a variety of media, especially that are appealing to
    younger people increasingly so. How do we tap into that?
        The third one is not only gathering data but making the
    data accessible to a broader cross-section of people, both
    public information but also scientific information.
        So we have a variety of programs that are underway. STAR
    Metrics is a program that we are working on right now in
    collaboration with some other agencies as well like NIH. And
    this is something that during the course of this year I hope
    will be a very strong medium through which the impact of NSF's
    work is broadly recognized.
        Mr. Bonner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Fattah. If the gentleman would yield for just one
    second because the chairman is going to jump in here.
        I totally agree with you. I mean, I think one of the
    problems is when we look at NASA, we look at National Science
    Foundation. Even though there are literally tens of thousands
    of very important discoveries that have contributed to our
    country and to the world, the public has no concept that this
    was through these investments or through these entities.
        We know when we go after a great football coach or a
    player, we are all rooting for our team no matter what the
    price. Sign the guy, sign him because we want to win. And that
    is the same kind of attitude we have to bring in this area of
    innovation, that we want to win. We want to know what it costs
    to win and then we want to pay the cost because we really do
    not want to pay the cost to come in second to some of these
    other nations in our world.
        Thank you.
        Mr. Bonner. If I might, this will be my last question and
    then I am going to go to another hearing. I really have enjoyed
    being with you and I appreciate the chairman allowing me to be
    in his chair for a few minutes.
        Yesterday the prime minister of Australia was here and
    twice, at the beginning of her speech and at the end of it, she
    cited as a young girl, and I could relate, as we are
    approximately the same age, how all the way down under, she was
    able to look to the United States and the world leadership we
    were providing by putting a man on the moon. And then when she
    closed with that, basically it was a challenge for America to
    always continue to lead.
        And, you know, sometimes it is refreshing to hear from
    outside the role that we play and that we should continue to
    play.
        Thank you, Chairman Wolf.
        Mr. Wolf [presiding]. Thank you, Mr. Bonner. I want to
    thank you for chairing the hearing. I was at another hearing
    testifying, so I appreciate it very much.
        And I agree with what both Mr. Bonner and Mr. Fattah said.

                           K-12 STEM EDUCATION REPORT

        This is a question based on my disappointment in NSF and in
    Dr. Bement. Back in 2009, I asked the NSF to pull together a
    team of experts to identify the best practices in K-12 STEM
    education and make recommendations on how these practices could
    be replicated across the country. Despite all the time, two
    years that has gone by since then, that team of experts has yet
    to meet. And the earliest we can get the recommendations would
    be early summer. We have actually lost a couple of young kids
    from pursuing STEM subject because of the failure of NSF to
    respond.
        When is the NSF going to fulfill this directive, and what
    is the justification for this unnecessarily long delay? We did
    the same thing on prison reform. Mr. Mollohan to his credit,
    and I want to make sure he always gets the credit, had the very
    best hearing on prisons and prison reform.
        We asked the Pew Foundation and the Council of State
    Governments to do an in-depth review, bringing the best minds.
    They finished their report. They published it. They have gone
    out to all the governors and you all have not even responded.
    Two years have gone by.
        So when you say that you are really that excited about
    education, I do not see the results. So what is the
    justification for this unnecessarily long delay, and when are
    you going to fulfill the directive? Why the delay first?
        Mr. Suresh. Thank you for the question, Mr. Chairman. But I
    also want to thank you for your interest in STEM and your
    leadership in this area.
        Let me respond to that. As you know, I arrived at NSF on
    October 18th last year, about four months ago. As soon as I
    found out about the need for this report, I had charged the
    head of our EHR unit, Dr. Ferrini-Mundy, who is here, to give
    me an update on this, but also to look into how quickly we can
    have this report submitted.
        There are three parallel activities that are going on----
        Mr. Wolf. Why did it take so long to do it, two years?
        Mr. Suresh. I think that there are three reasons for this.
    One is to identify the best practices in STEM education. There
    was an NRC Committee that was set up with experts from around
    the country. And they are submitting written material ahead of
    a meeting that is going to be held in May of this year, on May
    11th and 12th.
        And, in fact, I very much hope that you will be available
    to kick off that meeting. There was an invitation that was sent
    to your office about two weeks ago or so. And we very much hope
    that that event will take place. And that event will be a
    culmination of all the background work that has gone on. So
    that was one factor.
        The second factor is that NSF has also charged the Urban
    Institute to look at two states where we can take the best
    practices and use them in the report with enough careful
    scientific data. This is a very important topic and NSF is
    extremely grateful to you for the leadership you have shown in
    this. This has galvanized us actually to do a scientific study
    that typically the way NSF does and to give you a report that
    is complete and comprehensive and that addresses the issue.
        The third reason for this, NSF has also engaged the COSMOS
    Corporation to look into the best practices of the American
    Science Program and to incorporate the findings with respect to
    STEM education into the report. And they are also charged to
    get that.
        So I asked the head of EHR to give me an interim report on
    where things stand with specific deadlines. That report was
    given to me about a little more than a week ago and that report
    has been forwarded to your office as well.
        And the symposium will take place in May and the
    preliminary report will be done in June of this year. And the
    final report will be submitted by mid July of this year.
        Mr. Wolf. Well, just the thought of two years is so long,
    and I am really disappointed in the former director. He left
    town. How hard you work on the last day is as important as how
    hard you work on the first day, and on the last day, he did not
    finish this. He specifically sat there and promised that it
    would be done.
        I am concerned that NSF's actions in response to this
    directive may be too narrow and will result primarily in a
    report to this committee. It is interesting and this committee
    will look at it. But what are you going to do to make
    policymakers, school officials, teachers, and other interested
    parties aware of the findings so that they can actually put it
    to use?
        The purpose is to make sure the superintendent of schools
    in Fairfax County and the city of Philadelphia and Harrisburg
    and Richmond get this thing quickly. And as you know, school
    years begin, curriculum is set up.
        How are you getting it out to the real people that matter,
    not to this committee? It really does not matter what you tell
    this committee. What are you going to tell the superintendents
    and the guidance counselors and the science teachers around the
    country, and how will you get it into their hands so that it
    can be implemented?

                  K-12 STEM EDUCATION COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY

        Mr. Suresh. So if I could quickly answer that question. One
    of the things I have also charged not only Dr. Ferrini-Mundy
    but our communications folks is a communications strategy for
    these kinds of very important reports. That also goes back to
    Mr. Bonner's earlier question which is very relevant to this
    particular issue.
        I fully agree with your sentiment on making this available
    as broadly as possible and so we are looking into that strategy
    right now to get it to as wide an audience as possible.
        Mr. Fattah. If I could suggest to the chairman, we would
    love for your second favorite city, Philadelphia, to host a
    roll-out of the study for all the school superintendents from
    around the country and----
        Mr. Wolf. You going to go?
        Mr. Fattah [continuing]. We could tie them in by web if
    they cannot travel. We could do it at the great Constitution
    Center and NSF could roll this out in a very large media market
    that would get a lot of exposure. And the chairman and I could
    be there to help open up the discussion. So we will be glad to
    work with you.
        Mr. Wolf. I would be open to do it. We could go down to
    Pat's Steaks and get a steak.
        Mr. Fattah. I am paying for the steak. All right? So I
    think we have a bipartisan agreement that we should roll this
    study out in Philadelphia.
        Mr. Wolf. You want to do that? You want to work out
    something?
        Mr. Fattah. I want to work with NSF on that regard.
        Mr. Suresh. Mr. Chairman, I also want to assure you we
    definitely want to do as the National Science Foundation better
    than the Department of Prisons, so we will do everything
    possible.
        Mr. Wolf. Well, the prisons people turned it around. Pew
    Foundation and Council of State Governments did it very, very
    fast. It was quite a report. I was going to bring it today, but
    I did not want to embarrass you. It is very impressive.

                      MAINTAINING STUDENT INTEREST IN STEM

        At what age do you think you lose a young person? First,
    second, third, fourth, fifth grade? Very few people go to
    college and major in business and then transfer into sciences
    or physics or chemistry.
        When I go into the schools, I have my own perception. But
    what grade do you think you begin to lose somebody? If you lost
    them, I cannot say you never get them back, but it is very
    tough. Fifth grade, sixth grade, seventh grade, first grade?
    What is your answer?
        Mr. Suresh. Well, it depends on a number of circumstances,
    but I would say it is very early. I think one can always
    energize them with the right mentoring at different stages, but
    the earlier we excite somebody about the importance and the
    impact of science and engineering, the better it is.
        There are some constituencies where we lose certain
    segments of our scientific workforce at a much later stage. For
    example, in the case of women in science and engineering, 40
    percent of the postgraduates in the country in science and
    engineering are women, but in the workforce, they are only 26
    percent. We lose them in their early career stage after they
    have been trained, after they have made the initial impact for
    a variety of reasons.
        But in terms of capturing the attention of young minds, the
    earlier, the better.
        Mr. Wolf. There must be an age. There has got to be a point
    when the line crosses, and I am trying to get when that is.
        Mr. Suresh. Well, I mean, obviously the earlier, the
    better, but I can only give some response. I have two
    daughters. Both are into science and engineering and one got
    interested in science at fourth grade. And fourth grade
    according to data is what studies suggest. But there are also,
    you know, differing circumstances. But if you are asking about
    based on scientific studies on average, it is about fourth
    grade.
        Mr. Wolf. So whatever we do with limited resources, we have
    to put the emphasis on kindergarten, first grade, second grade,
    third grade, fourth grade and fifth grade to keep these kids
    active and interested in science.
        Well, that is what we are looking to find out and what
    schools have done----
        Mr. Suresh. Right.
        Mr. Wolf [continuing]. Not just in two states but around
    the country to bring that about.

                           NSF INTERNATIONAL OFFICES

        NSF has permanent offices located in Beijing. Can you
    describe what this office does and why it is necessary?
        Mr. Suresh. So, Mr. Chairman, before you came here, we had
    a lively conversation about international engagement and
    growing competition and so forth. NSF, as you know, has three
    overseas offices, one in Tokyo, one in Beijing, and one in
    Paris. We also have operations in Antarctica where we use
    Christchurch, New Zealand as a focal point if not an official
    office for our Antarctic program.
        As we discussed earlier here, the U.S. has been the
    unquestioned destination for decades, for nearly a century for
    scientists and engineers to come from all over the world. And I
    am a living example of that population.
        We have also been the generators of ideas, innovative
    ideas. We have been a very open society not just in science but
    as a society. And as a result, it has benefitted what we do
    enormously and it has benefitted the scientific enterprise
    around the world.
        Now, as other countries grow, other countries invest a lot
    of money and it is very important that agencies like NSF not
    only find out what our competition is, not only try to
    understand how we ensure that we remain at the very cutting
    edge of it, but equally important, we make sure that we give
    our scientists and engineers and our students an opportunity to
    any technologies that may evolve over there.
        So one of the purposes of the Beijing office would be to,
    A, find out what goes on in China in science and engineering
    education and research----
        Mr. Wolf. And do they give you a weekly or a daily or
    monthly report?
        Mr. Suresh. There is a monthly report that comes to our
    international office.
        Mr. Wolf. How many people are in Beijing?
        Mr. Suresh. I think it is an office with just one or two
    and they interface with the State Department.
        Mr. Wolf. Are they located in the embassy?
        Mr. Suresh. I do not think so. I will be visiting them
    later this year. I have not visited them.

                                 CYBERSECURITY

        Mr. Wolf. Let me ask you this. How many cyber attacks have
    there been against NSF?
        Mr. Suresh. Recently there was one last fall, but, you
    know, we take the cyber attacks very, very seriously. And, in
    fact, in the 2012 budget request, we have $155 million for
    cybersecurity research which is a 20 percent increase over the
    2010 enacted level. And this is something that is a major part
    of the emphasis for us.
        Mr. Wolf. Last month, your Inspector General testified that
    a significant cybersecurity incident recently occurred at NSF
    and the computers involved had been wiped clean before
    investigators from the IG's office had an opportunity to
    examine them.
        Have you made changes to your security breach procedures to
    ensure these circumstances do not repeat?
        Mr. Suresh. Yes. We have increased firewalls. We have
    increased cybersecurity software and also made the system much
    more secure following that attack.
        In addition to that, we have a fairly high-level committee
    that has been set up since that time at NSF looking into all of
    our practices and interfacing with the different parts of NSF.
        Mr. Wolf. Following on that, portable IT devices like
    BlackBerries and laptops are common targets of foreign
    intelligence services in countries like China where NSF
    employees travel frequently on official business. I was
    concerned to hear that NSF has no formal policy on protection
    of IT devices during official travel.
        Mr. Suresh. Actually, we now have. We have a policy.
        Mr. Wolf. As of when? Monday, or as of when?
        Mr. Suresh. No, no. As of about a month and a half ago.
        Mr. Wolf. What is the policy with regard to BlackBerries
    and laptops taken to China?
        Mr. Suresh. So initially they have to go through a check at
    NSF. It goes through our cybersecurity folks first to make sure
    that appropriate filters are put in for these devices.
        Mr. Wolf. But they tell me that you can never really take a
    BlackBerry or a computer to China and have it clean.
        Mr. Suresh. I am not familiar with that, but my
    understanding is that this is very much on the radar screen of
    our IT folks. And we have this committee that is looking into
    ensuring that there is no proprietary or sensitive information
    from NSF or any information from NSF that is compromised when
    people travel overseas anywhere including in China.
        Mr. Wolf. Well, say by Monday, maybe you can have somebody
    come up to sit down with the staff to tell us specifically what
    you are doing about BlackBerries and laptops going to any
    single country, and how you clean them. Many of the security
    agencies are giving new ones to take over there and then they
    turn them back in when they get back.
        Mr. Suresh. Okay.
        Mr. Wolf. If they compromise your BlackBerry or laptop,
    they can come through to your computer. So if somebody can come
    up next week and sit down with the staff to let us know what
    you are doing and how quickly. Not just for travel to China,
    but----
        Mr. Suresh. Okay.
        Mr. Wolf [continuing]. To Syria, and to any country so we
    have some sense.
        Mr. Suresh. I will be very happy to do that, have somebody
    meet with your staff and update them on----

                                NSF SPACE LEASE

        Mr. Wolf. I am going to go to Mr. Serrano in a minute. But
    the lease for your current headquarters expires in 2013. GSA
    has already begun looking at replacement options.
        Is remaining in your current facility still a possibility?
    What would need to be done to those buildings in order to make
    them consistent with GSA requirements and NSF's ongoing space
    needs?
        And I can recall Senator Robb, Chuck Robb, moved NSF to
    Virginia. NSF fought it tooth and nail. They wanted to be
    downtown close to the White House. Now they seem to be happy.
    At least Mr. Bement said they were happy.
        Many employees have moved there now. They live around
    there. And I do not want to see you guys pick up and head off
    to Timbuktu when people have bought homes and made an impact.
        So what needs to be done to these buildings? Where are you
    going to go, and what are you doing with regard to office
    space?
        Mr. Suresh. So, you know, this as a former renter, I know
    that there is never a good time for the lease to come up for
    renewal. And as you mentioned, our lease is coming up for
    renewal in 2013.
        The process to address what happens in 2013 started in 2009
    and in consultation with GSA. And based on these discussions
    over the past two years or so, nearly two years, GSA has
    determined that there is sufficient competition for a new site
    and also sufficient opportunities for infrastructure and access
    to critical infrastructure for NSF in the northern Virginia
    area. Of course, this is subject to Congressional approval and
    this is a discussion that they have been having.
        With respect to your question----
        Mr. Wolf. Just for the record, that is not my congressional
    district. I just want the record to----
        Mr. Suresh. No. I----
        Mr. Wolf. It is Congressman Jim Moran's district.
        Mr. Suresh. Yes. So that is what GSA has determined over
    the last year or so. With respect to the existing building, the
    existing building could be one possibility. But NSF moved into
    the existing building in 1993. And NSF's operations have grown
    significantly since 1993, so there are critical infrastructure
    improvements from transformers to elevators to panel rooms to
    IT infrastructure to cybersecurity and so forth that need to be
    done in the existing building should NSF or should GSA and
    Congress decide that we stay in the current location. And that
    will require significant improvements to the current location.
    That is also one of the possibilities. We do not know how this
    will evolve over the next few months or so.
        Mr. Wolf. The GSA prospectus for the project establishes
    location criteria for any potential future NSF headquarters.
    What are the criteria, and how does the application of those
    criteria limit the geographic area in which GSA can look?
        Mr. Suresh. The criteria, you know, broadly would be a
    variety of them that include access to critical infrastructure,
    access to places like hotels and things like this because last
    year, we engaged something on the order of 290,000 referees in
    the communities. Not all of them came. About 19,000 people or
    so came into the NSF area. We also hold meetings.
        And so the criteria are still evolving. They are not
    finalized, but broadly there are criteria. So I can tell you
    that the infrastructure that I mentioned, airports, Metrorail,
    interstate trains, easy to reach from different airports, that
    is one criterion.
        Last year, as I mentioned, we had 20,000 merit review
    panelists who visited the NSF site or nearby hotels. So access
    to that is very important.
        Specific criterion would be that hotel accommodations
    deliver a minimum of 1,500 room nights per week. And so----
        Mr. Wolf. Okay.
        Mr. Suresh. [continuing]. Hotel infrastructure has to be--
    --
        Mr. Wolf. Well, I would ask you to stay in touch with the
    committee and also Congressman Moran, Senator Mark Warner and
    Senator Webb on this issues.
        You know, it is interesting. We had to offer an amendment
    to beat NSF back. They fought to stay on Constitution Avenue.
    There is no rail on Constitution Avenue. There are no
    restaurants on Constitution Avenue. There are no hotels or
    motels on Constitution Avenue. And you all fought to stay
    there.
        So I want you to be faithful to the criteria and I would
    ask that you keep Mr. Moran informed. Because what I am afraid
    of is there is going to be somebody in the middle of the night
    try to move this agency somewhere, and your employees are going
    to be left high and dry. They have got mortgages on their
    house. They have investments that they have made. They have
    moved their families. Their kids are invested.
        And, again, the record must show NSF is not in my
    congressional district and never will be in my congressional
    district.
        But you start doing this, and you hurt people. So I am
    going to ask you to keep the committee informed and keep Mr.
    Moran and Mr. Warner and Mr. Webb also informed.
        Mr. Fattah. If the gentleman would yield.
        Mr. Wolf. Excuse me.
        Mr. Fattah. It is definitely not in my congressional
    district. But let me just say that on behalf of this side of
    the team, I am fully in support of what the chairman is saying.
    I believe that the stability of the employee base is critically
    important.
        And, Mr. Chairman, I think that NSF and GSA should figure
    out what the requirements are that they need. But I am not
    opposed to using the appropriations bill to help them focus in
    a way that will not have them wasting their energy looking for
    places to go other than in the general vicinity in which they
    are in.
        Mr. Wolf. I appreciate Mr. Fattah's comment. That is what
    we went through the last time. Actually, Dr. Bement used to
    live in Maryland and moved over, if some may recall. I have
    talked to some of the employees. They said they have made these
    investments, and now they are hearing word that there may be
    this effort to move.
        I have never tried to take any federal agency and put it in
    my congressional district. And this is not in my district.
        Mr. Fattah. I am willing to support language, prohibitions
    or other language that could be instructive in this matter.
        Mr. Wolf. I appreciate that.
        Mr. Suresh. If I could just add to your comments. One of
    the things I have done since joining NSF about nearly five
    months ago was to meet with each and every office and
    directorate at NSF in my first two months. And that has been
    extremely beneficial to me not only for the scientific work
    that NSF does or the education work that NSF does, it also gave
    me an opportunity to feel the pulse of the staff.
        And I am very much committed to making sure that the staff
    are very happy. And we would not want to do anything that
    significantly disrupts their lives and is a blow to their
    morale.
        Mr. Wolf. Where do you live?
        Mr. Suresh. I live in Washington. I recently moved here
    and--
        Mr. Wolf. Buy or rent?
        Mr. Suresh. Mine is a six-year appointment, so it was too
    long a time to rent. Even though it was too short a time
    probably to buy, I decided to buy it.
        Mr. Wolf. Mr. Serrano.

                              ARECIBO OBSERVATORY

        Mr. Serrano. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
        One of my subjects of interest, Doctor, is the Arecibo
    Observatory in Puerto Rico. Now, it serves the purpose that it
    does scientifically and otherwise. It is also very symbolic for
    the Federal Government and NSF and NASA to have chosen one of
    the territories for such an important project so long ago.
        And so you can see that by my comments that we both pay
    attention to the significance of it in terms of what it
    accomplishes and what it has accomplished and why it is needed
    and also the importance of having it in a territory and how the
    people feel about that.
        So for a while, it looked like it was going to close down.
    Now it seems like that is not the case. New reports came out
    about the near earth objects. I am always amazed by that
    comment. That is kind of a scary comment, you know. I think we
    have some near earth people in here, but objects are something
    of great interest to me.
        So what is the status? I mean, is it going to close down?
    Is it going to stay open? Have you rediscovered an importance
    for the Arecibo Observatory?
        Mr. Suresh. So the facility in Puerto Rico----
        Mr. Serrano. And for the record, Mr. Chairman, NSF is not
    in my district. But as a disclaimer, Puerto Rico is the
    territory where I was born, although I represent the Bronx,
    just for the record.
        Mr. Suresh. Mr. Serrano----
        Mr. Fattah. Is there a record of your birth?
        Mr. Serrano. Well, I know for sure I cannot be President.
        Mr. Suresh. Thank you, Mr. Serrano, for the question.
        I will be happy to answer that just for the record and for
    full disclosure, I have to say until five months ago, I held a
    job for an institution whose official mascot is a beaver. And I
    had a beaver ring on my finger until recently.
        The facility in Puerto Rico has multiple benefits. And, in
    fact, I am not an astronomer or astrophysicist, but the
    facility is the largest single antenna facility in the world.
    It not only serves in scientific discoveries in the
    astrophysics arena, it has also been beneficial for educational
    purposes.
        The decision that was made in 2006 was based on the senior
    review that was done where it was felt that cost sharing should
    be done from sources outside of NSF because it is also of
    interest to NASA and it is also of interest to not only the
    Astronomy Division of the Mathematical and Physical Sciences
    Directorate but also the Atmospheric and Geospace Division of
    the Geosciences Directorate at NSF.
        And based on that, attempts were made and now we have an
    ongoing management competition underway with a new five-year
    cooperative agreement to be awarded in fiscal year 2012. That
    is the current status. And there are still attempts being made
    to ensure in response to the senior review that we will get
    matching support from other sources. The fiscal year 2012
    budget request for the facility will be $8.7 million.
        Mr. Serrano. So based on that statement, one would say that
    an immediate plan to close it is not in the works and that, in
    fact, if things go well, we know the observatory will be around
    at least until 2017?
        Mr. Suresh. Well, that is correct. I think it depends on
    the outcome of this management competition, but we are going
    through the process and a decision will be made in fiscal year
    2012.
        Mr. Serrano. I also appreciate and thank you for being
    probably one of the first folks to come before this committee,
    I have been on this committee for many years and took a hiatus,
    forced by circumstances, and glad to be back, the first one to
    mention the educational value of the observatory. So since
    there are no secrets in politics or in public hearings, I am
    sure there are a lot of folks who will be happy at your
    comments. And I thank you for that.
        Mr. Suresh. If I could just add one comment to that just to
    put some numbers to that, the Angel Ramos Foundation Visitors
    Center attracts roughly 100,000 visitors per year at the
    facility. And so there is also not only a research component
    and an education component, there is also a public outreach
    component to excite people about it.
        Mr. Serrano. It is also featured in a James Bond movie. Did
    they get paid for that? I mean, what happens? I have always
    wondered when they use a facility like that, do we get paid for
    it?
        Mr. Suresh. I have to look into that. I am not----
        Mr. Serrano. Yeah. And do they get like a piece of the
    action every time it is shown on the James Bond marathon, you
    know?

                 BROADENING PARTICIPATION IN THE STEM WORKFORCE

        Mr. Suresh. Maybe that will convince a lot of young people
    to go into science.
        Mr. Serrano. It does. It does.
        And staying on the issue that Chairman Wolf had brought up,
    I had always heard also that fourth grade is the key. In fact,
    prior to my State Assembly days where I was chairman of the
    Education Committee, I worked for the local school district and
    there were many people who sadly stated that if a child was not
    into school in terms of feeling good about going to school
    every day by the fourth grade that it was a serious problem.
    And it seems like it is so early. But by the fourth grade, if
    that child was not feeling good about going to school and
    learning and being excited by teachers and parents and the
    community that that child could be lost as early as the fourth
    grade.
        There has been a lot of talk throughout the years and a lot
    of efforts by your folks to invite more African Americans and
    Latinos into the math and science fields. And I know you have
    done a lot of work with that.
        What is the ongoing issue there, and is there an interest
    first by government to invite those folks into the field and,
    secondly, is there a response from the communities?
        Mr. Suresh. So there are a number of programs that NSF has
    under the broad category of broadening participation. And one
    of the critical things that we are going to face as a country
    will be the workforce issue for the future. We address one
    aspect of it.
        And as I see it, there are three critical components to
    that workforce issue. The first component is going to be the
    representation of women in the future science and engineering
    workforce of this country. So that is about 50 percent of the
    population. They represent 40 percent in terms of early career
    scientists and engineers, but then from that point until a few
    years later, their representation in the workforce drops to
    about 26 percent. 2006 is the most recent year for which we
    have the data. Until we fix that, I think that component of the
    workforce is going to remain a problem.
        I want to come back to the Hispanics and underrepresented
    minority issue, but I want to contrast that with the data that
    we have for women scientists and engineers.
        In 2009, 72 percent of high school valedictorians in
    American high schools were girls, 72 percent, and that fraction
    is increasing.
        In 2009, 20 percent more women graduated from college than
    men did and that difference is increasing.
        In the last ten years in the U.S., we have seen a 10
    percent increase in the number of Ph.D.s given in science and
    engineering across all fields. That entire 10 percent increase
    was due to women getting Ph.D.s in science and engineering.
    They represent about 40 percent now.
        So all of this is very good news. So the good news is that
    women are increasingly coming into the science and engineering
    workforce. The problem is that they are leaving before their
    training and their expertise and wisdom could be tapped into
    for the country's benefit and for their careers because of a
    number of issues, complicating issues. One of the key issues is
    family issues.
        So with respect to that segment of the population, we have
    excellent news with respect to entry into the science and
    engineering workforce, but not so good news with respect to
    retention.

                         MINORITY-SERVING INSTITUTIONS

        When we go to African Americans or underrepresented
    minority populations in the country, Hispanics and Native
    Americans and so forth, we significantly lag both in the entry
    with respect to the representation in the population and also
    in the retention issue.
        So I can give you some data from the last eleven years. It
    is not just one-year data. In the last eleven years, NSF
    support for minority-serving institutions has grown at double
    the rate of NSF support for all the institutions in the
    country.
        The second data point that I can give is that in the same
    time period of eleven years, in dollar value, NSF support for
    minority-serving institutions has increased by 200 percent. So
    we are starting to do the right thing, but there is still a
    very long way to go. There are a number of activities that we
    can engage to do this.

