    [House Hearing, 116 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                    A REVIEW OF THE ADMINISTRATION'S FEDERAL
                        RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT BUDGET
                         PROPOSAL FOR FISCAL YEAR 2021

    =======================================================================

                                    HEARING

                                   BEFORE THE

                          COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE,
                                 AND TECHNOLOGY
                            HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                         ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS

                                 SECOND SESSION

                                   __________

                               FEBRUARY 27, 2020

                                   __________

                               Serial No. 116-69

                                   __________

     Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology

     [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

           Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov

                                   __________

                        U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
    39-835PDF                  WASHINGTON : 2021

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                  COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY

                 HON. EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas, Chairwoman
    ZOE LOFGREN, California              FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma,
    DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois                Ranking Member
    SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon             MO BROOKS, Alabama
    AMI BERA, California,                BILL POSEY, Florida
        Vice Chair                       RANDY WEBER, Texas
    LIZZIE FLETCHER, Texas               BRIAN BABIN, Texas
    HALEY STEVENS, Michigan              ANDY BIGGS, Arizona
    KENDRA HORN, Oklahoma                ROGER MARSHALL, Kansas
    MIKIE SHERRILL, New Jersey           RALPH NORMAN, South Carolina
    BRAD SHERMAN, California             MICHAEL CLOUD, Texas
    STEVE COHEN, Tennessee               TROY BALDERSON, Ohio
    JERRY McNERNEY, California           PETE OLSON, Texas
    ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado              ANTHONY GONZALEZ, Ohio
    PAUL TONKO, New York                 MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida
    BILL FOSTER, Illinois                JIM BAIRD, Indiana
    DON BEYER, Virginia                  FRANCIS ROONEY, Florida
    CHARLIE CRIST, Florida               GREGORY F. MURPHY, North Carolina
    SEAN CASTEN, Illinois                VACANCY
    BEN McADAMS, Utah
    JENNIFER WEXTON, Virginia
    CONOR LAMB, Pennsylvania
    VACANCY

                            C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S

                               February 27, 2020

                                                                       Page

    Hearing Charter..................................................     2

                               Opening Statements

    Statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Chairwoman,
      Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
      Representatives................................................    17
        Written statement............................................    18

    Statement by Representative Frank Lucas, Ranking Member,
      Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
      Representatives................................................    19
        Written statement............................................    20

                                   Witnesses:

    Dr. Kelvin K. Droegemeier, Director, White House Office of
      Science and Technology Policy
        Oral Statement...............................................    21
        Written Statement............................................    24

    Discussion.......................................................    34

                 Appendix I: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions

    Dr. Kelvin K. Droegemeier, Director, White House Office of
      Science and Technology Policy..................................    74

                Appendix II: Additional Material for the Record

    Article submitted by Representative Lizzie Fletcher, Chairwoman,
      Subcommittee on Energy, Committee on Science, Space, and
      Technology, U.S. House of Representatives......................    82

                        A REVIEW OF THE ADMINISTRATION'S
                        FEDERAL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
                      BUDGET PROPOSAL FOR FISCAL YEAR 2021

                                  ----------

                          THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2020

                      House of Representatives,
                   Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
                                                       Washington, D.C.

         The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:04 a.m., in
    room 2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Eddie
    Bernice Johnson [Chairwoman of the Committee] presiding.