                         HISPANIC-SERVING INSTITUTIONS

        Just last week, I met with the president of Florida
    International University, which is the largest Hispanic-serving
    institution in the country. Two days later I met with the
    president of Texas A&M University, which is the second largest
    Hispanic-serving institution in the country. And they have a 90
    percent Hispanic population in their community.
        So we talked about ways in which those large institutions,
    which are Hispanic-serving institutions which receive NSF
    support, can engage the local community, the community colleges
    and what are the effective ways in which to do this. In fact,
    they are organizing a major event that will involve 80,000
    people at Texas A&M University in September of this year which
    I will participate in.
        So we are looking at different ways in which we can do
    this. We have $100 million allocated in fiscal year 2012 for
    community colleges and we can tap segments of those resources
    to minority-serving institutions and Hispanic-serving
    institutions.
        We have a new program in the fiscal year 2012 budget for
    $20 million called Transforming Broadening Participation
    through STEM Education. And there are opportunities there also
    to target underrepresented minority groups and Hispanic-serving
    institutions.
        Mr. Serrano. Do I have time for one more?
        Let me preface my comment by saying that, and I know Mr.
    Fattah shares this feeling with me, we have the utmost respect
    for our chairman. Our chairman is a fiscal conservative, but he
    is a fiscal conservative with a conscience and heart.

                      EFFECTS OF REDUCED STEM INVESTMENTS

        There is a movement afoot this year, however, and I suspect
    for a couple of years to cut, cut, cut, cut. Having said that,
    I have been to 21 State of the Union addresses. And as a person
    from the south Bronx representing a poor district, born in
    Puerto Rico, I look for certain things. What is the President
    going to say about housing, social services.
        This time, what stuck with me was not in any of those
    areas, but it is in your area. When President Obama said, yes,
    we have to balance the budget, we have to do this, but we have
    to invest in inventing things and creating scientists. And he
    said we Americans are good at inventing things.
        And so without getting you on one of those cable channels
    tonight being, you know, insulted because you asked for more
    money or something, are we in danger here of taking many steps
    back if in the process of cutting, we do not give agencies like
    you the opportunity to create the next set of scientists or to
    create the next set of inventions or, you know, not just you
    but NASA and all those places that create? Where is the danger?
        And, again, you are in front of a chairman who is not--you
    know, this man, he knows I mean this, has a great heart and he
    is truly a great American. But there are a couple of guys
    around here including some on my side who would cut everything
    to nothing, zero. If we keep going with these CRs, the last one
    we will have is zero as our number, you know.
        What are we in danger of because, like I said, I always
    look for all these social issues? This time, the thing that
    stuck with me is he said we have got to invent. We can go back
    to being the leaders in inventing things and creating things.
        Mr. Suresh. Well, thank you. Thank you for asking that
    question and for the opportunity to address it.
        But before I start with that, I also want to express not
    only my personal appreciation but also the appreciation of the
    National Science Foundation for Chairman Wolf's strong support
    of science over the years and your commitment to science and
    STEM education.
        In response to your question, I think one of the things
    that NSF has done right from the beginning, starting with Dr.
    Vannevar Bush's ``Science, the Endless Frontier'' report that
    led to the creation of the National Science Foundation, is to
    keep a focus on basic science as the engine of innovation for
    the country with a long-term focus.
        And one of the things that we are particularly in danger of
    losing sight of in this economic climate is we have severe
    budget constraints, financial constraints, a nine percent
    unemployment rate, just below nine percent unemployment rate.
    But NSF investments are long-term.
        If we take a short-term view and cut, I think five years
    from now, ten years from now when we address all the current
    problems, we will not be in a position to address what is
    needed for the country with respect to scientific leadership,
    with respect to economic leadership, with respect to military
    leadership.
        I mentioned in my opening remarks that even in the short
    term, the National Nanotechnology Initiative started in 1999.
    NSF played a leading role in not only creating the National
    Nanotechnology Initiative but supporting it.
        In just ten years, NSF funded nanotechnology centers have
    led to 175 startups involving 1,200 companies in the country.
    As recently as the mid to late 1990s, NSF supported two young
    students at Stanford whose work, purely mathematical work, led
    to the creation of Google.
        So it is not just very long term. Sometimes it is very
    short term. In terms of long-term things, we supported GPS in
    the 1960s and the GPS research that NSF funded in the 1960s is
    now used in everybody's mobile phone for a variety of purposes.
        So I think if we lose sight of the long-term focus as we
    react to the short-term needs of the country, I think it will
    come back to hurt us. So that is very much in resonance with
    what you said in your comments.
        Mr. Serrano. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman.
        Thank you for your service.
        Mr. Suresh. Thank you very much.
        Mr. Wolf. Thank you Mr. Serrano.

                               DEFICIT REDUCTION

        I am going to go to Mr. Fattah, then I have a whole lot of
    questions. But I do want to comment. I appreciate the
    gentlemen's comments and your comments, and I agree. I think
    there is another thing that I feel strongly about that I want
    to put on the record, because silence indicates just total
    acquiescence in everything.
        There is another group that will be hurt, and it will be
    the poor. The poor will be hurt. It says in Proverbs 19, ``when
    you give to the poor, you give to God.'' But there is another
    end to the story, and this is for those of you who are writing
    in the press out there. Until we deal with the issue of
    entitlements, Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, this
    will continue. I think the President and this administration
    have been AWOL, they have been absent.
        I agree with Mr. Serrano on the sciences, and I think I had
    one question which we will submit for the record about China.
    The Chinese government has been increasing scientific R&D
    investing as a fraction of GDP at an annual rate of more than 5
    percent, which verifies what Mr. Serrano said. While they are
    starting from a smaller base, this level of commitment is
    enormous and we are cutting. We are really going to have to
    come together in a bipartisan way, and there is just no other
    way.
        In fact, Mark Warner and Tom Coburn and Dick Durbin have
    put together a group in the Senate that is moving ahead. Some
    on the left are criticizing them for going after entitlements,
    and some on the right are going after them for raising taxes,
    but they are moving ahead. So I really think unless we deal
    with the fundamental issue of getting control of the
    entitlements, what Mr. Serrano said will be true. So I think I
    would rather see us get control. I made a speech on the floor
    of the House saying if the Simpson-Bowles package comes up,
    while there are some things I would attempt to change in the
    process as we go forward, I would vote for it. If Tom Coburn
    and Dick Durbin--both good people--can come together, then I
    would hope we can, too.
        So we are waiting for the administration, we are waiting
    for the President. Until the President provides that
    leadership, I think both sides up here are going to continue to
    kind of clash.
        You know, we have 50 million people that are on food stamps
    now. Our food banks are fundamentally empty, and as you go
    after these programs you are really taking food away from poor
    people. There is just no other way about it. Other people can
    adjust their budgets, but you have got to go where the money
    is. Willie Sutton said he robbed banks because that is where
    the money was, and entitlements are where the money is. So I
    want to see us plus up math and science and physics and
    chemistry and biology, and also the food banks and things, but
    I think we are going to have to come to agreement. We are
    reaching a tipping point, and Moody's said we will lose our
    triple A bond rating in perhaps 2012.
        Following along on that, ``Rising Above the Gathering
    Storm'' stated that improving the nation's K through 12
    educational system was the highest priority step we could take
    to improve scientific and technical competitiveness.
        But I said I was going to go to Mr. Fattah. Let me go to
    Mr. Fattah first, and then I will go to this subject.
        Mr. Fattah. Now let us see, in the 1890s, in the midst of
    the conclusion thereabouts of the Civil War, we invested in
    land grant colleges in this country, Penn State and all of the
    other great land grant colleges. The Morrill Act, it kind of
    set a benchmark about the kind of nation we were going to be.
    Even in the midst of challenges we kind of knew that education
    and investment in education was critically important.
        So yeah, I think that there is a consensus that with
    innovation in scientific research we are going to have to do
    more than we are doing. I agree with the chairman totally that
    we need a comprehensive resolution on the fiscal front, I am
    for voting for one. In fact there are five different ones,
    including the present debt commission and at different
    variations of revenue raising and spending cuts. I would vote
    for all of them. I think we need to get this to the side, get
    this resolved, because I actually believe it is a distraction.
        First of all, I do not believe that we are not in a
    position as a country to pay our bills or that we have to be
    the largest debtor nation in the world. You know, there is a
    report today about billionaires holding trillions of dollars.
    There was a story last week about how a quarter of a million
    dollars was too little money to secure people to serve on
    boards of directors as a part-time job in our country.
        I mean the notion that we as the world's wealthiest country
    cannot pay our bills, it really is defied by the facts. It is
    just that we for, whatever reason, have bought in as a
    generation that somehow we can have this on the cheap, that we
    can be in two wars, we can do all this other stuff and we do
    not have to pay for it.
        And one of the largest hedge funds decided to remove from
    its portfolio all the U.S. debt, and that was reported this
    morning, and I think as we approach a crisis we will obviously
    react to it. The question is what damage are we doing in the
    meantime? And especially as we see our competitors. And they
    are not just economic competitors. Some of these other
    countries are not just economic competitors. We have to think
    about our national security and this is--you know, we cannot
    afford to be short sighted in these matters.

                                  NEUROSCIENCE

        But I want to go back to the point that the chairman was
    talking about, about what age young people--at what point is
    the concrete not yet hardened in which we can still have an
    impact on them? Because this whole area of neuroscience is
    something that the Foundation has spent some time on. It is the
    area that I have the greatest interest in, and I think that we
    have arrived at a tipping point in this whole area of
    understanding on the cognitive side. I mean you have the
    majority of a child's brain being developed in the third
    trimester, you have billions of neurons. We know that the brain
    is not being fully utilized, and I think that the Foundation
    has worked in this area.
        First of all it has been extraordinary, but I know that we
    are going to do more working together in this area, because I
    think that this is an area on which we can have a very
    significant impact, looking at cognitive ability, and it ties
    into some of the other things that the chairman has said. We
    know that when we have people who are nutrition challenged and
    who are going to at some point deliver babies, that the size of
    the brain will be impacted. And you know, the size of the brain
    has a impact on ability long term.
        So I also know that you have done some work looking at
    soldiers on the brain injury side. These are two separate
    subjects, but obviously they tie together. I think this work,
    if I am not mistaken, is really the largest amount of research
    looking at brain injury. And obviously we had our own colleague
    who was shot through the brain and we are watching her and
    praying for her full recovery.
        So if you could talk a little about where we are in
    neuroscience, and this is my softball question. I am going to
    come back with a much more challenging one, but I know that you
    will be able to handle it.
        Thank you.
        Mr. Suresh. First of all I am delighted to answer that
    because as you know when we met last time this is a topic of a
    lot of interest to me. The interesting thing about neuroscience
    is we are at a point where we have the opportunity to
    understand the functioning of the human brain from so many
    different perspectives. From the biology perspective, the
    tissue level, at the cell level, at the molecular level. And
    NSF-funded work is about to look at all of those levels in new
    and interesting ways.
        You know, we can take a single molecule and we can model
    it, pull it, push it, stretch it, twist it to forces of much,
    much smaller, a thousand times smaller than a nano level force,
    and those tools and technologies have come into existence very
    recently. This is why the National Academy of Engineering at
    the beginning of this century, when they released fourteen
    grand challenges for the 21st Century, one of the grand
    challenges for the community is reverse engineering the human
    brain. And the unique thing about NSF work is that we not only
    look at the biology of the human brain, we also study the
    psychology and the cognitive aspects of the human mind. And the
    combination of the two is absolutely necessary to address this
    issue.
        So you mentioned traumatic brain injury. More than a
    quarter of the soldiers returning from the first Iraq war, the
    second Iraq war, and Afghanistan have some symptom of traumatic
    brain injury, plus we have sports injuries, automobile crashes,
    and that is an area that is a perfect example of a scientific
    field that brings together separated communities. For example,
    you take the war and improvised explosive devices. When there
    is an improvised explosive device, say some distance from a
    tank, and the device explodes and the stress wave created from
    the device hits a human head, that is an engineering problem.
    This is what our Engineering Directorate has funded since the
    1960s and 1970s, engineers know how to do this. Once the stress
    wave hits the human brain what happens to the tissue and cell,
    that is the biology, and how being in that situation in the war
    zone being exposed to this and experiencing trauma is in the
    realm of cognition. And NSF is uniquely positioned to do this
    because we have done this for a long time.
        And the U.S. Army Research Office, until recently I was
    part of a research grant that was funded by the U.S. Army
    Research Office, looked specifically at returning soldiers from
    our recent wars to see how we can put together medical doctors
    from Walter Reed with engineers and with clinicians in various
    hospitals in the Boston area and with psychologists and
    psychiatrists so that we can come together with the latest
    tools and technologies.
        So on multiple fronts there is a challenge. In a completely
    different field there is even exciting opportunity. Computer
    science has progressed to such a point. As you know Watson from
    IBM won the Jeopardy championship not too long ago, and how do
    you take information storage and try to mimic that with respect
    to human cognition and human intelligence? And this is an area
    of great interest as well.
        So I think these are all areas from multiple angles that we
    address at NSF with the exception of the medical part of it
    which NIH does.
        Mr. Fattah. Well, if you could--let me make this request
    formally. I am very interested, and I know the chairman is, in
    how we can make a non-incremental leap forward, and so if you
    have thoughts and if the Foundation can help us think through
    where there may be significant opportunities to penetrate in
    this area, that would be welcomed.

        [The information follows:]

        To make significant, transformative advances in our fundamental
    understanding of the brain we need to explore its many facets,
    including how the brain develops and adapts during the lifespan, how
    neuroanatomy relates to brain function, and how different brain areas
    and systems interact. However, progress toward realizing these advances
    requires 1) enhanced infrastructure and tools to better understand the
    working of the brain and 2) greater interdisciplinarity and large-scale
    efforts in order to gain a meaningful understanding of the brain within
    the broader physical and social contexts that would have real
    implications for learning, development, and health and recovery.
    Enhancing these will be necessary for accelerating the advancement of
    cognitive and developmental neuroscience.
        Current technologies, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging
    (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), and genomics, have led to
    transformational discoveries, but remain limited. For example, fMRI
    provides relatively high spatial resolution of brain structures but is
    inherently limited in its temporal resolution, which is needed to
    understand how the various brain structures communicate with each
    other. EEG provides high temporal resolution but does not provide
    detailed information about the location of cortical generators of
    neural activity. However, EEG has the advantage of allowing the subject
    to move relatively freely and thus can be used to explore brain-
    behavior relations in young infants. For instance, using EEG, NSF-
    funded researchers have identified patterns of activity in the infant
    motor cortex that are produced when an infant watches a video of
    someone performing a particular behavior. These results suggest that
    infants use some of the same brain regions both to perceive actions of
    others and to perform these actions themselves, a possible neurological
    link for learning new behaviors. The current technologies in
    neuroscience have already led to important scientific discoveries about
    the brain; however, there is much more to explore.
        The limitations in current technologies and approaches are
    especially relevant to brain development studies. This is because some
    technologies, such as fMRI, require the subject to be still; thus it is
    very difficult to study children and infants. NSF has also invested in
    the development and use of noninvasive pediatric magnetoencephalography
    (MEG). This new technology has the potential to provide information
    about brain function and development with both the high spatial and
    temporal resolution that are needed, even with very young children and
    infants. Scientists at the Learning in Informal and Formal Environments
    (LIFE) Center at the University of Washington, Seattle are using MEG
    technology to monitor brain changes as pre-verbal babies are exposed to
    language. Intriguingly, it seems that more learning and organized brain
    activity takes place when human teachers are in the same room, versus
    video displays of the same instructors: MEG provides a promising new
    avenue, but currently there are less than a handful of such facilities
    in the United States. Neuroscientists must look further into the future
    at what remains unexplored, unknown, and undiscovered, and identify the
    tools that will lead to advancements. New analytical and computational
    methods for visualizing how brain activation data interact with
    behavioral and environmental data will also be necessary in this area.
    Research is also needed to evaluate the neural dynamics and connections
    within normally and abnormally developing brains; to follow patterns of
    plasticity and development; to map out strategies for developmental and
    educational interventions; and to monitor and assess brain activity
    remotely, while a person actively moves and interacts with the
    surrounding environment.
        In addition to improved measurement technologies, scientists need
    access to better data and data infrastructure--including longitudinal
    data--to better understand brain development, learning, and plasticity.
    While many aspects of brain development are complete by the end of the
    first few years of life, we have learned that important physical
    aspects of brain development--especially frontal lobe development--
    continue through adolescence and into adulthood. The frontal lobes have
    long been associated with ``impulse control,'' something that
    adolescents exhibit less of than older adults. Understanding how the
    brain continues to develop and adapt beyond adolescence is particularly
    important for dealing with traumatic brain injury (TBI), especially as
    it affects U.S. war fighters who are in young adulthood. In order to
    understand the brain in more detail, much finer grained analyses are
    needed, on how particular regions of the brain develop, as well as how
    the connections and interactions between these areas emerge over the
    lifespan. Vast data archives such as collections of brain images are
    needed to fully understand brain functioning and links to cognition and
    behavior. Innovations in data infrastructure for shared access,
    interoperability, and data mining techniques will greatly contribute to
    developmental and brain science.
        Neuroimaging technology, no matter how advanced, will not be
    sufficient to understand how the brain functions within the context of
    our complex, demanding, social world. Brain science must be
    fundamentally interdisciplinary, integrating knowledge, methods and
    technologies from behavioral and cognitive science, neuroscience,
    engineering, computer science, mathematics, and physics. The next big
    steps in understanding the brain will require teams of scientists who
    explore the human mind from many different perspectives. Understanding
    how the brain develops and adapts over the course of a life is
    particularly complicated because of inherent interactions between
    physical, cognitive, behavioral, and emotional changes. Thus,
    fundamental research on human cognition, perception, social
    interaction, development, learning, decision-making, and language is
    needed to support the goal of understanding the brain. Mechanisms such
    as NSF's Research Coordination Networks have great potential to bring
    disparate groups of scientists together as a coherent team to tackle
    important issues.
        With advanced knowledge and technologies, enhanced data and data
    infrastructure, and the collective expertise of newly-formed
    interdisciplinary teams of scientists and engineers, the U.S. can take
    advantage of fast-emerging, ground-breaking work in areas such as brain
    plasticity and brain-computer interface, to make significant advances
    in our understanding of neuroscience and development.

                         SCIENTIFIC DATA DISSEMINATION

        And finally let me get to my last question for the day.
    Holding two opposing views at once is what I think the
    president of Morehouse says is what a first-rate mind is all
    about, so let me pose two very different viewpoints to you.
        One is we have this intellectual curiosity and we also have
    this kind of notion in which we have this openness in which not
    only are we doing research, but through NSF this information is
    then made public after eighteen months in most of your grants,
    is made public and is available for the entire world to see. I
    am a little more parochial, at least as it relates to
    information that is important for our economic prosperity or
    our national security or cyber security. The idea is that as
    taxpayers we make an investment of significant sums, and I
    believe hopefully many more significant sums as we go forward.
    But how do we reconcile this need to get this information, our
    own national interest in manipulating and utilizing the
    information, with this notion of scientists who want to share
    it freely with the world.
        So I am trying to figure how you reconcile that, and it
    would be helpful for me to hear you respond to that.
        Mr. Suresh. I think you raise a very important issue, in
    fact aspects of this were very much on my mind, all very much
    on my mind now in my current job, but also a big part of the
    things I had to do in my previous job.
        You mentioned earlier, when you had the testimony from the
    Patent Office, the critical need to change patent policies and
    IP rights and so forth. I think that is a very critical step.
    Increasingly many universities are filing for intellectual
    property and having an efficient process that enables
    innovation to go to the marketplace through filing for patents.
    Efficient processing of these patent applications and
    protections that they provide is very critical.
        But at the same time science on a global scale has always
    been an open entity. And the reason it is open is because we
    have people come up with ideas, it is peer reviewed in the
    community, and if it is accepted for publication it is not
    immediately accepted until somebody else can duplicate it.
    Increasingly that somebody else may not be within the U.S.
    boundary, it could be a scientist from a different part of the
    world as more and more other countries increasingly invest in
    science and engineering.
        So given broadening of participation on a global scale into
    the science and engineering research enterprise, I think your
    question puts the finger on how do you keep science as open as
    possible as we have done, which is very good for knowledge
    creation on a global scale, but how do you keep the boundaries
    tight?
        So I think there are a number of things we can do. One
    could be addressing the issues of intellectual property
    processes and making them as efficient as possible so that we
    give scientists the opportunity to protect their intellectual
    property without being secretive about it, so that the
    scientific process can move on. That could be one part of it.
        The other part of it, equally important part, could be that
    as other countries, especially developing countries, start to
    invest more and more in science and engineering, we have been
    the beacon for science and engineering for so long it is very
    important that we do everything possible to convince our
    international partners to come up with the minimum level of
    scientific integrity, ethics, and openness that is necessary
    for science and engineering. There are things that NSF can and
    should do to do that. We have done the merit review process for
    the last 60 years and the people around the world, my
    counterparts in Europe and Asia, they feel that the NSF system
    is sort of the gold standard. It is important for us to insure
    that other countries, especially rapidly developing countries,
    develop a level of merit review and set of standards for
    selecting scientific proposals, funding scientific proposals,
    insuring the integrity of the process--they come up to speed. I
    think it is very important.
        So we have started some very preliminary conversations with
    counterparts in other countries. So there are many things we
    can do. There is no one particular solution.
        How we deal with issues of cybersecurity is very critical.
    At the same time in the spirit of an open government when we
    spend taxpayer money, how do we make our research output
    accessible definitely to all Americans, and most probably to
    the broader scientific community.
        So I think these are all issues that we need to address in
    tandem to make sure that we address the conflicting issues that
    you raise in your question.
        Mr. Fattah. Well, it is going to be a challenge as we go
    forward, and I will not belabor the point. We have another
    agency under the jurisdiction of the committee, which is the
    International Trade Commission, and they spend a lot of time
    litigating issues around IP violations for products coming into
    the country. The notion before was if you built a mousetrap, I
    think it was said, you could make your home in the woods and
    the world would make a path to your door. The problem now is if
    you make a better mousetrap and put it up online people are
    going to make it before you can make it, and make money off of
    it.
        And so we are in an economic battle. We have national
    security issues. Basis scientific research is at one level of
    our ammunition in this kind of a battle that we are in and we
    have to think about-- and I do not know how we reconcile it. I
    think it is just a very important issue obviously because again
    science by its nature is not science unless you can replicate
    it, and you have to publish it. And so it gets to some very
    important issues, but we do want to protect the public's
    investment, and American taxpayers are investing to make sure
    that America wins and we have to figure how, under these
    circumstances, we go forward.
        Thank you.
        Mr. Wolf. Thank you, Mr. Fattah. I have a number of
    questions, but I do want to follow up.

                         USE OF HYPERBARIC TECHNOLOGIES

        I would appreciate it if you could have your staff put
    together within a week any information you have on hyperbaric
    treatments. I went to a conference a while back with regard to
    hyperbaric treatments for returning vets. Some doctors I have
    talked to about hyperbaric treatments for a brain injury are
    not even sure what I am talking about. I think it is kind of a
    voodoo, others say it has been so successful. So if you could
    give us the information. I am not asking you to go out and do
    new research, but perhaps everything you have with regard to
    hyperbaric applications on brain injuries, on multiple
    sclerosis, on all the different treatments. Just so we can
    process it.
        [The information follows:]

        NSF reviewed its awards made over the past 25 years and identified
    only one that merits attention to the Chairman's direct question. This
    three-year award totaling $418,000 was made in 1999 to the University
    of Southern California to ``increase understanding of the basic
    mechanisms involved in communication between nerve cells in the
    brain.'' A link to the award data and abstract follows: http://nsf.gov/
    awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber-9818422

                  PROTECTING SCIENTIFIC INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

        Secondly, if you would work with the committee to do what
    Mr. Fattah asked. You really cannot be Pollyannish about the
    whole thing. You could not trust Hitler, you could not trust
    Stalin, you could not trust Mao, and you cannot trust Hu
    Jintao. It is just a fact. The Chinese are going to take this
    information.
        So if you have some ideas within two weeks, send up
    information that sort of follows along the lines of your
    exchange with Mr. Fattah. Then we can begin to look at the PTO
    and changes. Maybe it will be Mr. Fattah and I fighting off the
    Republicans on the floor, but on this issue I think we are
    together. I want to create jobs and protect the national
    security.
        I had a person come to my office the other day showing me
    once Permanent Normal Trade Relations passed to China, the
    trade imbalance just collapsed, the job loss collapsed. There
    is a picture of me with Bill Clinton speaking at a joint
    session opposing giving Most Favored Nation Status to China. I
    got up and applauded, and my Republican colleagues are looking
    at me like I am crazy. Then the President flipped, and now
    China is stealing from us.
        So if you can give us some ideas before we mark up the bill
    along the lines of what Mr. Fattah said, I would appreciate it,
    because I completely agree with him.
        [The information follows:]

        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                        SUPPORT FOR K-12 STEM EDUCATION

        I am going to go about maybe ten minutes, and then we will
    go to Mr. Culberson. We have a series we have to cover here.
    ``Rising Above the Gathering Storm'' stated that improving the
    nation's K through 12 educational systems was the highest
    priority step we could take to improve our scientific and
    technical competitiveness. Your budget request, however, de-
    emphasizes the development of K through 12 capabilities. In
    fact, the budget proposes to decrease K through 12 programs by
    15 percent from 2010. Do you believe that a request at this
    level reflects a significant focus on K through 12 STEM
    education as envisioned by ``Gathering Storm''? Why are you
    making cuts in virtually every one of the K through 12
    programs?
        Mr. Suresh. Well, let me offer a couple of points related
    to that. Increasingly NSF's participation in education
    activities, especially STEM activities, are not just confined
    to EHR. They are part and parcel of every part of every
    directorate, every office across NSF, including K through 12.
        For example, the Directorate for Engineering funds a
    program called UTeachEngineering in Texas, and that program has
    been very successful for K through 12 students in exciting them
    about the opportunities in engineering at a very early stage.
    There is the GEO Teach program that does similar things in our
    Directorate for Geosciences. So there are various activities
    that we can engage in. A number of directorates participate in
    activities beyond it.
        So the budget numbers just for one or two directorates do
    not necessarily mean that our commitment to K through 12----
        Mr. Wolf. But the budget is the budget, and it proposes to
    decrease K through 12 programs by 15 percent from the 2010
    level.
        Mr. Suresh. So one of the things we are looking at is the
    following: There are three new programs that are going to be
    put in place for this year. We have a new program, Teacher
    Learning for the Future, and what it tries to do is to take the
    best practices for some of the programs like GK-12, programs
    like Math and Science Partnership program and also the Noyce
    Teacher Scholarship program and so forth, bring them together
    in a much more cohesive way so that we can look at what new
    opportunities we can provide in concert with other offices and
    directorates across NSF.
        So the numbers just in those program buckets may not fully
    reflect----
        Mr. Wolf. They do not look good. They do not look good.
        Mr. Suresh. No, but this does not indicate any wavering
    commitment on our part for K through 12.
        Mr. Wolf. Someone once said ``if you really want to find
    what a person is committed to, look at their checkbook.'' Words
    can be one thing, but who they write their check to and what
    they are spending money on are something else.
        I want you to develop it a little bit more. The President's
    Council of Advisors on Science and Technology released a report
    last year on K through 12 STEM education. One of its finding
    was that the NSF K through 12 portfolio is not optimally
    balanced between programs that support basic education research
    and those that support the development and implementation of
    scalable practical education solutions. How do you respond to
    that criticism?

                 NSF AND DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION COLLABORATION

        Mr. Suresh. So as you know the PCAST report also referred
    to ways in which NSF and the Department of Education can work
    together better.
        Mr. Wolf. That was the next question.
        Mr. Suresh. Yeah. And also with other agencies.
        So the first thing I have done is I am co-chairing an NSTC
    committee on STEM education along with the OSTP deputy
    director. And this committee met last week and we are looking
    into ways in which NSF can play a critical role in STEM
    education. In fact we will be looking at ways in which we can
    respond to the PCAST report and also to the America COMPETES
    Authorization Act language.
        Mr. Wolf. Well, they recommend the creation of an advanced
    education research agency to be headed either by NSF or the
    Department of Education. Is that something that you are looking
    at? Do you support that recommendation?
        Mr. Suresh. We will work very closely with them when it is
    approved and comes into existence. There are a number of
    activities that we are already engaged in with the Department
    of Education that will position us very well for this new
    activity.
        For example, I mentioned the NSTC subcommittee that was
    just set up.
        Mr. Wolf. But do you support that recommendation?
        Mr. Suresh. I think anything we can do to work with other
    agencies----
        Mr. Wolf. Pretty good, you can duck these issues sometimes.
    The question is, do you support it? It's ok if you want to
    think about it, but we would like to know if you support that
    or not.
        Mr. Suresh. I think the spirit of this is very good and I
    would want to make sure that it is supported with the right
    resources so that it can be successful.

                     GAO STUDY ON TEACHER TRAINING PROGRAMS

        Mr. Wolf. Well, of course. How did you fall out in the GAO
    study on teacher training that came out last week about
    duplications between NSF and others? What are your comments
    about that? Have you read that?
        Mr. Suresh. Yes, and in fact Mr. Bonner asked that
    question.
        Mr. Wolf. Well, if he did for the record, then we won't.
        Mr. Suresh. Yes.
        Mr. Wolf. And your comments about it?
        Mr. Suresh. So I have looked at it. In fact there are
    various programs. NSF has been engaged in this as you know very
    well for the last several decades and we are continually
    looking at programs that could be duplicative and try to see
    what we can do to improve that. In fact there are a number of
    realignments of programs within EHR currently, specifically
    with the objective of looking at what is new and what may be
    done by somebody else so we do not duplicate those things.
        Mr. Wolf. Well, we have to do that. I just lost a little
    confidence in the fact that NSF could not do a basic study on
    best practices on education. Then I hear about studies and
    meetings, just meeting and meeting and meeting. And what
    happens? Zero. Two years go by.
        You are a good witness, and you explain what you are doing,
    but we want to see more action because this nation is slipping.
    What are we in math now? Where do we fall in math? What number
    are we in math for the world?
        Mr. Suresh. I think it depends on fourth grade level or
    eighth grade level, and by some studies we are number twenty
    and some studies among developed countries----
        Mr. Wolf. So what do we do to deal with that issue? And
    what best practice was working in Philadelphia, was working in
    Richmond, or working in some other place? The teachers are over
    worked and they cannot gather all that information. That is
    your job. So the fact that it took two years and we are still
    in the process of finding the answer is troubling. You are new,
    so I do not think you should feel too defensive about it
    because you have only been on there for four months. But we
    want to see, not just the verbiage and the rhetoric, but the
    actual reality of what is going to be done.
        Mr. Suresh. So I very much not only appreciate your
    question, but also your commitment to this topic. So as I
    mentioned earlier----
        Mr. Wolf. Well, we are getting ready to go into decline.
    The nation is ready.
        Mr. Suresh. Absolutely, if you are not careful.
        Mr. Wolf. The 20th Century was the American century, and we
    want the 21st Century to be the American century, not the
    Chinese century. That is what we are dealing with, and time is
    critical.

                                AWARD OVERSIGHT

        NSF is increasing the number of grants it makes each year
    without making corresponding increases in the programs
    responsible for monitoring grantee compliance. This has caused
    reductions in basic oversight activities like site visits and
    increases the likelihood that grantee waste, fraud, or abuse
    will go undetected.
        This year's budget request again proposed an increase of
    more than 2,000 research grants, but with no apparent increase
    for award oversight. How will you ensure that each of these new
    grants receives the appropriate level of monitoring and
    scrutiny with a static grants management budget?
        Mr. Suresh. So one of the reasons for the decrease in last
    year with respect to site visits was when NSF received $3
    billion in the stimulus package funding without any increase in
    staff, it really strained the system, and now that we are
    moving away from the impact of the stimulus funding it is our
    intention in every way to make sure that this oversight is
    maintained.
        The second thing that I have already launched a pilot
    program for this coming year, where we will look at employing
    new technology so that site visits can be done using a variety
    of ways while insuring confidentiality of the process.
        For example, we do not necessarily have to fly across the
    country for a site visit, and there are ways of engaging
    technology that we could do much more than we have done on the
    past.
        Mr. Wolf. Teleconferencing.
        Mr. Suresh. Videoconferencing, but engaging multiple
    communities. And so we are launching several pilot projects
    this year for different types of reviews, and our hope is that
    it will not only lead to better efficiency internally for NSF,
    it will also lead to engaging the best referees from the
    community.
        Mr. Wolf. Are there some grants that you have looked at
    afterward and you say, ``wow, that was a waste of money. Boy,
    we really got taken.''
        Mr. Suresh. Well, actually without spending a lot of money
    we can do a lot more. For example, we have a Cisco system on
    loan that we are going to try and see how it works before we
    spend any tax dollars to buy it or acquire it. There are other
    things we can do, and hopefully in the future NSF will have the
    latest technology.
        Mr. Wolf. Are there some grants that your staff has come in
    and said, ``Doctor, look at this. We put all this money out and
    we got garbage back,'' and you say, ``oh my goodness
    gracious.'' Are there many like that?
        Mr. Suresh. Fortunately because of the merit process we do
    not have that, but if by human error or some other factor if we
    have one of these we have mechanisms in place for periodic
    review. So even a five-year grant is not given without any
    conditions attached to it.
        Mr. Wolf. How many have you pulled back?
        Mr. Suresh. I do not have the exact number, but I can get
    that to you.

                         MECHANISMS OF AWARD OVERSIGHT

        Mr. Wolf. If you would. What kind of evaluations do you
    conduct on the work of your grantees to ensure that they are
    not just executing the grants in compliance with financial
    terms and conditions but also achieving probably the most
    important thing--significant program outcomes?
        Mr. Suresh. So we have annual grantee conferences in most
    of the areas where they not only report to the program officer
    or program director, they report to the peer community. In fact
    these grantee conferences are tracked, hundreds, in some cases
    many hundreds of scientists, so a scientist has to stand up and
    defend their NSF funded work in front of other scientists, and
    if the quality of the science is not good enough they will get
    shot down in public. So that is one mechanism. The other
    mechanism is peer reviews. The other mechanism is site visits,
    reverse site visits.
        So we have a number of mechanisms in place. An annual
    reporting requirement and so forth.
        Mr. Wolf. Do you think they have all been successful? Are
    you about where you think you should be?
        Mr. Suresh. Well, if they are not successful, if they are
    not meeting a particular goal, they will be terminated.
        Mr. Wolf. So you are going to give a list of who has been
    terminated and under what conditions?
        Mr. Suresh. I will get that data for you.
        [The information follows:]

        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                              ICEBREAKING SERVICES

        Mr. Wolf. Okay. The 2012 budget discontinues the annual
    transfer of funds from the NSF to the Coast Guard for the
    operation of Coast Guard icebreakers. While this does relieve
    pressure on the NSF budget, the DHS Inspector General has
    suggested that the Coast Guard may be less willing to task its
    ships for NSF use if NSF is not holding the purse strings. Are
    you concerned about this?
        Mr. Suresh. So obviously the Polar program is a very
    important part of NSF's activities, so we have three Coast
    Guard ships, icebreakers that we have had access to. Healy in
    the Arctic Ocean, and then we had Polar Sea and Polar Star in
    the Antarctic sites. Now as you may know one of the two has
    been retired, decommissioned, and the other one needs
    refurbishment before too long.
        So what we have done is we have engaged the Swedish
    icebreaker Oden to make up for any gaps that may arise. We are
    continuously working with the Coast Guard on this, and also if
    necessary we will renegotiate a continuing agreement with our
    Swedish counterparts for the Oden while we are looking into the
    long-term implications of this.
        Fortunately the lack of availability of either Polar Sea or
    Polar Star has not had any detrimental effect on our Antarctic
    operations.
        Mr. Wolf. But if you are not paying for it----
        Mr. Suresh. No, we will reimburse the Coast Guard for costs
    involved, and we have been in continuous conversation with the
    Coast Guard on our needs and their requirements as well. So far
    it has not been an issue. The director of our Office of Polar
    Programs, Karl Erb has been in constant touch with them. In
    fact just last month he was in Sweden to discuss this, he has
    been in touch with the Coast Guard, and this is something we
    will continuously monitor.
        Mr. Wolf. So basically the U.S. domestic icebreaking
    capabilities are in decline. If we cannot break ice with our
    ships, that is decline. Now we have to rent a ship or lease it.
    We love Sweden, for the record. They are wonderful people. But
    we have to rent from Sweden? We are a maritime nation, look at
    the map. Yet we have to rent it out from Sweden? Just for the
    record, we are not blaming you. Is that what we do? Are we
    renting this out from Sweden?
        Mr. Suresh. So this is only a temporary measure, this is
    not the long-term solution to this issue. So we are looking at
    what needs to be done to refurbish----
        Mr. Wolf. How long will that take?
        Mr. Suresh. They are continuing to look at our needs.
    Probably within a year we will have an idea.
        Mr. Wolf. An idea. So we will be using the Swedes for how
    long, honestly? You are not under oath.
        Mr. Suresh. My estimation is that for the coming year we
    will be relying on the Swedish.
        Mr. Wolf. So next year you will not need Sweden?
        Mr. Suresh. We do not know that yet, but this is what is
    being accessed right with respect to the refurbishment of one
    of the Polar icebreakers.
        Mr. Wolf. I think that goes into what we were talking
    about. I mean, I think it is a----
        Mr. Suresh. So we also commissioned another vessel for
    which the keel laying ceremony will be held in April, but that
    is a shallow depth icebreaker, so it can go only up to three
    feet or so, not the twenty feet or so that we need, so that is
    more of a research vessel than the icebreaker capability for
    the Antarctica.

                                NSF TRAVEL FUNDS

        Mr. Wolf. Okay, we have a number of questions on the
    icebreaker that we are going to ask you for the record. I have
    a few more on contracting, then we will go to Mr. Culberson.
        NSF funds travel, meetings and incidental expenses for
    thousands of technical experts each year. Can you tell us your
    travel budget for the last three or four years, and then based
    on the new technology that you were talking about,
    teleconferencing and videoconferencing, what you think it will
    be in 2012? If you can show us trends in 2009 this was it, 2010
    this was it, 2011. Now in 2012 we are doing these dramatic
    things, teleconferencing, video conferencing. What do you think
    the budget will be so we can actually see that there is an
    honest savings.
        And with that, can you provide how many trips were taken
    both by NSF people and contract people in 2009-2012 so we can
    see again if there has been an honest drop or there has not.
        Mr. Suresh. We will get that information to you, Mr.
    Chairman.
        [The information follows:]

        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                                NSF CONTRACTING

        Mr. Wolf. GAO has questioned whether NSF is overly reliant
    on cost reimbursement contracts, which are risky and costly to
    administer, and suggested that NSF could transition some of its
    current contracts to firmer pricing terms. Do you agree that
    NSF could conduct more contract work under fixed price
    vehicles?
        Mr. Suresh. Obviously the fixed price gives us upfront
    knowledge of what the commitments are. As you know NSF
    instituted a no cost overrun policy three years ago for all of
    our major research equipment and facilities contracts, but the
    nature of the work for different projects is so very different.
    Sometimes design changes need to be made during the process for
    scientific and technical reasons and that has led to some
    adjustments that are being made.
        I am aware of this issue and in fact we have started an
    internal conversation on how we can address this, keeping in
    mind that we want the best technology and the best capability
    to emerge within the confines of our constraints and our
    policies.
        Mr. Wolf. Okay. I am going to Mr. Fattah to see if he has
    any last questions.
        Mr. Fattah. I am good.
        Mr. Wolf. Okay, fine.
        Mr. Fattah. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Wolf. Mr. Culberson.

                     K-12 STEM EDUCATION REPORT, CONTINUED

        Mr. Culberson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and my apologies
    for running so far behind, I have got everything happening all
    at the same time here this morning.
        We are all, as the chairman and I know Mr. Fattah has told
    you, committed to support the NSF and your role is so critical
    in preserving our leadership as a nation in years to come, you
    are as an important strategic investment as we have, and
    Chairman Wolf is exactly right about the importance
    particularly of science and engineering education.
        You really do not have to go very far Mr. Chairman or Mr.
    Fattah, the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Math
    is about eight miles away from your headquarters. You all are
    in downtown Arlington, right? Everyone, every study, every
    analysis that I have seen done of public high schools in
    America uniformly ranks the Thomas Jefferson School for Science
    and Math number one in the nation. There is your best practice
    model.
        And I have to tell you I am really disappointed and
    profoundly disturbed that you were floundering around trying to
    answer the chairman's very simple question of where is best
    practice and how do you find it. It is eight miles away. I do
    not understand, I mean there it is.
        Mr. Suresh. Well, we will include all the right models in
    the report that we will give you and the community, including
    best practices from anywhere.
        Mr. Wolf. Have you been out there?
        Mr. Suresh. I met with the principal of Thomas Jefferson
    School.
        Mr. Culberson. Well, meeting with them is one thing. You
    know, we are devoted to you guys. I have to tell you that your
    testimony and the report of the Inspector General kind of
    alarms me. We're concerned about making sure that the NSF--that
    you almost have to be like Caesar's wife--and the
    responsibilities that you have to insure that, as Mr. Fattah
    and the chairman quite correctly point out, that you are
    protecting the vitally important national security information
    for economic reasons and for the nation's security. I am
    confident the chairman asked you before I came in about Chinese
    nationals.
        Mr. Suresh. Yes.
        Mr. Culberson. I hope you are going to respond promptly and
    thoroughly to his request, because that is really, really
    disturbing.
        The report I have you, Mr. Chairman, that General Mattis
    prepared, pointed out that there are more People's Liberation
    Army graduate students in U.S. graduate schools than I think
    from any other nation. That is a real concern, and to the
    extent that we want to make sure NSF is protecting vital
    information from the Chinese, but obviously, in your response
    to the chairman's questions, you are not focused on STEM
    education, you are creating all kinds of new programs and
    initiatives in your testimony, but dropping a couple. You are
    on page seven recommending terminating or reducing the graduate
    STEM fellows and the national STEM distributing learning
    program.
        I recall a couple years ago that there was a bill that
    President Bush pushed that I think actually passed in some form
    that I remember it. When it came through, Mr. Chairman, several
    years ago, I see some heads nodding. The bill transferred
    responsibility for STEM education from NSF to the Department of
    Education. Does anybody remember that? Wasn't there some
    statutory change that shifted this responsibility?
        Well, who has primary responsibility for developing,
    establishing, and identifying a best practice, which is clearly
    Thomas Jefferson High School, you do not need to go but eight
    miles down the road. I cannot get my Wi-Fi to work or I would
    have given you an exact number and map. Who has primary
    responsibility? Is it NSF or the Department of Education for
    identifying best practices for science, technology, and
    engineering programs in our public schools? Is it you or the
    Department of Education? It should be you I would think.
        Mr. Suresh. We do research into models and we develop
    models and test them and validate them, but the implementation,
    especially a large scale implementation of this, the Department
    of Education does of course, we interact with them.
        Mr. Culberson. Well, they are the ones that can roll it
    out, but I have to tell you it really shakes me up that you
    could not answer the chairman's question about what is the best
    practices or model and it is eight miles down the road at
    Thomas Jefferson High School.
        Mr. Fattah. If the gentleman would yield for one second. I
    agree with your passion on the point, but the earlier time when
    it was answered in full was that what they had done with the
    chairman's request is to take it very serious and they have
    done an empirical scientific based study with control groups
    and others looking at all the practices and so on so that a
    full report, and we are going to have a roll out. We are going
    to have a roll out. They have already submitted to the chairman
    the interim report.
        Mr. Culberson. Okay.
        Mr. Fattah. We are going to have a roll out in
    Philadelphia. I am going to get you a cheesesteak. At the
    Constitution Center we are going to have educators come in and
    hear this. Because what the chairman has gotten them to do is
    going to be historically important to teaching STEM.
        So you know, Thomas Jefferson is a great school, but
    aberrations or anecdotal circumstances are not enough to make a
    scientific judgment on.
        So we are going to have a great report.
        Mr. Culberson. In the report that Mr. Fattah is talking
    about you have looked at schools all over the United States and
    you have identified what appear to be the best practices and
    model programs, and you are going to roll this out as he says
    at the Constitution Center?
        Mr. Fattah. In Philadelphia, I'll get you a cheesesteak.
        Mr. Suresh. So, Mr. Culberson, I thank you for the
    question. Let me repeat some of the aspects.
        Mr. Culberson. Forgive me for running late if I missed you
    earlier.
        Mr. Suresh. No, no, no, no problem at all.
        Mr. Culberson. But I was just so disturbed when you could
    not answer Mr. Wolf's very simple question.
        Mr. Suresh. No, no, I answered it earlier, so I did not
    want to repeat myself.
        Mr. Culberson. I understand. Okay.
        Mr. Suresh. So let me reiterate some of the points I made.
        We have set up a National Research Council committee
    involving the best teachers in the country and educators in the
    country to provide us input on various best practices. That is
    step number one. On May 10th and May 11th there will be a
    symposium, which we have invited the chairman to kick off this
    year.
        The second thing we have done is to engage the Urban
    Institute, one of the centers of the Urban Institute, to pick
    two states, and it may well be Virginia and Thomas Jefferson,
    but we did not want to do it, we wanted an independent
    organization to do this professionally with all the details,
    and they will provide input on best practices from two states
    based on input they have received from a larger sampling from
    across the country.
        Mr. Culberson. Who is the Urban Institute?
        Mr. Suresh. There is the name of a center call----
        Mr. Culberson. Why wouldn't you do this?
        Mr. Suresh. Because they have been engaged in a number of
    studies related to this in the past and we wanted an
    independent study.
        Mr. Culberson. Educrats do not give me a lot of confidence,
    that just is the reason I ask. I do not want to dwell on this,
    since you answered earlier, and you were very gracious. You
    know we are devoted to you, and I do not want to dwell on it,
    but you are going to give a detailed report to the chairman and
    the Committee?
        Mr. Suresh. Absolutely.
        Mr. Culberson. You are going to roll out what you believe
    are the best practices and identify the schools that are really
    doing it right.
        Mr. Suresh. That is correct. And one other point that we
    discussed was not just a report to this committee, but also on
    ways in which we can roll it out to the community at large so
    that the best practices that are identified are disseminated to
    the school districts and others in the most efficient way.
        Mr. Culberson. Okay, and the Department of Education will
    be responsible for that?
        Mr. Suresh. But we could make it available to them through
    the media that we have.
        Mr. Culberson. Okay. Well, that is something I really want
    to help the chairman and Mr. Fattah follow up on. We are in an
    environment where we are facing--it is an age of austerity
    unlike anything the nation has ever faced and all of us are
    going to be working hard to protect NSF and firewalling off
    core functions. We are, I think, going to be entering an era
    where we are going to have to retrench as a nation and focus on
    core missions, and this is clearly one of your core missions,
    to identify and then help disseminate best practices in science
    and technology and engineering education, because it is just
    vital. I know the Chairman pointed out the Chinese are
    graduating ten times more engineers than we are.
        I also noticed that the Inspector General's report pointed
    out that you have had real problems with confirming whether or
    not grant recipients are actually performing and completing the
    work that ensures effective oversight throughout the life cycle
    of an award. You mentioned to the Chairman that you were doing
    site visits and inspections, but the Inspector General says you
    have actually performed 20 percent fewer site visits than you
    had originally planned, so you are doing fewer site visits. All
    of us want to be sure that you are following the Inspector
    General's recommendations. Are you aggressively doing
    everything you can?
        Mr. Suresh. Absolutely. In fact we are looking at every
    means possible to increase the site visit methods, and one
    example of that is what I mentioned with respect to engaging
    the latest technology to do the site visits. There are other
    things that we can do with respect to frequency of grantee
    conferences and so forth.
        Mr. Culberson. The IG mentioned Second Life which is the--
    --

                        MERIT REVIEW PANEL PILOT PROJECT

        Mr. Suresh. Second Life is a virtual site visit process and
    there are a number of ways in which we can do that. We already
    have a pilot project under way to look at what the best
    practices are.
        Mr. Culberson. Does that allow you to see virtually
    somebody pick up this glass of water and look at it and examine
    it?
        Mr. Suresh. Absolutely. The technology----
        Mr. Culberson. Is it secure?
        Mr. Suresh. That is why we are doing a pilot program.
        Mr. Culberson. To keep anybody else in the cloud from
    diving in from Peking to Beijing, I guess they call it, and
    looking at what you are doing.
        Mr. Suresh. That is exactly why we are doing the pilot
    project to make sure. It is absolutely critical that we insure
    the confidentiality of the review process, so we want to make
    sure that whatever systems we use--just to go a little bit
    further, just three days ago I met with the senior research
    officers of the AAU, American Association of Universities, to
    talk about ways in which universities can help us with regional
    hubs so that we can engage reviewers without having them fly
    into Arlington, Virginia.
        Mr. Culberson. Sure. Just make sure it is secure, please.
        Mr. Suresh. Absolutely.
        Mr. Culberson. Year before last, I had been using iGoogle's
    map service. I just temporarily played around with the thing
    that allowed my staff to see where I was. Then I woke up one
    morning, Mr. Chairman, and my location was in downtown Beijing.
    It was because they had hacked the Google site, and then hacked
    all of the Google accounts. I immediately terminated it.
        I mean the Chairman is right, there is a very aggressive
    and hostile cyber warfare going on from the Chinese.
        Let me also just wrap up and mention, I am also concerned,
    Mr. Chairman, that you are not spreading yourselves too thin.
    You received a lot of money from the Stimulus Package, and
    looks to me that you are spreading that pretty thin.
        I mean, you are cancelling a lot of important work that you
    have been doing on education. It looks like you started
    building a telescope, an Alaska region research vessel, an
    ocean observation initiative, and an advanced technology solar
    telescope. All noble efforts, but we are in an area where you
    are going to have to really focus on your core mission. I
    suspect those are tremendously expensive projects, and you just
    made a down payment on all of them and they are going to go
    over their life cycle cost by a lot.
        And by the way, Mr. Chairman, and I will just wrap up on
    this, the icebreakers are going to cost upwards of a billion
    dollars to completely rebuild them, won't they?
        Mr. Suresh. I do not know the exact price of this, but----

                           FOCUSING ON NSF'S MISSION

        Mr. Culberson. I have looked at it, it is about a billion
    dollars if you were to rebuild those Coast Guard ships, Mr.
    Chairman, and you do not have the money. When Mr. Wolf was
    Chairman last time, this was something I worked on with Frank
    LoBiondo, to get the Coast Guard to transfer responsibility for
    the icebreakers. President Bush has shifted them over to you,
    and you did not have the money. You do not have the money to
    refurbish those ships, it was about a billion dollars. They are
    finally back in the hands of the Coast Guard. They are ancient
    ships, are in very back shape. It may actually be more cost
    effective at this point to rent, as aggravating as it would be,
    from the Swedish. You are doing all these other new things.
        I just worry, do not get yourself spread too thin. The IG
    says you do not have good safeguards in place to monitor these
    major investments while you are doing in these big capital
    construction projects.
        There is a lot or worry here, Mr. Chairman, that this is
    going to require a lot of oversight from us. You do not
    necessarily need to get into all this right now, but I think
    everything I have said is essentially accurate, right?
        Mr. Suresh. Well, let me----
        Mr. Culberson. I have not misstated anything have I or
    misstated anything?
        Mr. Suresh. Let me add a couple of points to that.
        So along with new commitments that have been made, there
    are also things that have been terminated.
        For example, one of the projects that has been terminated
    is DUSEL. The potential cost of DUSEL would have been over a
    billion dollars over many years.
        Mr. Culberson. Right.
        Mr. Suresh. They were for underground science research.
    This is in high energy and particle physics underground.
        Mr. Culberson. Oh, okay. So you cancelled that. I am just
    concerned, I know the Committee is. I do not want to dwell on
    it, because I have got to get to my Texas lunch as well, and
    the Chairman is very gracious to let me come in so late and ask
    questions, but please do not get spread too thin.
        Mr. Suresh. I appreciate that.
        Mr. Culberson. It is a real source of concern.
        Mr. Suresh. Right. If I could just add one point to your
    question on the telescopes. The reason for supporting these
    telescopes, every ten years there is a survey that involves the
    top scientists in the country on what needs to be done, and the
    telescope work is very carefully done so that the planning
    process and the implementation process takes about ten years
    with a lot of community input. So this is not an NSF decision
    to do something, but----
        Mr. Culberson. Sure, I understand.
        Mr. Suresh. And this is to keep the U.S. at the forefront
    of the astrophysics research that no single institution in the
    country is capable of funding.
        So what you say is absolutely true, we cannot spread
    ourselves too thin, especially at tight financial times, but I
    want to assure you that we will do everything possible to make
    sure that dollars are spent wisely and for the right purposes.
        Mr. Culberson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Wolf. Thank you, Mr. Culberson.

                     ROLL OUT OF K-12 STEM EDUCATION REPORT

        Before I end, I want to second what Mr. Culberson said
    about the STEM report conference. Mr. Fattah, I hope we can do
    it. Maybe we can look at the schedule for July and maybe pick a
    Friday to do it.
        Mr. Fattah. I am going to work it in a way in which we can
    get you in there for the July 4th holiday. So we are going to
    do it right. You can be there for the fireworks and the whole
    bit and cheesesteaks. And we want to bring our colleague from
    Texas along with us.
        Mr. Wolf. Now does Geno's or Pat's, have the best
    cheesesteak anyway?
        Mr. Fattah. There is no doubt, this is a scientific fact,
    all right, quantified, qualified, empirical: Pat's is the best
    in Philadelphia.
        Mr. Wolf. Okay. That is who I have gone to. I used to play
    football at that field directly across the street from Pat's.
    So I want to pick a time that we can do that, hopefully a
    Friday, and we can tie it in.
        I think what Mr. Culberson has said was accurate. The Urban
    Institute, they are good, but I'm kind of worried that the
    Department of Education now is going to be involved. And I am
    worried that you are going to have two states, being looked at.
    Maybe the best school is in North Dakota. So rather than
    looking at two states, maybe you should look at the top 50
    schools. ``U.S. News and World Report'' publishes the top 50
    schools. One may be in Pennsylvania, one may be in New York,
    one might be here.
        So I think he makes a legitimate point. Here we are going
    to get the Urban Institute to have a grant and then they are
    going to look at two states. Maybe they are going to be the
    wrong two states. I think Thomas Jefferson does an incredible
    job, but maybe they should be looking at schools rather than
    states.
        And lastly, once we bring the Department of Education in,
    and I guess they are going to have to be brought in, but then
    you got a new agency involved.
        I think we should do the rollout in Philadelphia, certainly
    by the end of July so it can at least be processed. Although
    that will be late for the next school year. I think curriculum
    is set pretty much. But it ought to be just whatever is
    working, wherever it is working. That knowledge ought not to be
    hoarded, it ought to be shared. Ben Franklin's house is two
    blocks from that center--you could call it the Ben Franklin
    whatever. But I want to do it. And I do not want you to do it
    because we asked you to do it. I do not want to speak to your
    conference, because I do not want to look like I am lobbying or
    you gave me something. I just want you to do it because it is
    good for the country.
        My wife and I have 5 kids, 15 grandkids. I am worried that
    this Nation is getting ready to go into decline. If you find
    one idea that impacts one student at Overbrook and one student
    at Vienna High School and one student in Houston, Texas, it
    electrifies. So that is what we want to do is do. You have got
    to be working with--what is the association of school
    administrators? They ought to be part of it. I think Ed Hatrick
    is the head of that. When you come out with, whatever you are
    going to come out with, it should be so profound that it really
    makes the difference. When we look back, this could be the one
    thing that literally gave us the opportunity to make America
    continue.
        So we are going to really make an effort to work it out,
    but I do agree with what Mr. Culberson said. I would feel more
    comfortable if you were doing it without other groups involved,
    but you should do it however you think it is best.
        I worry, too, that is has taken NSF so long that it is
    almost scary.
        And frankly, if it could not be in July--and I want to do
    it with Mr. Fattah--I would rather do it in September or do it
    so that it really has a maximum impact for the following year.
    I do not know when curriculum is established. I have a daughter
    that is a teacher, but when do they begin in the City of
    Philadelphia, when do they begin looking at the next year? So
    maybe you should do it in September or October. Do not feel
    rushed. We are going to do it in Philadelphia. Do it right. Do
    not feel like ``we have got to get this thing done in July,''
    because maybe that would rush it and make it not so great. One
    of the greatest Presidents we have ever had, Ronald Reagan,
    said the words in the Constitution adopted in Philadelphia in
    1787 were a covenant with the rest of the world. Maybe this
    could be another covenant. Mr. Fattah is going to be one of the
    leading deciders, but think about when you can really do it and
    do it well. Take into consideration Mr. Culberson's comments.
        Mr. Culberson. And if I could, Mr. Chairman, they have been
    working on this since I was placed on this Committee in 2003. I
    asked for this subcommittee so I could work with Chairman Wolf
    on protecting the National Science Foundation and NASA.
        Mr. Fattah. I thought you wanted to work with me?
        Mr. Culberson. Well, of course, you too my friend.
        But I mean, this is where I wanted to be, to help with the
    sciences and NASA, and you all have been talking about this and
    NSF has been working on this literally, Mr. Chairman, since
    2003. This should not be that complicated. You should be ready
    to go.
        Mr. Suresh. Well, we will get you the best outcome of
    things.
        Mr. Wolf. And we are not going to hold you to the July
    deadline.
        Mr. Suresh. I appreciate that. You know the spirit of
    setting up this process to begin with was to do the right
    thing.
        Mr. Wolf. I understand, I understand, we do not have to go
    back and do that.
        Mr. Fattah do you have any other questions?
        Mr. Fattah. No, I want to thank you for your testimony, and
    you said you were out at Texas A&M, you met with doctor--is it
    Garcia? It is a great university and I participated in that
    program last year and I am glad that you are working in Texas.
    My colleague did not hear that, but you are working in Texas.
    Thank you. Thank you for your testimony.
        Mr. Wolf. Thank you, Dr. Suresh, thank you very much.
        Mr. Suresh. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, thank you, Mr. Fattah.

        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                                                Wednesday, May 4, 2011.

                    OFFICE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY

                                    WITNESS

    DR. JOHN P. HOLDREN, DIRECTOR
        Mr. Wolf. Good morning. We want to welcome you this morning
    to the hearing on the fiscal year 2012 budget of the Office of
    Science and Technology Policy.
        Our witness is Dr. John Holdren, the director of OSTP.
        We appreciate you being here.

          Opening Statement of Chairman Wolf and Ranking Member Fattah

        The Administration and the Congress are in broad agreement
    about the need for significant investments in science and
    technology programs next year.
        I think where there are some differences is that many do
    not agree on how the President's budget distributes the science
    and technology money used for fiscal year 2012.
        I am not sure that the Administration is doing enough to
    ensure that all of the various elements of the science and
    technology budget are well-coordinated and are formed into a
    coherent over-arching program.
        And I question sometimes whether the Administration takes
    seriously the threat posed to us by China and our other
    economic competitors.
        Dr. Holdren, you are here today not only to defend your own
    budget request but also to discuss these larger issues with the
    Government's research and development agenda because you have
    one of the most important positions within the Government on
    these science and technology issues.
        But before we get to your testimony and questions, I would
    like to turn it over to Mr. Fattah, the ranking member.
        Mr. Fattah. Thank you.
        Let me welcome you also, and let me thank the chairman for
    conducting this very important hearing.
        Needless to say, there is a very, very significant
    challenge for our country in this space. Many years ago we had
    absolute advantages that are now relative advantages over our
    economic competitors in a variety of these areas. Innovation
    and technology is critically important and our investments in
    science are important. Larger countries like China are making
    very significant investments and smaller countries like
    Singapore and others are making, relative to their size, very
    significant investments in these areas.
        This Administration has done more than any administration
    or actually more than a number of administrations combined in
    terms of investment in science, technology, and innovation.
        The chairman's efforts and this committee's efforts in
    terms of the report around the Gathering Storm I think have
    helped generate more interest here on The Hill around our
    critical needs.
        And I think that there is a combination of issues that
    create some synergy related to energy independence that also
    have spurred some interest.
        So I am very interested in your testimony and look forward
    to an opportunity to interact.
        Thank you.
        Mr. Wolf. Thank you.
        You may proceed. Your full statement will appear in the
    record.

                       Testimony of OSTP Director Holdren

        Dr. Holdren. Well, thank you very much, Chairman Wolf,
    Ranking Member Fattah.
        It is certainly a privilege for me to be here today to talk
    with you about the President's fiscal year 2012 budget proposal
    for science and technology. And I will try to address the
    broader concerns. I am certainly not here just to talk about
    the OSTP budget request. The premise behind this budget is one
    that, as both of you have already stated, is something we
    really all share and that that is that creating the American
    jobs and industries of the future, creating the quality of life
    that we all want for our children and their children does
    require investing in the creativity and the capacity to
    innovate of the American people.
        We think that the 2012 budget proposal that the President
    has put forward does that with responsible and targeted
    investments in the foundations of discovery and innovation,
    that is in research and development, in science, technology,
    engineering, and math education and in 21st century
    infrastructure.
        And it does that with increases in the highest priority
    focuses being offset by reductions in lower priority ones. It
    is a budget that is aimed at helping us win the future by out-
    innovating, out-educating, and out-building the competition,
    but doing it in a way consistent with the need to reduce the
    deficit, to trim budgets overall.
        Now, clearly we need the continued support of the Congress
    in order to get this done. And I stress continued support
    because the strengthening of the national effort in science,
    technology, and innovation has for a very long time been very
    much a joint venture of the Congress and the Administration. It
    has been that way over the past two years and we certainly hope
    it will continue to be a joint venture.
        As you know, the President's budget proposes a record $66.8
    billion for civilian research and development, but we are
    committed, as I have already suggested, to reducing the deficit
    even as we prime the pump of discovery and innovation.
        We have made in developing the President's budget strategic
    decisions to try to focus the resources on those areas where
    the payoff for the American public, for the American taxpayer
    is likely to be highest.
        Mr. Chairman, I know the committee is already familiar with
    the details of the President's budget proposal. I just want to
    very briefly highlight a couple of key points for the agencies
    that are under the jurisdiction of this subcommittee.
        First of all, consistent with the America COMPETES
    Reauthorization Act, which was passed by Congress, as you know,
    in December, signed by the President in January, the budget
    calls for continuing on the doubling trajectory for the
    National Science Foundation, the DoE Office of Science, and the
    NIST, that is National Institute of Standards and Technology,
    laboratories that the President originally committed to in his
    speech at the National Academies in April of 2009.
        Two of those three agencies that are especially important
    to the future economic leadership of this country are under the
    jurisdiction of your subcommittee, as you know.
        In the case of NASA, the President's budget holds that
    agency to the 2010 appropriated level of $18.7 billion while
    still funding every initiative that was called for in the 2010
    NASA Authorization Act.
        The President's budget also helps NOAA improve critical
    weather and climate services, invest more heavily in restoring
    our oceans and coasts, and in ensuring continuity in crucial
    earth observation satellite coverage.
        The 2012 budget also emphasizes STEM education to prepare
    our children to be the skilled workforce of the future. It does
    that in part by providing $100 million as a down payment on a
    ten-year effort to prepare 100,000 new highly effective STEM
    teachers. That is part of a broader Administration commitment
    to look carefully at the effectiveness of all of our STEM
    programs and find ways to improve them.
        And to further that goal, I have established a committee on
    STEM education under the National Science and Technology
    Council which, as you know, deals with interagency efforts
    relating to science and technology. STEM education is certainly
    very much an interagency effort.
        And that committee, which is being co-chaired by OSTP's
    associate director for Science, the Nobel Laureate in physics,
    Carl Wieman, has already begun its work. It began its work in
    March and involves all the federal agencies that are involved
    in different ways in STEM education.
        The budget also includes investments for a wireless
    innovation and infrastructure initiative that will help extend
    the next generation of wireless, we hope, to 98 percent of the
    U.S. population.
        Of course, it does, getting to my own office's budget,
    request under this subcommittee $6.65 million for OSTP
    operations. That is five percent below the 2010 funding level
    and slightly below the 2011 funding level. And that is in
    recognition of the need to share the sacrifice and to freeze
    non-security discretionary spending.
        So let me reiterate in closing the guiding principle that
    underlies this budget and that is that America's strength, our
    prosperity, our global leadership all depend directly on the
    investments that we are willing to make in R&D and STEM
    education and in infrastructure.
        Only by sustaining these investments are we going to be
    able to assure future generations of Americans a society and a
    place in the world that is worthy of the history of this great
    Nation which has been building its prosperity and its global
    leadership on a foundation of science, technology, and
    innovation since the days of Jefferson and Franklin.
        Now, I know that staying the course in the current fiscal
    environment is not going to be easy, but I believe that the
    President's 2012 budget for science and technology provides a
    blueprint for doing that that is both visionary and
    responsible.
        The support of this committee, which has been the source
    itself of so much visionary and at the same time responsible
    legislation in this domain in the past, is obviously going to
    be essential if we are going to stay on course.
        And I very much look forward to working with all of you,
    Chairman Wolf, Ranking Member Fattah, Members of the committee,
    in working toward that end.
        Thank you very much.
        [The information follows:]

        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Mr. Wolf. Well, thank you.

                              INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL

        I have a number of questions and we will go through the
    panel. But before I do, one, I am committed to doing everything
    we can with regard to funding the sciences.
        Secondly, if you look at the CR, the sciences did very,
    very well. We protected them.
        Thirdly, I am very concerned about the fact that our
    country is beginning to fall behind. I am particularly
    concerned about China.
        Let me ask you a couple of questions. I reviewed your
    international travel itineraries for last year and found that
    you were overseas for nearly two full months over a sixteen
    month period.
        Why is it necessary to be out of the country so often? Can
    you effectively manage the office if you are out of the country
    that much?
        Dr. Holdren. First of all----
        Mr. Wolf. I have your itinerary, your travel schedule.
        Dr. Holdren. Yeah, I know. I am going to have to----
        Mr. Wolf. Fifty-three days, 35 business days. China,
    Norway, Japan, South Korea, China, Denmark, Russia, England,
    China.
        Dr. Holdren. Let me explain, first of all, that most of
    those trips were in my capacity as the high level
    representative of the U.S. Government in joint commission
    meetings on science and technology cooperation under agreements
    that we have with all of those countries.
        We have those high level joint commission agreements with
    India, Russia, China, Brazil, South Korea, and Japan. And it is
    my----
        Mr. Wolf. You were never in Brazil, and you were in China.
        Dr. Holdren. I have not done Brazil yet. We do have such an
    agreement with China.
        I was also in China for the strategic and economic dialogue
    at the request, the specific request of secretaries Clinton and
    Geithner because of the importance of dialogue with China on
    innovation to get them to roll back their discriminatory and
    unfair policies with respect to procurement, with respect to
    intellectual property rights, and with respect to a number of
    other issues disadvantageous to American business and to our
    exports.
        So I was on all of these trips basically acting as the
    President's agent, pursuing the priorities of this country as
    reflected in important aspects of international cooperation in
    science, technology, and innovation that we believe are in the
    U.S. interest.
        Mr. Wolf. During that year, your most frequent destination
    by far was China. You took three separate trips covering a
    total of three weeks.
        Can you go into detail of what you were doing there during
    those three weeks? Maybe you just covered some of that. Then if
    you could elaborate in a written statement by the end of this
    week, I would appreciate it--who you met with, what your
    purpose was, where you went, when you left, when you came back?
        Dr. Holdren. No, I would be very happy to do that, sir.
        The meetings were, as I mentioned, some in connection with
    the strategic and economic dialogue, some in connection with
    the U.S./China dialogue on innovation policy, which is the
    forum in which we have been pursuing with the Chinese and
    making some considerable progress, I should say, in getting the
    Chinese to step back from the most discriminatory practices
    that they have put in place under the label of indigenous
    innovation.
        Some of those conversations as well were at the request of
    the State Department in the company of Todd Stern, the U.S.
    ambassador to the climate change talks, to try to work on the
    Chinese, particularly Minister Xie Zhenhua, to get them to take
    more reasonable positions in climate negotiations.
        Mr. Wolf. Well, let us look at this. Fifty-three days, 35
    business days, three trips to China for 21 days. I think this
    is a little too much to be gone from the office, but I will
    take a look at it when you send it.
        Dr. Holdren. Be happy to provide it.
        [The information follows:]

        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Mr. Wolf. Did you take your BlackBerry with you?
        Dr. Holdren. Yes, I did, with the permission of the
    security authorities. I did. The BlackBerry, of course, was
    scrubbed before and after, but I did take it with me and I
    did----
        Mr. Wolf. Are you sure you can really scrub it?
        Dr. Holdren. I am not an expert in information technology,
    but I am assured by the people who are in the White House that
    that is----
        Mr. Wolf. Well, why don't we have a joint meeting with you
    and me and the FBI.
        Dr. Holdren. That would be fine.
        Mr. Wolf. Okay.
        Dr. Holdren. I would be happy to do that.
        Mr. Wolf. We will schedule it. I will ask the staff to set
    up a time.
        Dr. Holdren. I would be happy to.
        Mr. Wolf. Have you ever been out to the FBI and had a
    briefing with regard to China stealing any of our technology?
        Dr. Holdren. Oh, I have had those briefings, but not at the
    FBI. I have had them in the situation room. I have had them in
    SCIFs.
        Mr. Wolf. Have you been out to the cyber center out in
    Northern Virginia?
        Dr. Holdren. We are going to visit that in a couple of
    weeks actually.
        Mr. Wolf. To date, you have not been there.
        Dr. Holdren. I have not, but I have been briefed by its
    director in the situation room.
        Mr. Wolf. I think you have to see it.
        Dr. Holdren. We are going to do it.
        Mr. Wolf. Can you tell us when you are going to go out
    there? Maybe I can get a staff person----
        Dr. Holdren. Okay.
        Mr. Wolf [continuing]. To go with you.
        Dr. Holdren. Good. Happy to do that.
        [The information follows:]

    Response to Chairman Wolf's Request for Dr. Holdren to Visit the Cyber
                      Center (NCIJTF) in Northern Virginia

        OSTP staff is working with the FBI to schedule a visit to the
    facility in Chantilly, VA. Once a date has been set, OSTP will notify
    Chairman Wolf's staff of the date.

        Mr. Wolf. Thank you.

              COMPLIANCE WITH CHINA LANGUAGE FROM FISCAL YEAR 2011

        The recently enacted fiscal year 2011 appropriations bill
    contained a legislative prohibition on bilateral activities
    between your office and the Chinese Government or Chinese-owned
    business.
        What steps are you taking to live within the terms of this
    prohibition during the fiscal year?
        Dr. Holdren. Well, it is our intention to live within the
    terms of that prohibition insofar as doing so is consistent
    with my responsibilities for executing the President's
    constitutional authority----
        Mr. Wolf. What does the----
        Dr. Holdren [continuing]. In foreign relations.
        Mr. Wolf. What does the language in the bill mean to you?
        Dr. Holdren. I am instructed after consultation with
    counsel and with appropriate--who in turn consulted with
    appropriate people in the Department of Justice that that
    language should not be read as prohibiting interactions that
    are part of the President's constitutional authority to conduct
    negotiations and at the same time, and there are obviously a
    variety of aspects of that prohibition that very much apply, we
    will be looking at that on a case-by-case basis in OSTP to make
    sure we are in compliance.
        Mr. Wolf. Well, can you keep the Committee informed on a
    case-by-case basis of any time you do anything at all with
    regard to China where you think that perhaps your activity will
    be in confrontation with the language.
        Dr. Holdren. Be happy to do that.
        Mr. Wolf. Great. Thank you.

                             COMPETITION FROM CHINA

        China's government sponsored R&D investments as a fraction
    of GDP have grown by more than five percent annually while the
    American rate of growth have actually been negative in recent
    years.
        How does the 2012 budget address this imbalance?
        Dr. Holdren. Well, first of all, as I mentioned, Mr.
    Chairman, the President committed the country in his speech in
    April 2009 to trying to reach three percent of GDP in the
    combined public and private investments in R&D in this country.
    And that represents an effort to maintain the U.S. lead over
    our competitors including China because as you correctly point
    out, China's investments have been growing very rapidly, in
    some cases more than ten percent per year.
        We are very concerned about that. We want to be sure we
    maintain the U.S. lead, which does remain large, I should say,
    across the range of critical science and technology domains,
    but China is trying to close the gap and we are interested in
    maintaining our lead.
        And the challenge we all face, and I reassert that we face
    it together, is how in this time of budget stringency we can
    find ways to increase the U.S. investments in science,
    technology, and innovation in ways that allow us to stay ahead.
        I would say one important aspect of that since the private
    sector comes up with almost 70 percent of the national R&D
    expenditures is we have to do more to encourage the private
    sector to continue to increase its investments in R&D. And one
    of the ways we have proposed to do that is by making the
    research and experimentation tax credit both simpler, more
    effective, and permanent in order to provide a reliable
    incentive for the private sector to lift their game in R&D.
        Clearly in a country where 70 percent of the R&D is
    financed by the private sector, we have to attend to that as
    well as to the government's expenditures.
        Mr. Wolf. If the existing trend continues, do we run the
    risk of China pulling even with or exceeding us in government
    R&D investments? And if that is the case, when could that
    happen?
        Dr. Holdren. I have got some projections. I mean, none of
    us has a clear crystal ball on this issue because we do not
    know how fast the Chinese economy will continue to grow.
        And there are a lot of people arguing that it will be
    slowing down soon for a variety of structural reasons, but we
    cannot be sure. We do not know if they can sustain the rates of
    increases in R&D expenditures that they have been making. And
    so it is very hard to predict with any confidence.
        I do not believe that it is likely that the Chinese could
    equal U.S. expenditures in this domain any time before 2015,
    but it also depends on whether you count those investments at
    market exchange rate or at purchasing power parity.
        The other point that I would emphasize, though, is it is
    not just the sheer amounts, but it is the quality of the work
    that is done with those investments. And as I think many
    authorities have pointed out, the greatest Chinese universities
    remain light years behind U.S. universities in terms of the
    quality of their faculty, their facilities, their students.
        A large fraction of Chinese engineering graduates would not
    qualify for entry-level engineering jobs in the United States
    because the level of their engineering training is simply not
    up to ours.
        So we need to remember that quality as well as quantity is
    important and we need to continue to focus both on adequate
    resources in terms of our own investments and in the various
    elements of the U.S. system which maintain our qualitative
    advantages.
        Mr. Wolf. They graduated 700,000 engineers last year. We
    graduated 70,000. It is not engineer for engineer, but 35
    percent, 40 percent, 45 percent of our graduates were foreign
    students, many of them Chinese who are going back.
        Dr. Holdren. That is true.
        Mr. Wolf. You were recently quoted as saying that major
    scientific advancements will allow China to ``eat our lunch''
    economically. At the same time, however, you continue to
    advocate for U.S. assistance to Chinese scientific agencies and
    expanding joint research opportunities.
        If you acknowledge that Chinese scientific advancements are
    a threat to our economy, why would you want to improve their
    capabilities and further speed up their advancements?
        Dr. Holdren. First of all, Mr. Chairman, with respect, they
    will eat our lunch if we do not continue our own investments in
    the strength of our science, our technology, our innovation,
    and our STEM education. I do not believe they will eat our
    lunch if we stay the course.
        Mr. Wolf. Well, sure.
        Dr. Holdren. I will take the second part of your question.
    I am happy to address that as well. I just wanted to be clear--
    --
        Mr. Wolf. You go ahead.
        Dr. Holdren [continuing]. In terms of my quote that I was
    not predicting that they will eat our lunch. I was saying
    avoiding their eating our lunch is the reason that we need to
    stay the course.
        Now, the question of why then if we are even worried about
    competition with China should we cooperate with them. The
    answer to that question is that there are a variety of domains
    in which cooperation with China is very much in our national
    interest.
        One of those domains is the prediction and the control of
    epidemics which, of course, know no boundaries. A lot of the
    scientific and technological cooperation we have done with
    China has been in that domain.
        Another domain in which it makes great sense for us to
    cooperate with China is nuclear safety, the prevention and the
    mitigation of nuclear reactor accidents. China is building
    nuclear reactors very rapidly. The consequences of nuclear
    accidents also know no boundaries. And it is in our interest to
    work with them to reduce the likelihood of accidents at their
    reactors as well as, of course, our own.
        China's oil imports are one of the reasons that gasoline
    prices are so high in the United States today. It is the rising
    demand from China and other developing countries and it is
    pressure on the world oil market which has pushed gasoline
    prices as high as they are.
        It is in our interest to cooperate with China in activities
    in alternative energy which will help them reduce their
    pressure on the global market because it is a global market.
    And we have an interest in China reducing its oil imports just
    as we have an interest in reducing our own.
        In the area of environmental problems that cross national
    boundaries, again it is in our interest to work with China to
    accelerate the pace at which they reduce the emissions that are
    affecting our environment as well as theirs.
        Mr. Wolf. In terms of specific joint scientific ventures,
    the President has advocated for cooperation between NASA and
    China's space program.
        Does the PLO run the Chinese space program? Am I correct
    there, the PLO?
        Dr. Holdren. The PLA?
        Mr. Wolf. Yeah.
        Dr. Holdren. They certainly have a lot to do with it. I do
    not think we fully----
        Mr. Wolf. The dominant one?
        Dr. Holdren [continuing]. Understand. My guess would be
    yes, but, again, I do not understand and I am not sure anybody
    understands exactly the way the tentacles of the PLA interact
    with other activities. But they do certainly have a major
    influence. There is no question about that.
        Mr. Wolf. Since our space capabilities exceed theirs by
    virtually all measures, how does this cooperation benefit
    anyone but China? What is the technical or scientific benefit
    to NASA of cooperating with the Chinese Space Administration?
        Dr. Holdren. I will give you a couple of examples. One is
    the question of space debris where we are all threatened by
    junk in space that our satellites and the International Space
    Station might run into.
        And collaborating in the area of minimizing space debris
    and making sure that we all know where all the debris is is
    very much in our interest, in the interest of the safety of our
    astronauts. That is one domain.
        A second domain which is much more long term, much more
    speculative, there is certainly nothing in place now, but the
    President has deemed it worth discussing with the Chinese and
    others is that when the time comes for humans to visit Mars, it
    is going to be an extremely expensive proposition. And the
    question is whether it will really make sense at the time that
    we are ready to do that to do it as one nation rather than to
    do it in concert.
        And nobody knows the answer to that question at this point.
    It will depend, since nobody is going to be ready to go to Mars
    before 2030, whether it makes sense to do that jointly or not
    very much depends on the state of political relations, economic
    relations, and so on at the time.
        But many of us including the President, including myself,
    including Administrator Bolden believe that it is not too soon
    to have preliminary conversations about what involving China in
    that sort of cooperation might entail.
        If China is going to be by 2030 the biggest economy in the
    world as some think it may be or even if it only is still the
    second biggest economy in the world, it could certainly be to
    our benefit to share the costs of such an expensive venture
    with them and with others.
        Mr. Wolf. An IMF report which I am sure you saw came out
    last month showing that, when measured in purchasing power
    parity, the Chinese economy will overtake the American economy
    in 2016, which is much earlier than any previous estimates.
        What is your reaction to that finding of the IMF?
        Dr. Holdren. Well, I looked at that finding with interest.
    I have actually long been one of those arguing that we should
    be paying more attention to purchasing power parity in many
    contexts as the appropriate metric. There are obviously
    respects in which market exchange rates are more meaningful,
    other respects in which purchasing power parity is more
    meaningful.
        But I think if China passes us by 2016 in purchasing power
    parity GDP, that will be a big deal. It will still be true at
    that time that their per capita GDP will be a quarter of ours
    or less, but I am not denying the significance of the
    possibility of the United States becoming the second largest
    economy in the world by any measure.
        And, again, I would simply say, Mr. Chairman, that what the
    President's 2012 budget is advocating is investments in
    science, technology, innovation, STEM education, and
    infrastructure which will postpone the day when China passes us
    and perhaps postpone it indefinitely.
        Again, I would say none of us has a clear crystal ball.
    China has many problems. You yourself have been in the
    forefront of pointing out some of the problems that China has
    created for itself in the domain of human rights and the domain
    of a government in which the citizens do not have anything
    resembling real participation. And that could come to bite
    them.
        We do not know what China is really going to be like and
    what problems they are going to be struggling with in 2015. But
    in the meantime, we should be doing what we can do to
    strengthen the United States' economy, to build jobs, to build
    sustainable industries, to develop new products, to innovate.
    We should be doing all we can in that domain and that is what
    this budget is about.
        Mr. Wolf. Well, I agree. And I would say that this
    committee, and I would say in a bipartisan way, is really doing
    that. I am not going to put you in a spot by asking you this
    question, but I am going to state it as a fact.
        It concerns me very deeply that this Administration is tone
    deaf to the human rights violations taking place in China. I
    think Ambassador Huntsman has done a good job. Short of that, I
    think this Administration has been relatively weak.
        The Chinese people are wonderful people; it is the evil
    government that is doing these things. When the dissidents come
    to the U.S., they tell me that based on what this
    Administration is doing, many of the people are being
    demoralized there.
        We have a situation. The Catholic Cardinal from Hong Kong
    was in to see me three weeks ago. The Catholic church is being
    persecuted, and there are a number of Catholic Bishops that are
    under house arrest.
        I attended a house church on Easter Sunday as some of the
    people were taken away and arrested. There are hundreds of
    house church leaders in jail.
        And when you talk about doing things ``in concert'', does
    it sort of bother you? It bothers me, that that would be the
    case.
        Rebiya Kadeer, who is head of the Uighurs, has two children
    that are in prison and a daughter under house arrest. The
    Chinese have even spied against her here in this country. The
    Uighurs are going through a very difficult time. I think that
    should really bother the Administration.
        The 2009 Nobel Prize winner put on a dinner for Hu Jintao
    when the 2010 Nobel Prize winner was in jail and could not even
    get out to go to Oslo to get his award, and his wife was under
    house arrest and would not be allowed to go.
        That, I think, troubles me. I would hope it would trouble
    the Administration and produce more than just a press release
    or a spokesman at the State Department saying something. Your
    actions make all the difference.
        President Reagan called the Soviet Union an evil empire.
    President Reagan went to Moscow with Gorbachev and he spoke out
    for human rights and religious freedom with Gorbachev there at
    that time.
        The reason I ask you with regard to the People's Liberation
    Army is that they also run a major organ donor program. They go
    into prisons and take the blood type, and then they also bring
    people over who want to buy kidneys for fifty or fifty-five
    thousand dollars. For fifty or fifty-five thousand dollars, you
    can buy a kidney of somebody who is executed by the People's
    Liberation Army that you would have this kumbaya relationship
    with.
        Now, that ought to bother anyone. That ought to bother the
    President. It ought to bother you. I have been there. I have
    been to Tibet. I snuck into Tibet with a young Buddhist monk
    and I have seen what they have done, torturing the Buddhist
    monks. We went by Drapchi Prison.
        The Administration initially would not even meet with the
    Dalai Lama. That should bother you. The Dalai Lama is a
    peaceful person. And what is taking place with regard to the
    Tibetans, they literally turned Lhasa into a no longer Tibetan
    city. The Chinese run it and are trying to undertake ethnic
    cleansing.
        And, lastly, should it not bother you about this
    cooperation with the number one supporter of genocide? I was
    the first member of the House to go Darfur. There is genocide
    in Darfur. The genocide in Darfur continues to this day.
        The AK-47s and the weapons, much of that has come because
    of the Chinese helping the Bashir Government, which is under
    indictment by the International Criminal Court. Here is a man
    who is under indictment by the International Criminal Court and
    his number one support is the Chinese Government. They have the
    largest embassy in Khartoum.
        So as you say ``in concert with'', doesn't that bother you?
    Or is it the Simon and Garfunkel theory--man hears what he
    wants to hear and disregards the rest?
        We cannot disregard the Catholic Bishops that are in jail
    or under house arrest, the Protestant Pastors that are under
    house arrest, the organ donor program where they are killing
    people to sell kidneys, the persecution of the Muslims and the
    Uighurs in that portion of the country. We cannot deny what
    they are doing with regard to the genocide.
        I was with two young women who told me as they were raped
    by the Janjaweed that circle the camps in Darfur, many of them
    carry weapons coming from China. You cannot separate this out.
    I cannot separate it out. And this Administration should not
    separate it out.
        When you look at the human rights report that just came
    out, this Administration does not have a very good record. When
    you say you want to work ``in concert'', it is almost like you
    are talking about Norway or England or something like that.
        And, lastly, and you should know and you should have been
    out to the cyber center before, China is spying against us and
    stealing economic information that is stripping this country
    and taking jobs away. So I am not going to ask you if it
    bothers you. It bothers me.
        I believe in doing what Ronald Reagan did with regard to
    the Soviet Union--standing up, speaking out. When I asked
    Secretary Locke the other day whether he would agree to
    attend--not worship, but attend--a house church, he would not
    even tell me that he would attend the church, go with a
    Buddhist and stand with him, go, meet, and ask to meet with
    Rebiya Kadeer's kids who are in prison, go and ask to talk to
    the Catholic Bishops that are under house arrest, talk to the
    Protestant Pastors who have taken away, advocate on behalf of
    the people that are being ethnicly cleansed in Darfur.
        So I am not going to ask you if it bothers you, but it
    bothers me. And as long as I have breath in me, we will talk
    about this. We will deal with this issue whether it be a
    Republican administration or a Democratic administration. It is
    fundamentally immoral.
        I saw those two young girls that I interviewed. And if you
    want to see the tape, come by my office. They said as they were
    raped by Janjaweed, the Janjaweed said it was to create lighter
    skinned babies.
        The Chinese Government is the number one supporter of the
    genocidal government of Sudan, and these are all facts. And if
    you want to get briefed on the facts, we can give you the
    briefing of the facts.
        So you say ``in concert with'' like you're talking about
    working in concert with Mr. Culberson, or with Mr. Yoder, not
    in concert with somebody that is fundamentally evil. You can do
    it. This Administration can do it in an appropriate way.
    President Reagan, to his credit, called the USSR the evil
    empire in 1983. He said ``tear down this wall''.
        And then, if you recall his speech at the Danilov
    Monastery, he advocated for human rights and religious freedom.
    Yet, he did it in such a way that at the funeral for Ronald
    Reagan, Gorbachev came. This Administration is failing on this
    issue. And I think people are expecting you to advocate, to
    stand up, to speak out. And, quite frankly, we are not seeing
    that.
        When I hear you say you will work in concert with China, I
    am not going to ask you if it bothers you, but it bothers me.
        Dr. Holdren. Mr. Chairman----
        Mr. Wolf. You can comment.
        Dr. Holdren [continuing]. May I comment, please?
        Mr. Wolf. Yes.
        Dr. Holdren. I want to say first of all, it does trouble
    me. It does bother me. And I need to say as well, Chairman
    Wolf, that I admire you for the leadership that you have shown
    in calling attention to human rights abuses in China. I admire
    you for that. And I agree with you that these abuses are
    reprehensible.
        I would only remind you that when Ronald Reagan called the
    Soviet Union the evil empire, he also continued cooperation
    with the Soviet Union in science and technology domains that we
    judged were in the U.S. national interest to cooperate with
    them on. And we continued to do that not because we were doing
    a favor to the Soviet Union, which President Reagan had called
    the evil empire. We did it because it was in our interest.
        And I would similarly say that the efforts that we are
    undertaking to do things together with China in science and
    technology are very carefully crafted to be efforts that are in
    our own national interest. We have been, I think, very
    strategic about that, very careful about that.
        I mentioned the kinds of areas in which we are engaged.
    That does not mean that we admire the Chinese Government. It
    does not mean that we are blind to the human rights abuses
    which you have shown so much leadership in calling attention
    to.
        But it is, I have to say, it is not my position, I am the
    science and technology advisor, I am not advising the President
    on what his stance should be in balancing the various national
    interests that the United States has at stake in the way we
    deal with China.
        You understand very clearly, I know, probably more clearly
    than I do, that those interests are complicated. And the
    President obviously is not making that balance in the same way
    that you would make it. But I think this is a matter that is
    very worthy of continuing discussion.
        I would be happy to come to your office and look at that
    tape, but I am not the person who is going to be whispering in
    the President's ear on what our stance toward China should be
    government to government except in the domain where I have the
    responsibility for helping the President judge whether
    particular activities in science and technology are in our
    national interest or not.
        Mr. Wolf. Mr. Fattah.
        Mr. Fattah. Thank you very much.

                MAKING SUFFICIENT INCREASES IN SCIENCE SPENDING

        And I join with you in your admiration for the chairman and
    his efforts in relationship to human rights.
        Let me get to some of the issues at hand relative to
    science and technology.
        Portugal is involved in a financial bailout due to some of
    the challenges that they are facing, but they also took a
    decision to provide laptops to every child in schools in
    Portugal.
        And Singapore has invested over $5 billion in their
    National Science Foundation.
        China made a decision a few years back to build 100 science
    only universities and some 200 math and science laboratories.
    And five years later, they were constructed and built.
        I want to just go back a minute. Decades ago during the
    Cold War, we built national laboratories like Los Alamos and
    Lawrence Livermore and Sandia and on and on and on, made very
    significant investments. The country went into debt even to
    make commitments so that our country could be number one in the
    world in terms of our technological capabilities.
        This Administration has called on the Nation again to make
    these investments even in difficult financial times. You do
    that in the context of a freeze on discretionary spending, but
    increases in the various accounts of agencies that were focused
    on in the report on the Gathering Storm, focused on in the
    America COMPETES Act.
        So I just want you to kind of walk through this. You were
    chair of the PCAST during the Clinton administration, and there
    has been this proposal to create 1,000 STEM schools, 800
    elementary, I believe, 200 high schools, and a number of other
    steps, and if you could just kind of walk through for the
    committee what you see as the critical investments that we need
    to make now.
        If you get on a plane now and fly out to Sandia, you see an
    institution in which we have invested for 50 plus years, right?
    I mean, what are the investments we need to make now so that
    long after we are no longer in these roles America is number
    one, because we seem to be acting as if we are going to lead
    this world on the cheap? We have this notion that we are going
    to kind of cut our way to the front of the line.
        And I want to be certain, since you are the lead science
    advisor to the President and you see what is going on across
    the globe in which countries smaller than us--I asked some of
    our officials how a country so much smaller than us could make
    such a significant investment in particular technologies. And I
    was told that their leadership had decided that even if they
    had to eat dirt, they were going to lead the world in that
    particular area.
        I do not know that we remember the sacrifices that other
    generations have made to position our country in the lead. We
    benefitted by that. But I want to know what steps we need to
    take in responsibility to our stewardship of this country so
    that our children and grandchildren will be in a circumstance
    in which we are number one.
        Dr. Holdren. Well, thank you, Ranking Member Fattah. Let me
    answer as best I can a couple of parts of your question.
        First of all, you referred to our national laboratories. We
    have by far the strongest national laboratory system in the
    world. Nobody else has capabilities close to the capabilities
    of our national labs and that is because we have continued to
    invest in those laboratories since the initial investments we
    made to set them up.
        Second point, we have the strongest research universities
    in the world, again by far. Nobody is even close. There are a
    few universities in the UK, maybe one in Japan, maybe one in
    China that are even in the top 25. That list is completely
    dominated by U.S. universities.
        Our task in both of those domains, the strength of our
    national laboratories and the strength of our research
    universities, is to maintain that strength, nourish it, and
    expand it. And that is the basis for the President's proposal
    to double the budgets of the basic research institutions in
    this country that provide so much of the support for those
    universities and for those national laboratories, the DoE
    Office of Science, the National Science Foundation in
    particular.
        The other major component, there are two other major
    components which I have alluded to of our strength in science,
    technology, and innovation that we need to pay attention to.
    One is the private sector.
        And what has happened in the private sector is some of the
    great research laboratories that the private sector used to
    maintain have been downsized, they have been fragmented and
    outsourced for a variety of reasons having to do with the
    structure of the economy and the incentives for the private
    sector. We have to increase the incentives, as I have already
    mentioned, for the private sector to invest more in research
    and development and innovation.
        And we have to invest more in the mechanisms by which
    discovery is transferred out of the national laboratories and
    the great research universities into marketable and successful
    products in the economic marketplace.
        One of the ways that is happening in the Obama
    administration is the energy hubs that the Department of Energy
    has stood up. Three of them have been stood up. We propose to
    stand up three more. And those hubs involve the interaction of
    national laboratories, research universities, and corporations
    to bring to bear their diverse comparative advantages on this
    challenge of translating discovery into jobs, into products,
    into new businesses in the marketplace.
        As we get better at that, that will prove to be one of the
    crucial dimensions of maintaining our economic standing in the
    world, maintaining the jobs we need, and maintaining our
    competitive position against competitors like China.
        The last element that we need to pay attention to is STEM
    education--science, technology, engineering, and math
    education. The President has said on a number of occasions that
    he believes the single most important thing we could do for the
    future of our country is to lift the level of our game in STEM
    education, particularly K through 12 STEM education.
        You mentioned PCAST, the President's Council of Advisors on
    Science and Technology. We provided the President with a report
    on what needs to be done to improve K through 12 STEM education
    some months ago. And one of the things we argued in that report
    is we need equal measures of emphasis on inspiration and on
    preparation. We need to inspire more kids to go into science
    and engineering and math and innovation and we need to do a
    better job of preparing them and keeping them there and keeping
    them successful in those pursuits once they get there.
        That is a large part of what the President's educate to
    innovate initiative is about which he announced originally in
    November of 2009 with at that time over half a billion dollars
    in private sector and philanthropic support for efforts in
    which national laboratories, corporations, and universities
    would provide real life scientists and engineers and
    mathematicians to go into classrooms and work with teachers to
    improve the curriculum, to develop more hands-on activities and
    experiments so kids could learn about science and engineering
    by doing it rather than just by being lectured about it.
        And so they would have more role models of both genders of
    every ethnicity to establish in real human terms what exciting
    and interesting careers are available to kids who pursue
    science and engineering and math.
        We have got to get better at that. That is probably, of the
    four pillars of continuing strength, the research universities
    and national laboratories, the private sector, the capacity to
    translate between discovery and applied innovation in the
    marketplace and STEM education, STEM education is I think the
    one and the President thinks is the one that requires the most
    additional effort to bring us up to speed. You see it in the
    international test scores. You see it in other measures and,
    yet, we also have fantastic examples of creativity and
    accomplishment in our young people.
        If you go to the Intel science talent search finalists
    dinner and look at their displays as I have every year since
    coming into this position, if you meet with the middle school
    mathletes who have won national mathematics competitions, we
    have got some incredibly bright kids out there. We just have to
    do a better job of nurturing more of them, inspiring more of
    them, and preparing them when they get into these fields.
        Mr. Fattah. Thank you.

                  STEM EDUCATION AT THE TERMINAL DEGREE LEVEL

        And you are absolutely right that we need help at every
    level. And I just commented in the congressional record and it
    is a very significant effort by ExxonMobil in terms of the
    national math and science initiative and a hundred plus million
    dollar commitment.
        But let me talk to you not about K to 12 STEM education,
    but at the terminal degree level. We have a dearth of American
    citizens of any stripe pursuing terminal degrees in the hard
    sciences.
        What can you tell us about why this is a continuing
    challenge and what are your recommendations as it relates to
    the President and his budget to address this issue? We have a
    number of entities under the jurisdiction of the subcommittee
    that are involved in efforts in this regard, so I would be very
    interested in your thoughts.
        When we look at people pursuing terminal degrees in nuclear
    physics or computer information science or any of the hard
    sciences, we are challenging ourselves in terms of the critical
    skills that are going to be necessary.
        And just, for instance, in our federal agencies, there is
    going to be a major critical skills shortage just over the
    horizon unless we prepare more young people for these roles
    just in terms of, for instance, the nuclear stockpile, our non-
    proliferation work, I mean, just across a whole range of
    issues.
        So I would be interested in your comments.
        Dr. Holdren. Well, again, thank you for the very good
    question. I would say a couple of things about it.
        Number one, the number of people who pursue and complete
    terminal degrees in science and engineering and math is
    deficient for a couple of reasons. One is too few people
    entering these programs. And the second reason is losing too
    many along the way.
        And the reasons we have too few entering the programs are
    largely the reasons I just talked about, deficiencies in our
    inspiration and preparation and the combination of those at the
    K through 12 level. So too many kids who have the talent and
    potentially the curiosity and the excitement to excel in these
    fields decided to excel in something else.
        But a further problem and a very important problem is too
    many people who enter college with the idea of majoring in math
    or engineering or science transfer into other fields along the
    way because they become bored, they become disenchanted. The
    way they are taught science and engineering and math at the
    university level is not what it needs to be to keep them
    inspired and engaged.
        And on that particular topic, I have a couple of assurances
    to offer you. One is that my associate director for Science,
    the Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman, has focused most of his
    attention since getting the Nobel Prize not on doing more Nobel
    Prize-level physics but on understanding better what works and
    what does not work in college-level education in science and
    engineering and math.
        And Wieman and his colleagues in that pursuit have
    developed some very important research findings that establish
    that it is quite practical to improve by a factor of two or
    more the success of college science, math, and engineering
    teaching both in terms of how much the students actually learn
    and in terms of how excited they stay about what they are
    doing.
        And we are currently conducting a new PCAST study looking
    at the first two years of college education which is where you
    lose most of these folks to figure out how to apply these new
    research findings and specific programs which will cause them
    to spread.
        And I have already spoken and Carl Wieman has spoken with
    the presidents of many of our research universities who are
    equally excited about the possibility of doing much better at
    this part of the effort, of keeping kids, young people engaged
    in science and engineering and math in college pursuing those
    goals in those fields, doing it more successfully, staying more
    excited, and addressing that particular problem.
        Mr. Fattah. Well, I am going to wrap up with just two more
    questions on this point. But one of the ways that we solved
    this problem in the past, because this problem has been with us
    for a while, is that we had foreign-born students to actually
    dominate many of these programs in the hard sciences at our
    great universities here in America and many of them would end
    up staying. And they would become citizens and they would have
    the terminal degrees. And our industry would have the
    intellectual genius necessary to go forward.
        But now you have students who end up getting the degree who
    are going back to their native countries and being part of what
    is essentially the economic competition to our country long
    term.
        So we have a number of challenges and we have to get more
    American-born students to pursue hard science degrees and we
    also need to keep talent that is coming to America for an
    education. We need to try to hold on to more of that talent to
    the degree that that is possible.

                    SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHALLENGES

        So I am interested, and I will end here, as you look at the
    broad spectrum of work, and your testimony touches on a number
    of issues, and we have obviously a range of challenges, but as
    the lead science and technology advisor to the President, if
    you could just comment in more general terms about what you see
    as the Nation's most pressing scientific and technological
    related challenges over the near-term horizon of the next 10
    and 20 years that you believe we should be focusing on here in
    the Congress and in terms of our priorities relative to
    appropriations.
        Dr. Holdren. Well, again, another good and rather sweeping
    question. Let me say a couple of things about it.
        First of all, in terms of students from other countries who
    graduate in science and math and engineering from our
    universities, as you say correctly, some of them do go back to
    their home countries. That is not in itself entirely bad for
    the United States to have highly educated people going back who
    have experienced the advantages of the economic and political
    system of the United States.
        It is one of the ways over the long run that we work to
    change the economic and political cultures in those countries
    because a lot of these students become leaders in their
    countries and their views about the United States and how we do
    things become very important.
        But it is also important that we not make it too difficult
    for those who would like to stay to do so. And in some respects
    in our visa policies I am afraid we have done that. We are
    looking at our visa policies to see if there are modifications
    that would make it easier for those foreign born students who
    do want to stay in the United States and who have been educated
    in science and engineering and math in our universities, make
    it easier for them to pursue that choice to stay and apply
    their talents in this country because we have gotten great
    benefits from the talents of foreign-born students who have
    decided to stay.
        You also asked me what the great challenges are. I mean,
    clearly a structural challenge is that part of the problem of
    inspiration and keeping students in these fields is having them
    confident that there will be exciting and interesting jobs
    available for them to take up after they graduate.
        And that again is a matter of ensuring that the private
    sector makes the investments that they should be making, that
    we make the investments and the private sector makes the
    investments in science and technology infrastructure. That
    includes information technology, high-speed computing. It
    includes infrastructure in space which we use for
    communications, for geopositioning, and for many other
    purposes. We have to continue making the investments if the
    jobs are going to be available for those students to engage in.
        In terms of substantive challenges, what are the things
    that we really need to be getting right in science and
    technology going forward? I mean, clearly a huge substantive
    challenge is in the domain of how do we strengthen
    manufacturing again in this country? What can we do with nano-
    tech, with info-tech, with bio-tech, with the intersection of
    those to develop a much stronger manufacturing sector again in
    this country?
        And that is something that we are spending a lot of time
    looking at jointly with the National Economic Council and in
    concert with many of the high-tech CEOs and leaders in this
    country and in the research universities and the national
    laboratories. How do we apply these rapidly advancing
    scientific developments in the domains I have mentioned to
    translate them into new industries, into new jobs?
        In terms of another substantive focus that is going to be
    immensely important, it is what I would describe as the energy-
    economy-environment intersection. We need affordable and
    reliable energy to fuel our economy, but we need to get it in
    ways that do not imperil our national security in the way our
    very heavy dependence on imported oil from unstable regions
    does today. We need to get it in ways that do not imperil our
    environment.
        There are tremendous technological challenges and
    opportunities at this intersection of energy, economy, and
    environment in which we need to be the leaders. We need to be
    the leaders in new battery technology. We need to be the
    leaders in fuel cell technology. We need to be the leaders in
    smart grid technology.
        And, again, these are challenges, but they are also
    enormous opportunities that can constructively occupy a lot
    more graduates of science and engineering and mathematics from
    our great universities than we are generating now.
        Mr. Fattah. Thank you very much.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Wolf. Thank you.
        Mr. Culberson.
        Mr. Culberson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

        COMPLIANCE WITH CHINA LANGUAGE FROM FISCAL YEAR 2011, CONTINUED

        Dr. Holdren, I noted in your response to Chairman Wolf's
    questions that the Administration has decided that any
    negotiations that the President conducts are an exemption to
    the policy adopted by Congress.
        Dr. Holdren. I have to say first of all Congressman
    Culberson, I am not a lawyer.
        Mr. Culberson. Right.
        Dr. Holdren. But I have been advised by our counsel and
    consultation with the Department of Justice that we must take
    care not to infringe the President's constitutional authorities
    in relation to the conduct of foreign relations, and diplomacy
    in particular.
        Mr. Culberson. I am always astonished in the time that I
    have been here that the number of administration officials who
    forget that the President's responsibilities under the
    Constitution are actually very narrow, and in fact are limited
    to: the President is the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, shall
    have the power to make treaties, and shall have power to fill
    up vacancies. That is it.
        It will be the chief executive officer of the United
    States, and chief executive officer means to execute the laws
    enacted by Congress, and the Congress just enacted and the
    President just signed into statutory law an absolute, ironclad,
    unambiguous requirement that none of the funds made available
    by the Congress to the Administration may be used for NASA or
    your office to develop, design, plan, promulgate, implement, or
    execute a bilateral policy program, order, or contract of any
    kind to participate, collaborate, or coordinate bilaterally in
    any way with China or any Chinese-owned company unless that
    activity is specifically authorized by statute and enacted
    after the date of enactment of this law.
        It is not ambiguous, it is not confusing, but you just
    stated to the chairman of this committee that you and the
    Administration have already embarked on a policy to evade and
    avoid this very specific and unambiguous requirement of law if,
    in your opinion, it is in furtherance of the negotiation of a
    treaty, right?
        Dr. Holdren. Well, Congressman, I say again.
        Mr. Culberson. It is exactly what you just said. I don't
    want to hear about you not being a lawyer. If you are----
        Dr. Holdren. Okay, as long as that is----
        Mr. Fattah. Can we let the witness answer the question,
    please.
        Dr. Holdren. What I have been informed is that a variety of
    opinions, previous signing statements and other legal documents
    have found that the President has exclusive constitutional
    authority to determine the time, the scope, and the objectives
    of international negotiations and discussions as well as the
    authority to determine the preferred agents who will represent
    the United States in those diplomatic exchanging.
        Mr. Culberson. Okay.
        Dr. Holdren. And I have been informed similarly----
        Mr. Culberson. Okay.
        Dr. Holdren [continuing]. And I am not qualified to
    dispute----
        Mr. Culberson. You are just following orders.
        Dr. Holdren [continuing]. Or argue with you about what I
    have been advised that as a result of those exclusive
    constitutional authorities that have been asserted to me by
    people who are lawyers and who work in this domain that the
    provision of the legislation, which you just read, should not
    be read to restrict activities that support those
    constitutional authorities.
        Now you can argue that with me till the cows come home, but
    I will lose, I am not a lawyer, I don't know how to argue that
    point.
        Mr. Culberson. Oh, no, I am not arguing about it legally,
    this is just common sense and it is plain English. And all of
    your money flows through this committee.
        Dr. Holdren. I understand. I understand that.
        Mr. Culberson. I just laid out for you they are now evading
    the law just enacted by Congress.
        Essentially, obviously the White House's position is that
    any activity that your office engages in or any division of the
    executive branch engages in with China or any Chinese-owned
    company is obviously going to be classified as being in
    furtherance of negotiations involving treaty responsibilities
    of the President in the Constitution.
        I mean you just laid out for us very clearly how you intend
    to evade the very explicit and unambiguous law enacted by
    Congress. It is very distressing and you are not likely to--I
    mean you need to remember that the Congress enacts these laws
    and it is the chief executive office's job to execute those
    laws, and this is unambiguous.
        Your office cannot participate, nor can NASA in any way, in
    any type of policy, program, order, or contract of any kind
    with either China or any Chinese-owned company.
        Now if any employee of yours, if you or anyone in your
    office or anyone at NASA participates, collaborates, or
    coordinates in any way with China or any Chinese-owned company
    you are in violation of the statute, and frankly not only are
    you endangering your funding, you are endangering--I mean this
    is not only--it is a direct violation of law and it is up to
    the chairman and this committee to decide how to enforce or
    frankly to--what remedies are available for what is obviously
    the--your intent to violate this-- the Administration's intent
    to violate this law.
        Dr. Holdren. Congressman Culberson, I----
        Mr. Culberson. You have a huge problem on your hands.
        Dr. Holdren. I hear----
        Mr. Culberson. Huge.
        Dr. Holdren. I hear you very clearly. It is not our
    intention to evade this law as you say, we intend to comply
    with it insofar as it does not infringe on the constitutional
    authorities that I have been advised exist.
        Mr. Culberson. I understand.
        Dr. Holdren. I said we would review on a case-by-case basis
    activities with China as to whether they are precluded by this
    legislation or not, and we will inform the committee, as the
    chairman has asked, of those considerations.
        But I am very much aware that there are many activities
    that we would have carried out with China or might have carried
    out with China that will be precluded by this, that do not fall
    under the President's constitutional authorities with respect
    to diplomatic relations with other countries.
        Mr. Culberson. The President's responsibilities for
    negotiating treaties with other countries are obviously set
    out. I mean he has got that responsibility set out in the
    Constitution, but the scope, the extent, the deal, the manner
    in which he conducts those negotiations are what officers of
    the executive branch are authorized to do.
        Now, frankly, the existence of your office--you are a
    creature of statute. Every officer in the executive branch was
    created by a statute, by Congress, and funded through this
    committee, so the scope of the President's responsibilities
    again are all designed by statute. You have now got a statute
    that preempts every other statute on the books.
        Now I am a good enough lawyer and practice enough in court
    to know that what you have just given us from the chief
    counsel's office is very revealing, Mr. Chairman, because
    obviously the White House is now going to engage in a--rather
    they have obviously identified a way to evade the intent of
    Congress, and are obviously going to try to classify anything
    you are doing with China as in pursuit of a treaty, but that is
    not going to fly.
        It has been signed into law, and the limitation that the
    Congress enacted preempts every other statute of the books, it
    is a long standing rule, and this one again is just common
    sense, that a law that you pass today that is, for example,
    very specific in regard to a particular subject, not only does
    a law passed today preempt every other law passed before it,
    but number two, particularly if the law today that is very
    specific, it deals with a particular subject, that absolutely
    preempts every other law passed before it, and that is just a
    general rule.
        In this case it is even more specific, and this is not
    legal, it is just common sense, Dr. Holdren, that you can't
    participate, collaborate, or coordinate in any way with China
    or any Chinese-owned company unless that activity is
    specifically authorized by a law enacted after the date of
    enactment of this division.
        So you need to tell the lawyers, the General Counsel's
    Office what you just read to us now threatens their funding. I
    am a pretty good lawyer, and I can think of lots of ways to
    help the chairman of this committee and other subcommittees
    enforce the law. I mean it doesn't have to be just lawsuits,
    there are a thousand ways to enforce the law, all kinds of
    creative ways to enforce the law. I mean the law is essentially
    what--you know, the law is meaningless unless it is enforced,
    and it doesn't have to be just through a judge.
        Trust me, the chairman of this committee and the
    Appropriations Committee is charged with enforcing the law.
    What you just read to me endangers, frankly, your funding, and
    the Office of General Counsel's funding. I intend to go after
    all of them in every division of the White House.
        You have just opened the door for me, and I think it is
    very revealing. You just gave us a peek behind the curtain. You
    are obviously not going to pay any attention to this law if the
    General Counsel's Office tells you that this activity that you
    are engaged in, Dr. Holdren, or your subordinate, is in
    furtherance of a treaty. You have just told us you can go right
    ahead and do it.
        Dr. Holdren. What I have said, Congressman Culberson, it is
    not our intention to declare that every activity in which we do
    or might engage with China falls under the category that is
    within the President's exclusive constitutional authority. That
    is not our intention.
        And I am sure that this provision, as long as it stays in
    force, and I must admit I am very hopeful that when the next
    round of appropriations comes there will not be a similar
    restriction in it because it will be restricting. It will be
    restricting. There is no question about it.
        Mr. Culberson. So not every activity.
        Dr. Holdren. It will be restricting.
        Mr. Culberson. Not every activity is going to be cut off.
    And so clearly you are already beginning to identify some.
        I just think it is very distressing and disturbing. Not
    only does it ignore the intent of Congress, but you are also
    blindly ignoring the threat posed by China.
        I heard you respond earlier to questions from the chairman
    that you took your BlackBerry to China. Do you know that Google
    executives, and frankly no executive of any company I know,
    will permit their employees to take their cell phones or iPads
    or whatever to China. Google actually requires that their
    employees--the only thing they can take is a stripped down
    notebook that has a web browser on it, and then when they
    return the machine is destroyed.
        Dr. Holdren. Uh-huh.
        Mr. Culberson. Do you know about that? You nodded your
    head. You are familiar with that.
        Dr. Holdren. No, I do know about that, sir.
        Mr. Culberson. Do you know about the National Security
    Agency and the policy of the United States military not to
    permit any U.S. military officer or any government official,
    and I think it is even true, Mr. Chairman, of the State
    Department, I think you serve on the committee with Kay
    Granger, I don't believe anybody from the State Department
    takes a PDA or a wireless computer device of any kind into
    China. You sync your BlackBerry at the White House don't you?
        Dr. Holdren. Sir, I am not sure what the State Department
    does, but the policies of the White House in this regard have
    certainly been vetted with our security agencies, and I suspect
    the reason for a difference between what Google requires and
    what the White House requires is that we have greater
    confidence in the technical abilities of the people who are
    working for the Administration in the security domain to make
    these devices secure. If that judgment is misplaced and we
    learn about it clearly we will correct it.
        But again, it is my understanding that the experts,
    including experts in the NSA and the FBI and the expertise
    available to our intelligence community in this domain, is that
    we can make these devices safe for us to use in China.
        And again, you know, you are outside my domain of specific
    expertise. The advice I am getting on this from people who are
    experts is that we can safely do this, and so we do.
        Mr. Culberson. Your BlackBerry syncs wirelessly or do you
    sync it at the White House with a hard plug in?
        Dr. Holdren. No, it syncs wirelessly.
        Mr. Culberson. Okay. Well, Mr. Chairman, I know you are
    going to help educate Dr. Holdren on what obviously everybody
    else in the government knows, and that is you don't take
    wireless devices into China. The extent of the espionage, the
    aggressive attempts by the Chinese to penetrate the U.S.
    government and private companies with cyber attacks is
    something you, as a science advisor, ought to know better than
    anybody else, and I am frankly very disappointed, disturbed to
    hear that you already found a way, in your opinion, to evade
    the law enacted by Congress, and that you are also obviously
    indifferent to or unaware of the aggressive attempts by China
    to go after the United States in stealing our technology in
    cyber attacks. It is just very disturbing, Mr. Chairman, and
    you have been very gracious.
        I will save my other questions for the next round.
        Mr. Wolf. Mr. Schiff.
        Mr. Schiff. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Thank you, Doctor, for being here. I just want to echo a
    couple comments you made earlier in terms of the situation with
    graduates of institutions of higher learning who can't stay in
    the country.
        Caltech is in my district, as you know, and it is a cause
    of great concern for me that we have these very bright people
    come to Caltech from all over the world that get advanced
    degrees in math, science, and engineering, they want to stay,
    they want to start a business, they want to hire Americans, and
    we boot them out of the country. They then go elsewhere and
    compete with us.
        And while I acknowledge there is certainly a benefit in
    having bright people educated in America in other countries,
    there is an even greater advantage in keeping them here to help
    grow our economy, and I have been working on legislation that
    would provide for those that graduate with advanced degrees in
    math, science, and engineering who want to start a business and
    hire five Americans we should give them a green card and
    encourage them to do that.

            SUPPORTING LARGE RESEARCH FACILITIES AND INFRASTRUCTURE

        I wanted to ask you a comment on something. Having access
    to cutting edge research facilities is increasingly important
    to our Nation's ability to make game changing discoveries.
    Given the increase in cost to build and operate these
    facilities around the globe we often now have to work with
    partners to keep costs down. Increasingly the construction of
    these large facilities, such as the 30-meter telescope in
    Hawaii, not only require non-federal contributions, but also
    sophisticated international collaboration. Important
    international partners need to understand U.S. plans are going
    forward to ensure that we get the most bang for our buck and
    that U.S. scientists are participating and having access to
    these cutting edge facilities.
        In what ways are the White House and the Office of Science
    and Technology Policy leveraging international and non-federal
    funding commitments for large facilities sponsored by federal
    agencies such as NSF, NASA, and the Department of Energy?
        Does OSTP actively work with federal research agencies to
    spur negotiations to ensure that proper planning, design, and
    development can occur?
        Dr. Holdren. Well, thank you, Congressman Schiff. The
    answer is yes, on all counts. That is OSTP does have the lead
    responsibility in the White House for working with all of the
    science and technology rich agencies in what they do jointly
    with other counties and in international collaborations,
    including ITER, the International Thermal Experimental Reactor,
    including international high energy physics experiments,
    includes the astronomical kinds of facilities you are talking
    about.
        We have as one of our four divisions, the Division of
    National Security and International Affairs, which has within
    it the responsibility, and a number of people work in that
    domain very specifically to work with the DoE, with the NSF,
    with NOAA, with NASA on the development and implementation of
    cooperative efforts, which as you point out are enormously
    important.
        Mr. Schiff. Let me ask you another question related to my
    first comment in terms of the visa situation.

                      INSPIRING INTEREST IN STEM EDUCATION

        Over the years I have brought a great many astronauts to my
    district to meet with middle school students, and I brought an
    astronaut to a middle school in Pasadena, one of the lowest
    performing schools in my congressional district. He was
    particularly good with the kids. They all are very good, but he
    was particularly good.
        He had a bunch of NASA patches in his trouser pocket that
    he offered to give the kids if they could get certain questions
    right. They had to earn the patches. And the first question he
    asked kind of bugged me because I got the math wrong. He said
    that----
        Dr. Holdren. You didn't get a patch?
        Mr. Schiff. I did not get a patch. I was lucky I didn't put
    my hand up.
        The question was when he is on the shuttle he orbits the
    earth every hour and a half, how many sunrises and how many
    sunsets would he see in a 24-hour day?
        I didn't think it was that difficult a math problem, but
    the students who are all middle school students, you know,
    guessed eight, guessed six, guessed twelve, and then one child
    put up his hand, and I think the correct answer was thirty-two,
    which was--when at the astronaut reached to take out a patch
    and give it to him I realized that the answer I had was wrong,
    I was off by four, and I spent I think the rest of the
    presentation figuring out----
        Dr. Holdren. Trying to figure it out.
        Mr. Schiff [continuing]. Why I got the math wrong. It
    really bugged me. I had to get him to explain it to me
    afterwards.
        But I wondered when he gave this to this young child
    whether that middle school student knew he was gifted.
        And you know my district is a suburban, largely middle
    income, but there are a lot of lower income families,
    particularly served by this school, and I wondered, you know,
    this kid who put up his hand among 300 other kids was clearly
    gifted to get it right, to get it right in front of 300 other
    classmates who were all guessing all over the boards, and I
    wondered whether he knew he was gifted, whether his teacher
    knew he was gifted, whether his parents knew he was gifted, and
    what the odds were that that child would make it in his
    lifetime the one mile from there to Caltech, and I thought the
    odds were probably not very good, and in some respects the odds
    of coming to Caltech from half way around the world were better
    and easier than coming from a mile away from Caltech.
        And I wonder what your thoughts are and what we could do
    about that. How do we make sure that we identify talented young
    people like that? That we give them every opportunity to make
    their way what geographically is a short distance, but in terms
    of society and everything else may be an infinite distance.
    What can we do about that?
        Dr. Holdren. Well, first of all I would say I would guess
    that the odds of that student making it the one mile to Caltech
    went up because astronaut came to that classroom, and they went
    up both because of the inspiration that that visit provided and
    because the nature of the interaction called attention to that
    kid's talent in a way that the teacher couldn't help but
    notice, and the kid probably noticed that he was able to do
    something that the other kids weren't.
        Mr. Schiff. And this Congressman wasn't able to.
        Dr. Holdren. I didn't want to mention that.
        That is one of the ideas that is behind this educate to
    innovate initiative in trying to get more real world scientists
    and engineers and mathematicians into classrooms working with
    kids. It is not just for the inspiration, but it is for the
    nature of the interactions that reveal talented kids who might
    not have known themselves how talented they were until they
    have the opportunity to engage in these kinds of interactions
    with somebody who has succeeded in these domains.
        And we have found by the way as you did in this instance
    that astronauts are enormously effective in this domain. They
    are very highly trained, they are very smart, they are very
    interesting in terms of the way they think about physical
    problems and the physical world and can relate them to kids.
        I have got so many examples that are similar to yours of
    seeing astronauts interact with kids. We had five astronauts
    when we had Astronomy Night for Kids on the White House lawn in
    October of 2009. We had Sally Ride, the first American woman in
    space. We had Mae Jemison, the first African American woman in
    space. We had Buzz Aldrin, the second person to set foot on the
    moon. We had of course Charlie Bolden, the NASA administrator.
    And we had John Grunsfeld, the Hubble repairman, the guy who
    spent 55 hours walking in space, and we had 300 kids from
    middle school. Kids who either had done particularly well in
    science and math or who had been recently rapidly improving
    their performance. That was their reward is being able to come
    to this event. And the interactions were just mind boggling.
        We had moon rocks and we had a portable planetarium, we had
    16 telescopes, but the interactions between those five
    astronauts and those 300 kids I would bet changed a lot of
    lives. I mean this is one very important way that you get it
    done, but we have to do more as your question suggests to be
    able to reach into the communities that are less well off, that
    are less likely to have parents inspiring their kids and
    teaching their kids, and we have to figure out more ways to
    make this happen.
        Mr. Schiff. Do we have a mechanism, you know, I know many
    areas have magnet schools, but do we have a mechanism to
    identify students at a very young age like this who have this
    talent and pull them into a special program?
        Dr. Holdren. We try to do it in part with science fairs,
    and as you know the President has given a lot of prominence to
    the value of science fairs and robotics competitions and math
    competitions and so on, which start at a very early age. I have
    a grandson of ten who just competed in a science fair in a
    public elementary school in Falmouth, Massachusetts where he
    lives, and it was clear to me--I was not there, but my wife
    went, my wife is a scientist as well, and she went as one of
    the people sort of observing this whole thing--and it is
    apparent that these experiences that kids have in science fairs
    in developing their own experiments and explaining them to
    people are a way in which kids of exceptional talent do get
    identified early, and then the trick is--again, your question
    goes to this--what to you do once these kids are identified by
    their teachers? How can you provide the resources needed to
    ensure that that talent get develops, that that inspiration
    continues? And we are thinking about that. We are trying to
    think about what both the limitations and the opportunities are
    associated with these kinds of competitions, which have become
    immensely popular.
        I don't know if you were able to go to the science and
    engineering fair on the mall last year, but the robotics
    displays were the ones that were most overwhelmed. The second
    most overwhelmed display--and I think 500,000 people came to
    this weekend event--but the second most overwhelmed display was
    the NASA display where they had real live astronauts meeting
    kids and talking with them.
        But the first most overwhelmed display was the robotics
    where kids were dealing in hands on ways with robots and being
    able to modify them and make different kinds and so on and so
    forth, and that is just a wonderful mechanism for identifying
    particular kinds of talent, and we have to figure out what the
    next steps can be.
        Mr. Schiff. Well, I would love to stay in touch with you on
    that. We have great robotic programs in my district as a result
    of Caltech. They work with a lot of our local high schools on
    robotics programs.
        But it still seems a bit haphazard what you are describing.
    It requires a student to kind of self-initiate and gravitate
    towards a science fair.
        I got the impression, although it may not be correct, that
    some of our competitor countries, they will identify these
    students through examination and then they are put in a certain
    program, track, et cetera, quite methodically to cultivate that
    talent.
        I don't know that we want to go exactly down that route,
    but it seems we may be missing a lot of our native talent.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Wolf. Thank you, Mr. Schiff. Have you seen Waiting For
    Superman?
        Dr. Holdren. I have not seen it.
        Mr. Wolf. I will get you a copy. If I do, will you watch
    it?
        Dr. Holdren. Oh, absolutely I will. I think Carl Wieman has
    already been trying to get me to watch it.
        Mr. Wolf. Have you seen it?
        Mr. Schiff. No.
        Mr. Wolf. I will get you a copy.
        I think the answer is there, and it is a very powerful
    movie. At the end, some of the young people want to get in a
    school, and the decision as to whether they will be able to do
    it is based on whether they win the lottery. They follow the
    families, and those who win the lottery are cheering. It is
    almost like a hockey game or a basketball game where the
    parents cheer because their young child gets in. Then the two
    or three who never make it go home. One is from California, and
    I will get you a copy. I will try to get it for you certainly
    by the time to go home for the recess, and you should watch it.
        Also, we are losing astronauts. I bumped into an astronaut
    the other day, and for the record we can check and make sure
    that what I am saying is accurate, but he told me the
    astronauts are leaving in droves based on the Administration's
    position with regard to NASA and space. We don't want to get to
    the point that we don't have any astronauts or where the
    astronauts are so rare.
        Dr. Holdren. I agree.
        Mr. Wolf. I took the NASA Administrator down to an
    intercity school in Washington, D.C., and I think every child
    deserves that opportunity ,and not just, you know, a handful.

                    NASA'S FISCAL YEAR 2012 BUDGET LOGISTICS

        With regard to the NASA budget, science investments were
    supposed to be an area of particular emphasis in the 2012
    budget request, but the emphasis seems to have been very
    unevenly applied. Agencies like NSF, NIST, and the Department
    of Energy Office of Science received significant increases, but
    NASA, the fourth largest R&D agency and one that we were all
    raving about, was held flat from 2010.
        How does a flat NASA budget reflect the Administration's
    emphasis on scientific investment?
        Dr. Holdren. Well, as you know, Mr. Chairman, NASA has a
    great many functions under its roughly $18.5 billion budget,
    and we have been trying in the Obama Administration to
    strengthen the science within that.
        We think one of the things that happened over the prior
    administration when there was a grand vision for expanding our
    activities in human exploration, but the budgets for that were
    never provided, is that the science budget suffered, and we
    have been in the process of trying to build them back up, but
    we are living as you know in an extremely difficult budget
    time.
        I mean if I were a king, NASA would have a bigger budget so
    that we would be about both to pursue a vision for advanced
    technologies to take us farther and faster in space so that we
    would be able to fund all of the earth observation that we
    really need NASA to be doing, so that we could fund all the
    looking outward that we need NASA to be doing.
        Unfortunately at this particular juncture there is not
    enough money and some difficult choices have been made.
        I said early on that while I agree with you that science
    and technology did much better in the 2010 Continuing
    Appropriations Act than nearly any other sector of government
    activity, that still doesn't mean that we are doing as well as
    those of us who are focused on the challenges and the
    opportunities in science would have liked.
        Mr. Wolf. Well, I would agree with you. The Administration
    needs to step forward and deal with the entitlement issue,
    Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. We don't want to get
    off into that subject, but the President appointed the Bowles-
    Simpson Commission, and then he walked away from their
    recommendations two different times. If he had embraced it by
    dealing with the entitlement issue, you could plus up many of
    these accounts.
        But the question was, the others had increases and NASA has
    a flat line, and that just doesn't make any sense.
        Last year, you attempted to cancel NASA's exploration
    program and were soundly repudiated by Congress. It seems like
    the Administration didn't learn its lesson, though, because
    this year's NASA budget is also unacceptable.
        You are once again proposing big increases in earth
    science, space technology, and commercial space flight, and
    paying for those increases by cutting the exploration program,
    which is budgeted at more than $1 billion below the authorized
    level.
        Why does the Administration insist on using the exploration
    program as the bank to pay for the other priorities?
        Dr. Holdren. Well, with respect, Mr. Chairman, I wouldn't
    have phrased it quite that way. I think first of all that the
    2010 Authorization Act from NASA contained much of what the
    President wanted and it also contained much of what the
    Congress wanted. I thought it was a pretty good compromise
    between positions that initially seemed to be quite far apart.
    So I didn't consider it a resounding repudiation of what the
    President wanted to do.
        With respect to the amounts of money in space exploration,
    the President's budget still funds at a very substantial level,
    the key ingredients of that, the heavy lift vehicle, the
    multiple purpose crew vehicle, but it was necessary.
        And you referred to the astronauts. It is necessary if we
    want to maintain access for U.S. astronauts to the $100 billion
    International Space Station on U.S. rockets, if we want to
    minimize the gap during which we would be dependent entirely on
    the Russian Soyuz, we absolutely have to make investments in
    commercial crew development, and at the same time we need to
    invest in those technologies, the heavy lift and the
    multipurpose crew capsules to be ready for the next step, and
    there is a balancing act involved in doing that under a budget
    cap that is lower than what one would want to pursue all of
    those goals.
        I think the President's budget made the best choices that
    NASA and the President's other advisors thought could be made
    under the circumstances, and taking into account that we were
    restrained until the recent passage of that 2011 Continuing
    Appropriations Act, we were restrained by the language in the
    2010 Appropriation's Act which heavily restrained NASA from
    moving any resources around in the Constellation Program, and
    by the time we were relieved of that constraint you weren't in
    the same position that you would have been in if throughout
    fiscal year 2011 one had had more flexibility.

                DEVELOPING NASA'S HEAVY LIFT LAUNCH CAPABILITIES

        Mr. Wolf. The NASA Administrator has been quoted several
    times saying that NASA is not going to build a 130 metric ton
    launch vehicle, which is a requirement of the authorization and
    now the fiscal year 2011 appropriations bill also.
        Between statements like that and a budget request that
    significantly underfunds the authorized exploration program it
    looks like the Administration has no regard for the legal
    requirements of the authorization.
        Do you view the lift capability requirement as legally
    binding?
        Dr. Holdren. Mr. Chairman, first of all I believe----
        Mr. Wolf. It has got to be really difficult to pick what
    you want to like. This is not a cafeteria government, it is----
        Dr. Holdren. Look, I understand that, and I believe that
    the administrator has clarified his views on that and has made
    clear subsequently. There was a statement he made in response
    to a question from a reporter that I think was at best less
    than a complete commitment to the 130 tons, but he has
    clarified that subsequently.
        I was at a meeting with him, a public session with at the
    Goddard celebrating the anniversary of Goddard's birth out in
    Maryland in which the administrator made very clear that he is
    committed to 130 tons, and I think that is a fact.
        Mr. Wolf. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you
    do view the lift capability requirement as legally binding
    then?
        Dr. Holdren. I regard it as something that we are legally
    obliged to pursue. I don't think we can necessarily legislate
    success. Ultimately we will get 130 tons. Whether we will get
    it by the date specified in the legislation that is something
    we are obliged to try to do and we will try to do it.
        But I am concerned, I know the administrator is concerned
    that sometimes what is Congress wants, however admirable, is
    not necessarily achievable under the available budgets and in
    the time available.
        So we are going to try, we are going to do everything we
    can to get this capability by the date specified, but it is
    going to be a challenge.
        Mr. Wolf. The Administration advocates for the development
    and deployment of a smaller launch vehicle, such as one with 70
    to 100 metric tons of lift. A vehicle of this size would be
    oversized for servicing the Space Station, but undersized for
    deep space exploration.
        What would the mission be for a 70 to 100 metric ton launch
    vehicle, and why would the development of the smaller vehicle
    be a useful achievement?
        Dr. Holdren. Well, I would say that is a question that goes
    beyond my expertise, and it is one that I would direct to our
    colleagues at NASA.
        I could speculate as to the value of that intermediate step
    in terms of preparing the way for the larger capability that
    ultimately we will need, and I would speculate that there are a
    variety of kinds of payloads that would fall in that range that
    would still be extremely useful to be able to get up there,
    including the possibility, should the 130 tons not be available
    by the specified date, to launch the components we need in
    pieces and put them together in orbit, but that would be
    speculation.
        I know that NASA is engaged in a detailed study of how best
    to meet the goal that the Congress has specified, and my
    understanding is that that study will be ready by mid-summer
    and will be provided to the Congress, and I think it would not
    be terribly productive for me to try to second guess what it is
    going say.
        Mr. Wolf. Well, maybe you have answered this, but I want to
    kind of lock it down so there is no misunderstanding. In
    addition to funding issues, NASA's work on the exploration
    system is being delayed by foot dragging within the
    Administration on the vehicle designs and acquisition
    strategies for the crew vehicle and the launch system.
        NASA told us that they can have these decisions made and
    communicated to the Congress by June 20th, which you are
    referencing, but we are hearing reports that others in the
    Administration want to delay that.
        Any further delay is, I believe, unacceptable and I assume
    you would agree. Will you commit to us right now that the
    exploration implementation plan will be done and submitted by
    June 20 as NASA has planned?
        Dr. Holdren. Mr. Chairman, I cannot guarantee NASA's
    performance, but I have heard no reports that anybody is trying
    to slow them down, that anybody has suggested that it would be
    acceptable to deliver that report later.
        It is my understanding that that is their goal, that that
    is their intention, and I expect they will meet it, but I can't
    guarantee you personally since I am not at NASA and not engaged
    directly in this process.
        I will certainly convey to the administrator your view as
    expressed here that that deadline is firm and it is essential
    that it be met.
        Mr. Wolf. Well, you are a very important person in this
    administration and in the space area, and we have been hearing
    that there has been some effort to urge NASA to go slowly,
    particularly since this appropriations process will then pass.
    But if you could check with the Administrator----
        Dr. Holdren. I will do that.
        Mr. Wolf [continuing]. And then get back to the Committee
    to let us know that that June 20th date will be met. I would
    appreciate it.
        Dr. Holdren. I will do that, sir.
        [The information follows:]

       Summary of Dr. Holdren's Discussion With NASA Administrator Bolden

        At the House CJS Appropriations Subcommittee on May 4, 2011,
    Chairman Wolf requested that Dr. Holdren call Administrator Bolden
    about the June 20 deadline for NASA to submit its exploration
    implementation plan to Congress.
        Response: On May 12, I talked to NASA Administrator Bolden about
    the exploration implementation plan. I stressed the importance of
    completing the exploration plan by the June 20 target date.
    Administrator Bolden confirmed that NASA is making every effort to meet
    that date.

        Mr. Wolf. With the funding levels proposed in the
    President's budget, NASA will be unable to meet the 2016 target
    date for initial operation of the Space Launch System and the
    Multi Purpose Crew Vehicle, which will further prolong the gap
    in our national human exploration capability.
        Aren't you concerned about the possibility of additional
    years without a NASA-owned system for getting Americans into
    space? And what do you see as the impact on our national
    prestige and security of a major delay in NASA's exploration
    program?
        Dr. Holdren. Well, first of all I am concerned about it,
    Mr. Chairman, and I am doing everything I can within the
    constraints that we are all working under to see that NASA does
    meet that target and that we minimize, as I have said before,
    that we minimize the period in which we are dependent on the
    Russian Soyuzy for transport of our astronauts to the
    International Space Station.
        I am concerned as you are by the possibility that the
    number of people interested in becoming astronauts and
    remaining astronauts will go down if we do not have assured
    means of providing access to the space station.
        We think the space station, by the way which under the
    President's proposals, would continue to operate until at least
    2020 is an enormous resource for science and for technology
    development and for the continuing inspiration of American
    young people seeing American astronauts going back and forth to
    and from the space station and operating and working and living
    there, and we want that to be a viable resource with U.S.
    astronauts getting there on U.S. rockets. That is our aim, that
    is my aim.
        Mr. Wolf. Okay. We are going to go into STEM education. I
    don't want to keep others waiting, but I want to go into STEM,
    which I am a big supporter of.
        A year or two ago, and I guess we can check the figures, 50
    percent of the money that was available for STEM grants was
    left on the table, and it was not accessed by students. You
    might want to check and see if that is accurate and then get
    back to the Committee. I would appreciate that.
        [The information follows:]

     Response to Chairman Wolf's Concern That 50% of STEM Grants Go Unspent

        At the House CJS Appropriations Subcommittee hearing on May 4,
    Chairman Wolf expressed concern that 50% of STEM grants go unspent.
        Response: Nearly all STEM programs are spending all their money,
    with these notable exceptions: The Higher Education Reconciliation Act
    of 2005 created two new need-based grant programs that complement funds
    awarded to Pell Grant recipients: Academic Competitiveness Grants (ACG)
    and National Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent (SMART)
    Grants. The former are awarded to Pell Grant recipients in their first
    and second years that completed a rigorous high school curriculum,
    while SMART Grants are given to Pell recipients in their third and
    fourth years that major in technical fields or languages vital to
    national security. Unfortunately, the number of students receiving the
    grants has been lower than estimated, resulting in the amount of funds
    available exceeding the value of grants awarded. Due to this
    unexpectedly low usage, the Department has rescinded $1.085 billion in
    total funds for the program since the 2008 fiscal year. This figure
    includes a recession of $560 million in fiscal year 2011. Both ACG and
    SMART Grants are scheduled to sunset after the end of the 2010-11
    academic year and are not scheduled to receive any additional
    appropriations.

        Secondly, you mentioned something that triggered the idea.
    We have asked the National Science Foundation to do an in-depth
    study, which they hope to have some time this summer, as to why
    young people make a decision to go into math, science, physics,
    chemistry, biology, the sciences. There seems to be some sort
    of fifth or sixth grade deciding point there, and so the
    director of the NSF is working with a number of other people to
    look at that.
        If you have any ideas for that I urge you to talk to him
    and cooperate. They hope to do a report, which we would then
    hope to get into the hands of all of the school systems.
    Because there may be somebody in some place that is doing
    something amazing, and if we could just let people know about
    it that may be kind of the silver bullet, if you will, for that
    issue. But if you could check on those two things, I would
    appreciate it.
        Dr. Holdren. I will talk with him. Dr. Subra Suresh is a
    good friend and we spend a lot of time talking about these
    matters, and I too have seen the research that indicates that
    kids actually decide very early on their trajectory, and they
    either get excited about science and math and engineering early
    or they may not get excited at all, and you are absolutely
    right, we have to work harder to understand that and to make
    sure that for the kids with that inclination and those kinds of
    abilities that they get the inspiration to make those choices.
        Mr. Wolf. Okay. With that I will just go to Mr. Aderholt.
        Mr. Aderholt. Thank you, Dr. Holdren.
        I want to follow up with chairman, just with the heavy
    lift, of course with the understanding, my understanding that
    the cost of developing a rocket with a lift of 70 tons, which
    was not fully integrated into a robust plan for completing a
    130-ton rocket, would still be about 80 percent of the cost of
    a fully integrated plan.
        The language in the CR bill for the heavy lift rocket
    indicates that it will be simultaneous development of the upper
    stage of that rocket.
        The question would be how will your office help ensure that
    NASA manages contract modification and other options to ensure
    that the law is followed for simultaneous development?
        Dr. Holdren. Congressman Aderholt, we will certainly be
    paying attention to that and working with Administrator Bolden
    and his staff to do everything we can to promote the successful
    achievement of the goals that the Congress has specified.
        I think any interest in a 70-ton rocket would be in the
    context of a fully integrated plan to get to 130 tons, and
    again, I think the administrator has clarified his views on
    that subsequent to some initial expressions which were less
    clear, and OSTP is also committed to that goal and we will work
    with NASA to try to ensure its achievement.
        Mr. Aderholt. Okay. Let me change into just another topic.

                  TORNADO DEVELOPMENT AND PREDICTION RESEARCH

        Of course as you know the southeastern part of the United
    States was hit by the series of tornados, I guess it was a week
    ago today, and I think over the course of the southeastern
    states there were approximately, and I think we are hovering
    around 350 deaths right now, actually a third of those are in
    the district that I represent, and a lot of those is just north
    of Tuscaloosa, Birmingham, that area that I represent.
        The question I have in relation to the tornados that hit.
    Do you believe that the tornado genesis, the process by which a
    tornado develops, is it the same in the humid southeastern
    United States as it is in the central plain areas of the United
    States? Go ahead.
        Dr. Holdren. Well, first of all the amount of energy
    available to tornado formation is certainly affected by the
    amount of water in the atmosphere and by the temperature of the
    atmosphere, and both have been increasing. The temperature has
    been increasing, the amount of water has been increasing. There
    are a lot of other factors that govern the formation of
    tornados, including the interaction of weather fronts as you
    know, and so it is not a simple matter of saying simply if it
    is more humid and if it is hotter we are going to have more
    tornados, but all else being equal, that is given the other
    conditions that it takes to form tornados, if there is more
    moisture in the air or more heat in the air the potential for
    powerful tornados is larger.
        Mr. Aderholt. I see. How does the budget request for your
    office or for NASA or NOAA reflect the need for research on
    these southeastern tornados, which you have indicated, you
    know, cause with more humidity and the more rain would cause?
    Does your request reflect research regarding that?
        Dr. Holdren. There is certainly considerable research in
    NOAA on that question, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
    Administration, and it is continuing.
        The other relevant factor that I think is very important in
    this case is the capacity to forecast tornados and provide
    early warning, and NOAA's budget is very important in that
    domain as well. In fact we have a particular challenge in this
    domain because the Joint Polar Satellite System, which was not
    fully funded in the 2011 is budget is essential to maintaining
    continuity of the capacity to forecast tornados.
        For all the tragedy that these tornados caused it would
    have been even larger. The loss of life could have been
    significantly larger had it not been for the amount of early
    warning that we had in large part due to the continuing
    availability and functionality of our polar-orbiting weather
    and climate satellites, and we could lose that. In fact we are
    now projecting a gap in that capability some time in the
    vicinity of 2015 because we have not made adequate investments
    to put the next polar-orbiting satellite up there.
        So this is a very important matter where the safety of our
    citizens and the budget for NOAA come together.
        Mr. Aderholt. No doubt, I mean the series of tornados that
    went through I know Alabama last Wednesday can only be compared
    to 1925, and when there were over 700 deaths, and of course I
    think a lot of that is due to the fact that the early warning
    was not there in 1925, and so, you know, the tornados that
    occurred last Wednesday could have been much worse than 700 had
    there not been that early detection, so I do understand and I
    do appreciate that.
        So okay, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Wolf. Thank you.
        Mr. Fattah.
        Mr. Fattah. Thank you.
        In this discussion about the tonnage for NASA, I am not
    sure that in the past the Congress has been so specific about
    the level of tonnage, and it is obviously challenging to think
    that as members we would be able to kind of project forward the
    science. But I think that the point is, is that where this
    requirement is in statute and if the science does not get us to
    the capacity to be able to do it then we run against a
    circumstances that would be challenging. So it will be
    interesting as we go forward.
        But I think that the focus and the direction is in the
    right--the compass is correct. That is, that we want to produce
    a heavier lift as we go forward in terms of tonnage. I don't
    know that we have the wisdom, even though we obviously put it
    in statute, to say that somehow we are going to be able to do a
    certain tonnage. But notwithstanding that it has been done and
    we will see where we go.

                  NOAA SEVERE WEATHER PREDICTIONS AND WARNINGS

        I want to shift gears a little bit to NOAA, and I note that
    you just commented on this, but in terms of the very severe
    weather that parts of our country have faced and it is very
    unfortunate about the deaths and injuries and the loss of
    property, but that whether or not given the NOAA budget
    submission in the 2012 budget whether there are issues inside
    of that budget that will be important for us to consider.
        First is the severe weather issue. So we have the tsunami
    warnings, we have the severe weather warnings, we have--a large
    part of this request has to do with satellites, and if you
    could talk a little bit about this issue it would be helpful.
        Dr. Holdren. Well, I would be happy to talk about that
    issue, although it is a vexing one.
        When this administration came into office, we were faced
    with a situation in NPOESS, the National Polar-orbiting
    Operational Environmental Satellite System, in which the
    replacements for our polar-orbiting satellite suite, which
    satellites are of great importance to our military as well as
    to civilian weather forecasting and to climate monitoring, was
    over budget----
        Mr. Fattah. If you would yield for a second.
        Dr. Holdren [continuing]. Behind schedule, and under
    performing.
        Mr. Fattah. If you will yield for a second, that is why the
    bin Laden raid was delayed for one day because of weather,
    right?
        Dr. Holdren. It does illustrate that forecasting the
    weather is extremely important to military operations, but of
    course it is extremely important as well as we understand from
    this horrible experience in the southeast, it is extremely
    important for civilian purposes as well.
        And in hurricane season our hurricane tracking capability
    is extremely important to the safety and welfare of our
    citizens, and we are very heavily dependent on this suite of
    polar-orbiting satellite for these purposes.
        I understand from the NOAA administration, Dr. Lubchenco,
    that over 90 percent of the data that we use for forecasts
    beyond 48 hours comes from these polar-orbiting satellites, and
    if we lose that capability, if it is interrupted, and
    particularly if it was interrupted for long, for that period
    the quality of our forecasts beyond 48 hours will be seriously
    degraded.
        We are going to lose that capability now it appears for a
    period of time no matter what we do because the budgets for the
    last couple years have not been adequate to keep even the
    replacement program which we worked out with fewer instruments,
    fewer satellites, but still enough to do the basic job on
    track, and we need to get that back on track in 2012.
        The President's 2012 budget makes a request that would get
    it back on track. I very much hope that we will have the
    support of the committee and the Congress as a whole in getting
    that done.

        NATIONAL CAPABILITY GAPS IN HUMAN SPACE FLIGHT AND WEATHER DATA

        Mr. Fattah. Well, let me delve into this a little bit,
    because there have been a lot of comments about the fact that
    we have to depend on the Russians to take astronauts because we
    have a gap in a space vehicle and now we have a gap in
    satellite coverage for our severe weather forecasting that is
    going to appear. And I want to go back to the decision package
    that led to these gaps.
        Now the ending of the shuttle flights was a planned
    activity well back more than a decade or so ago, and in 2004
    the final timeline was put together for the end of these
    flights. There are people in our country who believe that the
    Obama Administration decided that we are going to stop flying
    shuttle flights.
        I want you to comment on these gaps and how we got to this
    moment where we have hundreds of tornados, we have a tsunami
    that hit Japan, created a nuclear problem, but yet we are going
    to be without satellite coverage for some period of time in
    terms of checking the weather. So if you could help us
    understand how we got to this moment that would be important.
        Dr. Holdren. Well, Ranking Member Fattah, it is a
    complicated story. I could send you a timeline and would be
    happy to do that.
        [The information follows:]

        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Mr. Fattah. I would like for you to do that.
        Dr. Holdren. The essence of the matter is in part you are
    right that we have known since early in the previous
    administration that the shuttle program needed to come to an
    end. It needed to come to an end for a number of reasons, one
    of them being that this is basically 1970's technology which in
    some sense is so complicated and so fragile you see the results
    in the fraction of the time that we end up having to postpone
    launches for the safety of the astronauts, which obviously has
    to remain paramount. But it was also the case that the shuttle
    is so expensive to operate that while you are operating it you
    can't find the money in any plausible NASA budget to develop
    its replacement, and so it was recognized again already in the
    Bush Administration they made that decision that the shuttle
    would be phased out.
        And the problem was that the successor program to the
    shuttle, the Constellation Program, was going to provide both
    access to lower earth orbit and the heavier capabilities for
    deeper space missions. It never got the budgets it needed to
    stay on track, and the result was by the time we came into
    office the Constellation Program was in danger of being three
    to four times over budget, that is over the originally
    anticipated cost for those vehicles.
        And in addition, it was so far behind schedule that no
    amount of money poured into it at this point could erase the
    gap in the capacity to put American astronauts on the space
    station on U.S. rockets.
        At the same time the attempt within NASA to find enough
    money to keep Constellation on track had sapped the resources
    available for many of NASA's other programs, but we had a
    further problem. We had a problem that the NPOESS program, the
    successor program for these polar-orbiting satellites was a
    joint venture of the Department of Defense, NASA, and NOAA, and
    for a whole variety of reasons those folks were proving not to
    be playing very well together, and that contributed to delays
    and cost overruns in the NPOESS program itself, which we were
    charged when we came into office with fixing.
        I say we, I was charged in my confirmation hearing for
    fixing it and then I was charged by the President with fixing
    it because it is an interagency science and technology program
    that falls under the jurisdiction of OSTP, and we worked very
    hard with those three agencies to fix it and we figured out a
    way, we thought the best possible way to fix it in terms of
    dividing certain responsibilities more clearly between the
    Department of Defense on the one hand and NOAA and NASA on the
    other, but carrying out those responsibilities required an
    increase in NOAA's budget which they have not received.
        That is the essence of the story. I will give you a longer
    time line following this hearing, sort of the step by step of
    who did what and to whom that led us to this predicament.
        Mr. Fattah. I want to thank you, that is very illuminating
    and unfortunate, but I want the time line.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Wolf. Thank you.
        Mr. Culberson.
        Mr. Culberson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

                         CONTROL OF RARE EARTH ELEMENTS

        Dr. Holdren, I know you have published repeatedly in the
    journal Science and other science publications so I know you
    are familiar with them and read the journal Science on a
    regular basis. I am confident.
        Dr. Holdren. I am sometimes a little bit behind on my
    reading of Science because of my other responsibilities, but I
    do read it on a regular basis.
        Mr. Culberson. I can certainly sympathize. You said you
    were not aware that the People's Liberation Army had any role
    in the--or you weren't sure of the role or how far their
    tentacles extended into NASA.
        To what extent are you familiar with the role of either the
    People's Liberation Army or the Communist Party in Chinese
    universities in the way they are operated or governed?
        Dr. Holdren. Well, first of all I am aware that the PLA has
    a substantial role in the Chinese space program. I don't want
    to be misunderstood about that.
        Mr. Culberson. Okay.
        Dr. Holdren. I said I am not clear on the details of the
    extent of that role and how it works.
        Mr. Culberson. Fair enough.
        Dr. Holdren. But there is no question that the PLA has a
    role in the Chinese space program, and similarly I would be
    very surprised if the PLA didn't have some interactions with
    the Chinese university system. I am not again familiar with the
    details of how that works.
        Mr. Culberson. Or the Communist Party's involvement in
    either the space program or in their research at their
    universities.
        Dr. Holdren. Well, the Communist Party governs that
    country, and so the involvement is obviously extensive.
        Mr. Culberson. You mentioned earlier in your testimony that
    you are engaged in efforts to promote scientific and
    technological cooperation that you feel is in our best
    interests.
        And I just want to make absolutely certain you were aware--
    and I was unaware until I had seen this in the April 8th
    edition of Science--that all mainland universities in China,
    Mr. Chairman, have two leaders, the president of the university
    and the Communist Party secretary. So it is not just the space
    program. It is pervasive.
        And the reason the chairman and I keep circling back to
    this is that the Chinese have made it their national policy, it
    is their goal to make the 21st century the Chinese century, and
    they see their primary obstacle to be the United States.
        And the chairman quoted an article I think that the--was it
    the IMF, Mr. Chairman, said that about 2016 the Chinese economy
    would surpass ours?
        It is, I think, self-evident that by the--and this has, I
    think been out in the open that by 2015 the Chinese will be in
    a position militarily to announce, as I expect they would,
    their own Monroe doctrine of sorts, and that is my own personal
    supposition, Mr. Chairman, but I have run that past a number of
    folks and I think we can safely predict that some time within
    the next four to five years we will see China announce a Monroe
    doctrine for the eastern hemisphere that they have a zone of
    influence within which the United States can't and shall not
    have any influence or interference. The Malacca Straits are the
    carotid artery to the Chinese in terms of their reliance on
    foreign oil.
        The chairman also took testimony of the subcommittee from
    the Director of the National Science Foundation that in fact
    the Chinese--and I just saw an article more recently on this,
    Mr. Chairman--that the Chinese now control 97 percent of all
    rare earth elements on the planet.
        And you were quoted in this same article, Dr. Holdren, this
    is from the journal Science, March 26, 2010, that the--or
    excuse me, I'm sorry--a group of scientists had sent you a
    letter: ``last month magnet industry leaders in the United
    States sent a letter to John Holdren [. . .] calling on the
    Obama Administration to take prompt action to restore rare
    earth mining and processing in the United States and other
    western countries. The recommendations including establishing
    short-term stockpiles of rare earths critical for defense needs
    and having the U.S. Department of Energy set up a $2 billion
    loan guarantee program to help western mining companies build
    new mining and processing facilities.''
        What have you done in response to that letter and what have
    you done to protect the United States and help ensure that we
    have access to these strategically vital rare earth elements?
        Dr. Holdren. Well, thank you for those good questions,
    Congressman Culberson.
        Let me start by saying that we do understand that China
    wants to be number one. That is not surprising. We want to stay
    number one. And the things that we are recommending in the 2012
    budget are intended to keep us number one, and we have talked
    already a bit about the ingredients that will be required for
    us to stay number one.
        I have also already said I don't think any of us has a
    clear crystal ball as to when China might pass us and in what
    respects. I think China has some big internal problems, most of
    them of their own making, many of them resulting from the kinds
    of policies and practices that Chairman Wolf has been a leader
    in denouncing, and my hope is that we stay number one and that
    China does not pass us in important aspects of capability.
        I also hope that China is not in a position militarily at
    any foreseeable time to make a unilateral declaration of the
    sort that you described that would impair United States'
    interest and the United States' freedom of action.
        But with that said and turning to the rare earth element
    question, we have been aware of that issue for a long time. We
    have had in place under the leadership of the Office of Science
    and Technology Policy jointly with the National Security staff
    and the National Economic Council an interagency working group
    on the rare earth minerals that has provided briefing papers
    for the President, that has developed short-term and long-term
    strategy proposals for how to minimize this vulnerability.
        Mr. Culberson. Which are?
        Dr. Holdren. China has come to this position because they
    were able to undercut the price.
        We have considerable rare earth mineral resources in the
    United States, in Alaska, and in other parts of the United
    States, but it is a matter of not just having the resources but
    of developing the whole supply chain of not just mining, but
    processing those materials into usable forms, and we are doing
    a number of things to make that happen.
        Mr. Culberson. Such as?
        Dr. Holdren. We have developed a review of domestic and
    global policies that effect that and are looking to strengthen
    the ones that will accelerate U.S. production.
        We have been in conversation with companies and with the
    governors of the states that possess these resources on what
    they can do to accelerate the process of reviving rare earth
    mineral industries in their states.
        Mr. Culberson. Reviews and conversations.
        Dr. Holdren. Reviews and conversations. We have----
        Mr. Culberson. Something specific.
        Dr. Holdren. Well, we have the----
        Mr. Culberson. Tangible.
        Dr. Holdren. The DoE has ramped up its R&D, including
    developing a new hub on critical minerals, which as the other
    hubs have done will aim to reduce the time lag between
    discovery and innovation in universities and national
    laboratories----
        Mr. Culberson. But that is utilization of the rare earth
    elements.
        Dr. Holdren [continuing]. And getting things into the
    progress.
        Mr. Culberson. That is utilization of rare earth elements.
        Dr. Holdren. No, it is not just utilization. I'm sorry,
    sir, but it is also how we can mine them more cheaply, process
    them more efficiently, convert them into the forms that we need
    in our products more efficiently so that the Chinese will not
    be able to undercut us economically and maintain that very
    large market share that they now enjoy. It is not just a
    process focused on using them.
        Mr. Culberson. Okay. What specific tangible things have you
    done--because this is in your shop, this is your
    responsibility--to protect the United States against what is
    obviously now a monopoly of the Chinese on rare earth elements,
    which they have used already to their strategic advantage when
    one of the Chinese captains of a Chinese ship t-boned a
    Japanese ship some time last year I think, and the Japanese
    arrested the Chinese captain, who deliberately hit them, you
    remember that, and then all of a sudden the Japanese had to
    release the captain.
        Well, it turns out the Chinese had, you know, these reports
    out there that you can read them and find them, and the open
    source is that the Chinese used their monopoly on rare earth
    elements to strangle the Japanese and force them to release
    this captain.
        I mean this is a strategic threat to the United States, and
    we are really looking for what--you got this letter from the
    industry leaders last March and you have known about this for a
    long time, what specific tangible steps have you taken to
    ensure that the United States has access to rare earth elements
    from sources other than China? I am looking for some other
    nation.
        Dr. Holdren. Well, we are always talking to the
    Australians, have been talking to the Australians who have
    considerable resources of these.
        The problem, Congressman, as I mentioned, is not the
    existence of resources of these minerals in many countries
    other than China, the problem is that it is a matter of two or
    three years to develop the supply chain, and we are working
    with companies and governments to develop those supply chains
    and to do it with technologies that will enable us to compete
    with or undercut the Chinese.
        Now that is not something you can do overnight and it
    requires initially understanding the character of the problem.
    We have gotten started. We got started. We got started a year
    ago March on that effort.
        I would be happy to provide you following the hearing with
    a more detailed report on that.
        [The information follows:)

        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Mr. Culberson. Okay, please do, I know the chairman would
    be very interested.
        By the way, in your office does anyone in your office,
    anyone working with your office have any Chinese nationals
    working directly or indirectly for them or with them?
        Dr. Holdren. We of course don't have any Chinese nationals
    working in our office. To work in the Office of Science and
    Technology Policy you have to be an American citizen and you
    have to be eligible for a top secret clearance.
        Mr. Culberson. Directly or indirectly----
        Dr. Holdren. No.
        Mr. Culberson [continuing].Would anyone working with or
    that has access to your office have any Chinese nationals
    working with them directly or indirectly?
        Dr. Holdren. I am not sure, Congressman, what you mean by
    indirectly, but as the chairman has mentioned, I myself have
    traveled to China numerous times over the last several years
    and have had Chinese visitors here in connection with my
    responsibilities for conducting the Joint Commission on Science
    and Technology Cooperation with China, but we have nobody in
    our office who is a Chinese national or who is consulting for
    our office who is a Chinese national.
        Mr. Culberson. Super.

                    ADDRESSING SOCIAL ISSUES THROUGH SCIENCE

        I also wanted to ask about, if I could, I notice that when
    you were president of the AAAS that you asked that scientists
    tithe 10 percent of their time to working on your number one
    priority as AAAS president: fighting world poverty. Do you
    recall all that?
        Dr. Holdren. I recall my presidential speech in which I
    listed a number of important priorities, including fighting
    world poverty and disease, mastering the energy-economy-
    environment challenge and more.
        Mr. Culberson. Right. Did your number one priority you laid
    out for AAAS was to--and I am looking at your speech here on
    the Science website that how can science and technology help,
    what is your obligation to scientists? Number one, meeting the
    basic needs of the poor, right?
        Dr. Holdren. I believe, Congressman, I would have to
    revisit that text myself, but I listed five or six items, and I
    think I said they were not in order of importance.
        Mr. Culberson. Okay.
        Dr. Holdren. They were all important and they included
    avoiding the use of weapons of mass destruction.
        Mr. Culberson. Sure, and that----
        Dr. Holdren. They included maintaining the productivity of
    the oceans and so on.
        Mr. Culberson. Right, right.
        Dr. Holdren. And I suggested that not all scientists tithe
    10 percent of their time to reducing world poverty, but that
    they tithe 10 percent of their time to these large public
    interest questions across the board.
        Mr. Culberson. Noble worthwhile effort, but what I am
    driving at is another issue. You have said, and it is clear
    that your office since NASA doesn't report to the--the NASA
    administrator is not a cabinet-level official and doesn't
    report directly to the President, the NASA administrator
    reports to you, so essentially your responsibilities are very
    broad for the President to encompass essentially a supervisory
    role or as sort of the administration official responsible for
    NASA.
        Dr. Holdren. It would be I think more accurate to say,
    Congressman, that the NASA administrator reports to me on
    matters of science and technology, to OMB on matters of budget,
    and to Cabinet Affairs on matters of interaction with the rest
    of the administration.
        Mr. Culberson. So to what extent since you have a long
    history of publications of, you know, guiding the AAAS and
    focus on that number one--maybe not in priority order--but one
    of the top five goals of scientists, you know, tithing 10
    percent of their time and focusing on the fighting of global
    poverty, to what extent were you involved in and how and what
    way did you help guide Lori Garver and her remarks to Goddard
    last year in which she said NASA's number one goal was fighting
    world poverty?
        Dr. Holdren. I had no influence on those remarks at all and
    was not aware of them until after they came out, and I don't
    really understand the context. I had no interaction with Lori
    Garver.
        Mr. Culberson. That makes no sense, I agree.

                ATMOSPHERIC EMISSIONS AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROLS

        A couple of other quick areas, Mr. Chairman, that I just
    find particularly fascinating and revealing.
        Back in 2001, you published a paper in Science in which you
    argued we have a--essentially an environmental Hippocratic Oath
    to do no harm to the environment, that the--you had argued that
    the atmosphere is essentially a commons that we all have an
    equal right to, and when you had published a paper with Paul
    Baer, John Harte, Barbara Haya, Antonia V. Herzog, Nathan E.
    Hultman, Daniel M. Kammen, Richard B. Norgaard, and Leigh
    Raymond, which I know you are familiar with, and I will be as
    brief as I can, Mr. Chairman, but this is particularly
    interesting and I know will be of interest to the chairman as
    well, that you were attacked in a letter of February 2nd, which
    I am confident you remember.
        A gentleman by the name of Arthur Westing wrote and said
    hey, this idea proposed by John Holdren and others that
    recommends apportioning the use of the atmospheric commons as a
    gaseous and aerosol waste dump sounds superficially attractive
    and that you suggested that emissions were allocated based on
    equal rights to the atmospheric commons for every individual.
        And he says the idea of an equal per capita allocation of
    greenhouse gases is flawed, because he said, it implicitly
    condones global overpopulation and rewards countries in
    proportion to their level of transgression of human carrying
    capacity of their portion of the global biosphere.
        And you wrote a response to him saying that, you know, we
    see no evidence that an equal per capita allocation would
    provide an incentive to significantly alter national population
    growth. Climate demographic interaction would help reduce
    population growth rates through increased investments, and in
    any case we suggest in our policy form possible solutions to
    any appearance of incentives for governments to adversely alter
    their population policies in response to per capita permit
    allocations.
        This can be achieved, for example, by choosing a fixed
    base-year population by determining for each country a
    population baseline, incorporating reasonable declines in
    population growth, or by allocating permits to population based
    on some previous time point.
        Would you explain this? I am just not sure I understand the
    concept of an atmospheric commons, and I don't notice the
    Chinese respecting that. I mean they dump more pollution into
    in atmosphere along with the Indians than any other country on
    the face of the earth. And what right would any international
    body have to impose population limits on any country?
        I mean that essentially is what you are advocating here. It
    is just sort of bizarre. I am not sure I understand what you
    are----
        Dr. Holdren. You are not correctly understanding it. We are
    not proposing there to impose population limits on anybody. The
    idea of a population baseline was simply a reference point
    against which entitlements to add pollutants to the atmosphere
    would be based. Precisely the problem that you mention with
    China making very large emissions into the atmosphere under
    which we all live.
        Mr. Culberson. And India.
        Dr. Holdren. And India as well. Is one of the reasons that
    in selected domains we think it is in our interest to continue
    to cooperate with them, to move them more rapidly toward
    reducing those emissions, which is in our interest because we
    all live under one atmosphere.
        The only significant point about the concept of an
    atmospheric commons is the atmosphere is common to everybody.
    We live under one atmosphere. Things added to it in one place
    that stay there influence the conditions and the quality of
    life for others elsewhere.
        Mr. Culberson. Uh-huh.
        Dr. Holdren. And therefore ultimately society has to figure
    out, and that can only be done by negotiations and agreement
    ultimately, has to figure out how to limit what every country
    adds to that commons to the detriment of all the others.
        Mr. Culberson. Okay.
        Dr. Holdren. There is nothing more sinister or
    sophisticated than that behind this interaction.
        Mr. Culberson. Okay. One final question.
        Why, then, should the United States continue to
    unilaterally, under your guidance and the Administration's
    guidance, continue to impose aggressive and stringent
    restrictions on access to domestic sources, oil and gas,
    restrictions on atmospheric emissions, carbon dioxide,
    unilaterally, when the Chinese and Indians are ignoring it?
    That is a cannon ball around the ankle.
        Dr. Holdren. Again, with all respect, Congressman
    Culberson, you phrased that a little differently than I would
    phrase it.
        We are not imposing stringent restrictions on carbon
    dioxide emissions in this country at this point. And the
    Congress has not agreed to do that and it is not happening.
        Mr. Culberson. But you were trying to do it by rule through
    the EPA. Aren't you helping in that effort?
        Dr. Holdren. The EPA has some authority in this domain,
    and----
        Mr. Culberson. And you are advising them on it and helping
    them on it.
        Dr. Holdren. I am not advising the EPA, I advise the
    President, let me be clear about that.
        But in my view it is important and valuable and necessary
    that the United States reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases
    because, we along with China and India, are major contributors
    to the additions of greenhouse gases that are implicated in
    global climate change that is not good for any of us.
        And it is also I think highly likely that if we are to
    succeed in persuading China and India to take more stringent
    steps to reduce their emissions--and by the way, China has
    already done quite a lot to reduce their emissions below what
    they would otherwise be, they are still enormous, but they have
    made large investments in energy efficiency and particularly in
    automotive efficiency, they have imposed stringent standards on
    automotive efficiency, they are building more advanced coal
    plants to try to reduce the emissions from that sector, they
    are studying carbon capture and sequestration.
        I think we should continue to urge the Chinese to make
    progress in that direction and we should continue to make
    progress in that direction ourselves.
        Mr. Culberson. On our own.
        Dr. Holdren. On our own and in negotiation and cooperation
    with others. It is in our interest to persuade China to reduce
    their emissions, and it is in our interest to reduce our own.
        Mr. Culberson. The chairman has been very gracious, thank
    you, sir, for the extra time.
        Mr. Wolf. Thank you.

                               POPULATION CONTROL

        Well, I didn't know Mr. Culberson's line of questioning,
    and let me just say I am not going to ask you a question. But I
    do want to, based on what he said, put this in the record.
        In anticipation of the hearing, I got your book out of the
    Library of Congress. Your book, ``Ecoscience: Population,
    Resources, Environment,'' coauthored with population control
    advocates Paul and Anne Ehrlich. There is no question to ask,
    and many views that people had in 1977 they have discontinued.
    I want to put that out there, but it was troubling when I went
    through it.
        On page 837 it said, ``indeed it has been concluded that
    compulsory population control laws, even including requiring
    compulsory abortion could be sustained under the existing
    Constitution if the population crisis becomes sufficiently
    severe to engage the society.'' Page 837.
        You also went on to say on page 838, ``neither the
    Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution mentions a
    right to reproduce.''
        It says in the Declaration that all men are created equal
    and are endowed by their creator with the rights to life and
    liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Those words were drafted
    by Thomas Jefferson in Independence Hall in the City of
    Philadelphia, which I used to walk through and see the Liberty
    Bell almost every day.
        Lastly, you went on to say on page 787, ``the development
    of a long-term sterilization capsule that could be implanted
    under the skin and removed when pregnancy is desired opens
    additional possibilities for coercive fertility control. The
    capsule could be implanted at puberty and might be removable
    with official permission for a number of births. No capsule
    that would last that long, 30 years or more has yet been
    developed. But is technically within the realm of
    probability.''
        Dr. Holdren. Mr. Chairman, if I may.
        Mr. Wolf. Sure.
        Dr. Holdren. You didn't ask a question.
        Mr. Wolf. No, I didn't.
        Dr. Holdren. But the chapter--I want to comment.
        Mr. Wolf. Sure.
        Dr. Holdren. The chapter from which you read was a
    compilation of ideas and concepts that had been discussed in
    the literature, it was identified as such, and the author
    statement at the end says we do not advocate these measures.
        I think it is not fair to assert that I held the view that
    compulsory measures to limit population were appropriate,
    justified, warranted, or moral. That was a summary of views
    that appeared in the literature in a large comprehensive book
    in which I was mainly responsible for the chapters on
    geochemical cycles, on energy, on materials, and so on.
        Mr. Wolf. Well, I appreciate that.

                    COORDINATION OF STEM EDUCATION PROGRAMS

        On STEM education in a report on duplication in government
    programs that came out a few weeks ago, GAO identified five
    different agencies--NSF, NASA, Department of Energy, Defense,
    and Education--who fund programs to improve STEM education.
        We know this is not a complete list because other agencies
    fund it. NOAA also has STEM education programs.
        Do you believe that the benefits of having so many
    different agencies involved outweigh the costs of inefficiency
    and program fragmentation?
        The other question that we can kind of marry to that is,
    the GAO review concluded we need better cross agency
    coordination to reduce duplication and ensure a balanced
    portfolio of STEM education programs.
        This is not a new finding. In fact, it seems that this
    finding is made pretty much every year by both internal and
    external reviewers.
        Since we have known that STEM education coordination is a
    problem, why haven't we fixed it and what can we do working
    with you to fix it?
        Now again, I am talking about trying to have more, not
    talking about cutting back. We are talking about encouraging
    more. So those two questions together.
        Dr. Holdren. Chairman Wolf, I agree with you, and that is
    why we have stood up this National Science and Technology
    Council committee chaired by Carl Wieman, Carl Wieman agrees
    with you as well, we want to look at all those programs across
    all the agencies that are engaged in STEM education, we want to
    figure out which ones are duplicative, which ones are
    effective, and which ones are ineffective. We want to eliminate
    the duplicative and ineffective ones and we want to end up with
    a package that is more potent that spends the resources we have
    available in a more effective way to lift our game in STEM
    education in this country. I think you are exactly right, that
    has been begging for review and we have gotten it under way.
        Mr. Wolf. Well, I want to help you on that. If we can do
    something in this committee in the mark up, I hope you will
    come to it.
        So the question sort of continues. Last year's America
    COMPETES Act, which I voted for and I commend Bart Gordon very,
    very much for the work that he did, assigned responsibility for
    the coordination of federal STEM education programs to a
    committee, which we have been discussing, under the auspices of
    your office.
        What is the status of the committee? Can you tell us who is
    on it? How many meetings they have had? When can we expect to
    see concrete steps taken?
        And then to connect that, the COMPETES Act also required
    you to submit a report with each year's budget request
    outlining what is in the budget for STEM education, discussing
    potential duplication and providing progress and implementation
    updates on ongoing activities.
        Will there be a report for 2012?
        Again, this is nothing you should be fearful of. We are not
    looking to throw this out. It is so we can have a more
    effective effect.
        So, who is on the panel, the committee that you referenced?
        Dr. Holdren. I can't tell you off the top of my head who is
    on the panel. I can tell you who chairs it, and that is my
    associate director for science, Dr. Carl Wieman.
        Mr. Wolf. And that is very impressive, but can you tell
    us----
        Dr. Holdren. I will happily provide that. I don't have the
    list of the panel members with me, but all the agencies that
    have these programs are represented on the panel.
        [The information follows:]

               Request for Details on the NSTC STEM Ed Committee

        At the House CJS Appropriations Subcommittee hearing on May 4,
    Chairman Wolf requested details about the newly-formed STEM Ed
    Committee under the NSTC: who sits on the committee; action plan, etc.
        Response: The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC)
    Committee on STEM held its first meeting on March 4, 2011. The
    Committee is co-chaired by Dr. Carl Wieman, Associate Director for
    Science at OSTP, and Dr. Subra Suresh, Director of the National Science
    Foundation. Agencies represented on the committee include: Departments
    of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health & Human
    Services, Interior, Transportation, as well as NASA and the EPA. There
    are two working groups under the committee: Federal Inventory of STEM
    Education Fast Track Action Committee and Federal Coordination in STEM
    Education Task Force. The Committee's charter is also included.

    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Dr. Holdren. And I have to tell you that Dr. Wieman is not
    only a very smart guy, but he is a very determined guy, and
    he----
        Mr. Wolf. Oh, I'm sure, I----
        Dr. Holdren [continuing]. Wants to get to the bottom of
    this.
        Mr. Wolf. I think it is a great appointment.
        Now, when were they set up? What day were they set up?
        Dr. Holdren. I believe they had their first meeting in
    March, last month, that's right.
        Mr. Wolf. Okay. Do you know when they plan on--and this is
    not fair to put you----
        Dr. Holdren. I don't know that off the top of my head, but
    I would be delighted to provide you the answers to those
    questions, who is on the committee, when they are planning on
    reporting, and what that report will cover.
        Mr. Wolf. Will there be a report for the 2012 budget?
        Dr. Holdren. I believe there will.
        Mr. Wolf. Good, good.
        Dr. Holdren. All right.
        Mr. Wolf. Well, let us know if there is something that we
    can do here in this bill that helps you with regard to that.
    Again, I know it may be viewed in a different way by some that
    think we are looking to strip something out, we are looking to
    change. But I agree with you that we should give you more
    resources and have more young people involved.
        Do you know if my figures are accurate with regard to last
    year or two years ago, with 50 percent of the----
        Dr. Holdren. I must say that took me back, and I have made
    a note to look into it. I don't understand where that number
    comes from, but I will sure find out.
        Mr. Wolf. If you can.

                         STEM EDUCATION BEST PRACTICES

        Do you believe the 2012 budget reflects an appropriate
    balance between K through 12 STEM programs and those focused on
    higher education? Should we be more aggressively focused on the
    youngest kids to ensure that they become engaged in science?
    How are you balancing that out?
        You mentioned earlier that you don't think it is being
    taught appropriately at some colleges, and you are right. I
    very seldom have heard of somebody who goes to the University
    of Virginia and majors in business administration or political
    science and then in their sophomore year transfers into
    physics. It is usually they go----
        Dr. Holdren. Other way.
        Mr. Wolf. It is the other way.
        So do we have the right balance here? Is all the necessary
    original research out there and it is just a question for your
    office to pull this all together? Maybe you can participate in
    the conference the National Science Foundation is going to have
    showing what works for fifth grade and sixth grade, but also
    maybe have a separate session about how do you then tell the
    University of Virginia, Virginia Tech and MIT, how they can
    make it relevant so that the people who come into physics stay
    in physics rather than go into political science?
        Dr. Holdren. The answers are all basically yes or maybe.
        The maybe is do we have the balance right? I think we have
    taken a good cut at the balance in this budget, but we are
    constantly looking at it and we are constantly learning about
    additional opportunities to do things in different domains,
    that is one of the things that Dr. Wieman is looking at, and we
    will obviously be proposing to adjust balances over time as we
    learn more and discover things that we should be doing and
    aren't doing, or as we discover things that we have been doing
    that aren't working well.
        In terms of the conference you mentioned we will absolutely
    be participating in that conference.
        Mr. Wolf. You all are smart people, you have a lot of
    information. Is there something down there that you know now
    about it but you are so busy--and I respect that--but we are
    not getting it out to those people who need to know, like the
    deans of engineering across the country?
        I saw a figure, I think it is in the ``Gathering Storm,''
    but don't quote me. It could have been in Norm Augustine's
    update, but it said, and I believe I made a comment on it, that
    we graduated more Ph.D.s in physics in 1956 than we graduated
    last year. Is that a fact?
        Dr. Holdren. I don't know whether that is a fact.
        Mr. Wolf. Do you think it could be?
        Dr. Holdren. It is certainly conceivable, yes.
        Mr. Wolf. If you have some information, Mr. Fattah and I
    could do a letter to all of the deans of engineering or we
    could put together a conference. You could call a conference,
    we could use the Capitol Visitor Center here whereby you could
    bring your best minds to say, ``we now know this is successful
    at the university level, and this has worked whereby all you
    deans ought to be looking at this.'' But the point is you may
    have something there that we want to sort of get out.
        Dr. Holdren. Let me tell you, Mr. Chairman, this is cutting
    edge stuff.
        Carl Wieman is one of the leading researchers in the world,
    probably the leading researcher in the world and practitioner
    who at a number of major universities has put these new
    approaches into practice and achieved spectacular results, but
    this is such new stuff that it is not yet very propagated very
    widely.
        We recruited Dr. Wieman to be the associate director for
    science at OSTP because--not because he is a Nobel Prize winner
    in physics, that it is wonderful to have a Nobel laureate as
    your associate director for science--but we recruited him
    because of his extraordinary leading edge work on this subject,
    and we are trying to use the fact that he is now in OSTP in the
    White House and talking with the President about this and
    talking with other university leaders. We are trying to use
    that to propagate these ideas, and we will continue to do that,
    and I think we will see these ideas and these approaches
    spread, and I think they will be helpful with the phenomenon
    you identify, that we have----
        Mr. Wolf. Well, could you have the doctor come up and----
        Dr. Holdren. Oh, absolutely.
        Mr. Wolf. And maybe we should----
        Dr. Holdren. He would love to, I assure you.
        Mr. Wolf. Maybe we should have a conference this fall where
    we bring all the deans together here.
        Dr. Holdren. He has been talking to a lot of them, but a
    conference could be a good idea.
        Mr. Wolf. Well, why don't you have him come on up.
        Dr. Holdren. No, I will do that.
        Mr. Wolf. And we can just talk.
        Dr. Holdren. Absolutely.

                         TSUNAMIS AND DISASTER PLANNING

        Mr. Wolf. We had asked NOAA several weeks ago if they would
    hold a conference here, and I appreciate the NOAA Administrator
    saying yes. We are going to bring all of the governors up and
    down the east coast, the Caribbean and all the FEMA people
    together to see if all the economies are ready for a tsunami,
    are they ready for an earthquake? We hope to do the same thing
    maybe out at Caltech out there.
        I don't know if you were going to be participating in that.
    You may talk to the head of NOAA to see. We are also bringing
    the U.S. Geological Survey.
        Dr. Holdren. Good.
        Mr. Wolf. That way if something is coming, we know that
    they should be prepared and we know that everyone has a plan.
    This Committee six years ago plused up the buoy systems around
    the world to make sure that we were ready, and so I think you
    should see if there is some role that you can play. We are not
    looking to fill your time up, but I would like to do something.
        Dr. Holdren. This is important stuff and I am engaged in
    this domain of planning and preparedness and understanding how
    our facilities may be vulnerable to tsunami and earthquakes and
    making sure with the other agencies that are involved.
        This is another one of these cross-cutting agency issues,
    and I am involved in it, and I agree with you about its
    importance.
        Mr. Wolf. Well, the conference will be in June here at the
    Congress. The Congress is out that week.
        Dr. Holdren. I can't tell you at this moment whether it is
    on my calendar, but it might well be, and I am scheduled to
    have a conversation with Under Secretary Lubchenco at the end
    of the afternoon.
        Mr. Wolf. Well, she has been very good. She is really----
        Dr. Holdren. She is great.

                     DUPLICATION OF EARTH SCIENCE PROGRAMS

        Mr. Wolf. I have a question on NOAA duplication. We are
    just going to get it to you for the record.
        There is some concern with regard to the duplication of
    NOAA and NASA on certain research topics like atmospheric
    composition, climate and other things, so please take a look at
    that.

                      OSTP FISCAL YEAR 2012 BUDGET REQUEST

        The only new item in your 2012 budget request is a $350,000
    decrease that would be achieved by limiting the activities of
    the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
        What work did you have planned for the PCAST that might be
    deferred under the budget request?
        Dr. Holdren. I have to say in all honesty, Mr. Chairman,
    that I didn't volunteer for that reduction. This comes under
    the heading of sharing the sacrifice, and the--what PCAST does
    depends in part on what studies the President asks us to
    conduct for him, and how we will deal with that decrease going
    forward will depend in part on what studies the President
    requests from us, and we may find ourselves having more
    meetings by teleconference and fewer meetings face to face,
    which has both advantages and disadvantages.
        We may handle it by saying we are going to have to
    prioritize among the different requests the President has made
    of us and ask him what he wants the most, because we don't have
    enough money to do it all.
        Mr. Wolf. Could that decrease impact the schedule for
    PCAST's planned report on higher education STEM programs?
        Dr. Holdren. I do not think it will because that study is
    already well under way and I don't think its completion is
    going to be imperiled by that reduction. It would be studies
    later in the pipeline that would be impacted.

                   MEETING GOALS FOR BASIC RESEARCH SPENDING

        Mr. Wolf. Between the American Competitiveness Initiative,
    two versions of the American COMPETES Act, and the ``Rising
    Above the Gathering Storm'' report, we have had a variety of
    calls for increases in basic research over the last few years.
        ACI and the COMPETES Act proposed doubling the budgets of
    NSF, NIST, and Energy Office of Science over either seven or
    ten years, and ``Gathering Storm'' called for an annual 10
    percent increase in basic research funding for physical science
    and math and engineering. Including the proposed 2012 budget,
    but excluding one time stimulus funding, how close are we to
    being on track to these goals?
        Dr. Holdren. We are certainly not there in the Continuing
    Appropriations Act for 2011, and the only way we could get back
    on track on those projectories would be if the President's 2012
    budget were approved by the Congress, but that would get us--if
    the 2012 budget were approved that would get us back on this
    sort of trajectory that you are describing and that American
    COMPETES called for.
        Mr. Wolf. Well, I don't know what our allocation is going
    to be. I certainly will do everything I can, and I think Mr.
    Fattah feels the same way. I think you are back to that issue
    of hopefully--and I know this is not your responsibility, the
    President will deal with this whole entitlement issue--tieing
    the entitlement issue onto the debt limit, and then I think it
    would free up a lot of additional revenue.
        Dr. Holdren. Uh-huh.
        Mr. Wolf. If you looked at the tax package that passed, the
    White House said this was an example of Republicans and
    Democrats working together. I voted against the tax package.
    There was a cut in the payroll tax which will cost $112 billion
    for one year. Can you imagine what $112 billion spent wisely
    could have done? Instead we give a break to Jimmy Buffett, a
    break to Warren Buffett, and we basically hit these programs
    really hard. So I don't know what the allocations will be.
        The ``Gathering Storm'' report also calls for OSTP to set
    up an office to oversee improvements to the Nation's research
    infrastructure. Have you established this office? And what kind
    of strategy are you pursuing to ensure the aging research
    facilities get the upgrades needed to keep them functional and
    relevant?
        Dr. Holdren. Well, that is both a function of the science
    committee and the National Science and Technology Council,
    which is also chaired by Dr. Wieman and it is always the focus
    of studying PCAST as initiated.
        Mr. Wolf. So would the PCAST cut have any impact on this?
        Dr. Holdren. I hope not.
        Mr. Wolf. So maybe. Maybe?
        Dr. Holdren. We have to look at how we are going to
    accommodate that cut. But again----
        Mr. Wolf. You would really be upset if we put that money
    back.
        Dr. Holdren. I am not sure I am allowed to answer that
    question.
        Mr. Wolf. I think there are other questions that we will
    just submit for the record. I will go back to Mr. Fattah and
    Mr. Culberson at the end.
        Mr. Fattah. I am prepared to conclude, Mr. Chairman, unless
    we are going to go back around.
        Mr. Wolf. No, we won't.

                             CYBERSECURITY AT OSTP

        Two weeks ago we had a conversation with the NSF director
    about balancing the desire to promote public access to research
    findings with needs to protect scientific intellectual property
    and data critical to American economic and national security
    interests.
        Do you believe we are currently striking the right balance?
    Or can you take a look at this?
        Dr. Holdren. We are taking a look at it, that is another
    issue that is in our domain. There is a tension there that will
    never be entirely resolved between those two goods. The good of
    the need to protect intellectual property and national security
    information on the one hand and the need and the value of
    openness on the other.
        I wouldn't swear to you, sir, that we have the balance
    exactly right now, but we are looking at it.
        Mr. Wolf. Well, the Chinese are stealing us blind.
        Dr. Holdren. I hear you on that.
        Mr. Wolf. And if we can chat after you go out to the Cyber
    Center, the staff will get in touch with you. I was out there
    last Thursday and they are stealing us blind.
        And keep in mind, a secretary in the Bush Administration
    had his computer stripped. They took the same equipment, I
    believe, to Beijing that you may have taken.
        So we will also ask the bureau to talk to you about that
    too, but I think Mr. Culberson is right. There may be a
    problem.
        Dr. Holdren. I would be happy to talk to the bureau.
        Mr. Wolf. The Chinese stripped my computer here. Have you
    had any cyber attacks against your computer?
        Dr. Holdren. Not that I am aware of, sir.
        Mr. Wolf. You may be one of the only agencies in the
    government that has not.
        Dr. Holdren. I mean I am not saying there have been no
    cyber attacks against OSTP, my understanding is that cyber
    attacks are directed all the time at virtually every U.S.
    agency. I am sure in that sense there have been attacks against
    OSTP as well.
        I am not aware of any successful ones, and I am not aware
    of any cyber attack other than the usual things that come in
    every day on my own personal computer.
        Mr. Wolf. Well, can you look and see if you believe, since
    you are the science advisor, that we have every necessary
    policy in place so that agencies such as NASA and NSF and
    others are doing everything that they need to do? We would even
    work it out here that you look at this in-depth government
    wide. Obviously the law enforcement agencies are looking at it,
    but almost from a different level than you might look at it. So
    if you would look at that, I would appreciate it.
        Dr. Holdren. I will certainly do it, Mr. Chairman. I do
    want to assure you that OSTP is a full participant in the
    interagency working group on cyber security at every level from
    the working level to the deputy's level to the principals level
    in which I participate, and we do participate with the Director
    of National Intelligence and the head of the FBI and all the
    folks that you were talking about we are with them all the time
    talking about the cyber security issue, what we can do to
    increase the protection of U.S. assets and the protection of
    U.S. intellectual properties. So this is not a new issue for
    me.
        Mr. Wolf. I understand.
        Okay, do you have anything, Mr. Culberson?
        Mr. Culberson. I will submit anything else in writing, but
    just to say, if I could that just to reiterate, that the
    scientific community has no better friends in Congress than
    Chairman Wolf and this committee, and all of us work arm in
    arm. Mr. Fattah, all of us. Adam Schiff, my dear good friend
    who has a daughter about the same age as ours, in support of
    the sciences, in support of NASA, in support of planetary
    exploration. We have philosophical disagreements in certain
    areas, obviously, but we are arm in arm in our commitment to
    support, to firewall our investment in the basic sciences and
    to preserve and protect America's leadership, and the world
    requires a very strong investment by the federal government in
    fundamental scientific research, sir, and you can expect strong
    support from this committee in that effort.
        Dr. Holdren. Well, I thank you very much for that,
    Congressman Culberson, I appreciate it, I know it has been true
    in the past, and I see that it is going to be true going
    forward and it is greatly appreciated by me and by the
    Administration.
        Mr. Wolf. In closing to follow up with what Mr. Culberson
    said, I had an event a while back that Norm Augustine
    attended--you know Norm Augustine. He made a comment that the
    16th century was the Spanish century. Spain is a great country,
    but it is no longer the dominant power. He said the 17th
    century was the French century, and we used the French to help
    us at Yorktown. They are no longer the dominant power. He said
    the 19th century was the British century. The 20th century, he
    said, was the American century. And then he left a question out
    there--will the 21st century be the American century or the
    Chinese century?
        Not a question, but following up on what Norm Augustine
    said, I want the 21st century to be the American century, and
    we want to work with you to make sure that it is.
        And also on the whole issue of China, I am going to take
    you at your word. We are not swearing people in under oath
    here, but if there is any activity that you are doing with
    China where you may think you are okay, I may not. Please call
    the Committee and tell us. Do I have your word?
        Dr. Holdren. Yes.
        Mr. Wolf. Okay, good, the stenographer can't pick up a nod
    of the head.
        Dr. Holdren. Yes, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Wolf. Okay. Then the meeting is adjourned.
        Dr. Holdren. And thank you.
        Mr. Wolf. Thank you very much. Thanks.

        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                                     INDEX

                                  ----------

                 National Aeronautics and Space Administration
              Maj. Gen. Charles F. Bolden, Jr., NASA Administrator

                                                                       Page
    Administrator Bolden's accomplishments........................... 23-24
    Aeronautics...................................................... 64-66
    Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer......................................    88
    Astronaut corps..................................................    87
    China:
        cooperation with............................................. 54-56
        cyber attacks................................................    55
         space program............................................... 26-27
    Commercial spaceflight.................................30-31, 39-40, 58
    Conflict between prior appropriations bills and the authori28-29, 75-76
    Constellation spending under the CR..............................    57
    Contract cost for seats on Soyuz.................................    59
    Contracting practices............................................ 66-69
    Cost and schedule estimates...................................... 50-52
    Crew time for research........................................... 61-64
    DESDynI Radar Satellite.......................................... 41-42
    Duplication among federal agencies............................... 20-22
    Duplication in climate change programs........................... 44-46
    Educational benefits............................................. 88-89
    Europa........................................................... 85-87
    Glenn Research Center and Plumb Brook Station.................... 43-44
    Human-like robots................................................    71
    Implementation of funding cuts proposed by the House............. 31-32
    Implementing the authorization under the budget request.......... 24-25
    Infrastructure planning.......................................... 49-50
    International partnerships....................................... 33-35
    Justification for spending money on NASA......................... 46-48
    Leveraging private investment.................................... 40-41
    Matching NASA's missions with its budget......................... 19-20
    Math and science education....................................... 37-38
    Modification of current contracts................................ 42-43
    Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle....................................... 56-57
    NASA's:
        compensation for loss of Columbia............................    27
        funding challenges prior to the authorization................    27
        implementation of decadal surveys............................ 76-85
        long term goals.............................................. 48-49
         long term planning.......................................... 73-75
         overall mission and vision.................................. 36-37
    Near-Earth objects...............................................    54
    New exploration program.......................................... 22-23
    Ninety-day progress report.......................................    23
    Opening Statement:
         Administrator Bolden........................................  4-18
        Chairman Wolf................................................   1-3
        Ranking Member Fattah........................................   3-4
    Orion program....................................................    75
    Planetary science................................................ 38-39
    Questions for the record:
        Mr. Aderholt................................................129-137
        Mr. Culberson...............................................138-141
        Mr. Fattah..................................................119-128
        Mr. Wolf.....................................................90-118
    Science, technology, engineering and mathematics................. 53-54
    Shuttle display sites............................................ 34-36
    Shuttle transition............................................... 52-53
    Soyuz contraction extension date.................................    59
    Space station.................................................... 69-71
    Space station support............................................ 60-61
    Space technology.................................................    41
    Superiority in space............................................. 71-73
    Test flight of Space Launch System............................... 29-30

                          National Science Foundation
                           Dr. Subra Suresh, Director

    Arecibo Observatory.............................................172-173
    Award oversight........................................191-192, 192-193
    Communicating results of new investments........................163-165
    Cybersecurity...................................................168-196
    Deficit reduction...............................................176-178
    GAO study on teacher training programs..........................190-191
    Hispanic-serving institutions....................................   175
    Icebreaking services............................................194-195
    Impact of continuing resolution..................................   157
    Increased funding for graduate research fellowship program......157-158
    International competitiveness in scientific discovery...........159-162
    K-12 STEM education:
        communications strategy.....................................166-167
        education report...................................165-166, 197-200
        education report, roll out of...............................202-204
        effects of reducing.........................................175-176
        maintaining student interest in.............................167-168
        support for..................................................   189
    Merit review pilot project......................................200-201
    Minority-serving institutions....................................   174
    Neurosciene.....................................................178-181
    NSF:
        contracting..................................................   197
        Department of Education, collaboration with..................   190
        focusing on NSF's mission...................................201-202
        international offices........................................   168
        space lease.................................................169-172
        travel funds................................................195-196
    Opening remarks:
        Director Suresh.............................................145-156
        Ranking Member Fattah.......................................144-145
        Vice Chairman Bonner........................................143-144
    Potential duplication between government programs...............162-163
    Program terminations............................................158-159
    Protecting scientific intellectual property.....................183-188
    Questions for the record:
        Mr. Aderholt................................................216-217
        Mr. Bonner...................................................   218
        Mr. Fattah..................................................219-227
        Mr. Honda...................................................228-229
        Mr. Serrano.................................................230-231
        Mr. Wolf....................................................205-215
    Scientific data dissemination...................................181-183
    STEM workforce, broadening participation in.....................173-174
    Use of hyperbaric chambers.......................................   183

              White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
                         Dr. John P. Holdren, Director

    Atmospheric emissions and environmental controls................301-303
    Competition from China..........................................256-263
    Compliance with China language from fiscal year 2011...255-256, 268-273
    Cybersecurity at OSTP...........................................313-315
    Earth science programs, duplication of...........................   311
    International travel............................................250-255
    Making sufficient increases in science spending.................263-265
    Meeting goals for basic research spending.......................312-313
    NASA's fiscal year 2010 budget logistics........................277-278
    NASA's heavy lift launch capabilities, developing...............279-282
    National capability gap in human space flight and weather data..285-292
    NOAA severe weather predictions and warnings....................284-285
    Opening statement:
        Mr. Wolf.....................................................   233
        Mr. Fattah..................................................233-234
        Dr. Holdren.................................................234-249
    OSTP fiscal year 2012 budget request............................311-312
    Population control..............................................303-304
    Questions for the record:
        Mr. Wolf....................................................316-328
        Mr. Culberson................................................   336
        Mr. Graves..................................................337-339
        Mr. Fattah..................................................329-335
    Rare earth elements, control of.................................293-300
    Scientific and technical challenges.............................267-268
    Social issues, addressing through science.......................300-301
    STEM education:
        At the terminal degree level................................265-267
        Best practices..............................................309-311
        Coordination of programs....................................304-309
        Inspiring interest in.......................................274-277
    Supporting large research facilities and infrastructures........273-274
    Tornado development and prediction research.....................282-284
    Tsunamis and disaster planning...................................   311