    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

         Chairwoman Johnson. This hearing will come to order. And
    without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare a recess
    at any time.
         Good morning, and welcome to today's hearing to review the
    President's Fiscal Year 2021 budget request for research and
    development (R&D). Dr. Droegemeier, I want to welcome you
    before this Committee for the first time in your role as
    Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).
         And this is not news to you that I'm disturbed, although
    not surprised, to see such a disappointing vision for the
    future of the United States' science and engineering
    enterprise, as is laid out in the budget proposal. In the press
    release announcing the release of this budget, the
    Administration claimed that this proposal represents a 6
    percent increase for R&D. This is a creative use of math that
    has not fooled us. This budget proposal is only 6 percent
    better than last year's even-worse proposal. And, fortunately,
    Congress rejected last year's proposal and appropriated for R&D
    increases. So in truth, this Fiscal Year 2021 budget proposal
    represents a 9 percent cut to R&D funding.
         At the National Science Foundation (NSF), large increases
    for artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum science, which of
    course I support, are more than offset by cuts to all the other
    areas of research, to STEM (science, technology, engineering
    and mathematics) education, and to broadening participation,
    resulting in a 6.5 percent overall cut. While the proposal for
    NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) at first
    blush appears to be a strong request, it amounts to a
    significant increase for human space exploration in large part
    at the expense of investments in research, high-quality science
    missions, and STEM education.
         At the Department of Energy (DOE), the Administration
    proposes to cut non-defense R&D programs by $4.5 billion. Once
    again, we see a proposal to eliminate the ARPA-E (Advanced
    Research Projects Agency--Energy) program, even though ARPA-E
    is praised across the political spectrum for its success.
         Finally, the proposal includes severe cuts to atmospheric
    and ocean research at NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric
    Administration), which will help to inform our approach to
    climate change mitigation, and guts EPA (Environmental
    Protection Agency) assessment programs which help ensure
    Americans have access to clean air and water.
         While there are a few bright spots in this proposal, this
    request represents a disturbing and ill-advised disregard for
    the pressing issues facing this country and the urgent need for
    science and engineering solutions to help us address them.
    Fortunately, Congress will once again have the last word. I
    just wish we didn't have to engage in this dangerous game each
    year. It sends a message to our international competitors and
    our own young students and researchers that we are not serious
    about maintaining our leadership in science and technology
    (S&T).
         And finally, while the hearing is about the budget
    request, we also need to discuss the larger environment for
    science under this Administration. While the cuts are
    ostensibly proposed in the name of budget austerity, in reality
    they appear to be driven by an ideology that aggressively seeks
    to undermine faith in science and scientists, and to discount
    expertise at all levels of government and society.
         There have been some very high-profile cases of agency
    scientists and research managers being silenced by reassigning
    them to offices and jobs unrelated to their expertise. The U.S.
    Department of Agriculture (USDA) research and data services are
    being gutted. The State Department is ignoring advice from CDC
    (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) scientists,
    putting Americans' lives at risk. The President himself tried
    to undermine the critical mission of NOAA to keep Americans
    safe during severe weather. And sadly, those cases making the
    news are just the tip of the iceberg. The silencing of experts
    is happening quietly across the Government on a daily basis.
         I welcome your testimony this morning, but I do not
    imagine that anyone will walk away from this hearing satisfied.
    While I believe you are personally committed to a thriving
    scientific enterprise, the budget proposal before us, and the
    actions taken to undercut the Federal scientific workforce, are
    not worthy of this great Nation.
         I look forward to us working together.
         [The prepared statement of Chairwoman Johnson follows:]

        Good morning and welcome to today's hearing to review the
    President's Fiscal Year 2021 budget request for research and
    development. Dr. Droegemeier, I want to welcome you before our
    Committee for the first time in your role as Director of the
    Office of Science and Technology Policy.
        That said, I am disturbed, although not surprised, to see
    such a disappointing vision for the future of the United States
    science and engineering enterprise as is laid out in this
    budget proposal.
        In the press release announcing the release of this budget,
    the Administration claimed that this proposal represents a 6
    percent increase for R&D. That is a creative use of math that
    has fooled no one. This budget proposal is only 6 percent
    better than last year's even worse proposal. Fortunately,
    Congress rejected last year's proposal and appropriated
    increases for R&D. So in truth, this Fiscal Year 2021 budget
    proposal represents a 9 percent cut to R&D funding.
        At the National Science Foundation, large increases for
    artificial intelligence and quantum science, which of course I
    support, are more than offset by cuts to all other areas of
    research, to STEM education, and to broadening participation,
    resulting in a 6.5 percent overall cut.
        While the proposal for NASA at first blush appears to be a
    strong request, it amounts to a significant increase for human
    space exploration in large part at the expense of investments
    in research, high-priority science missions, and STEM
    education.
        At the Department of Energy, the Administration proposes to
    cut non-defense R&D programs by $4.5 billion. Once again, we
    see a proposal to eliminate the ARPA-E program, even though
    ARPA-E is praised across the political spectrum for its
    success.
        Finally, the proposal includes severe cuts to atmospheric
    and ocean research at NOAA which will help to inform our
    approach to climate change mitigation, and guts EPA assessment
    programs which help ensure Americans have access to clean air
    and water.
        While there are a few bright spots in this proposal, this
    request represents a disturbing and ill-advised disregard for
    the pressing issues facing this country and the urgent need for
    science and engineering solutions to help us address them.
        Fortunately, Congress will once again have the last word. I
    just wish we didn't have to engage in this dangerous game each
    year. It sends a message to our international competitors and
    our own young students and researchers that we are not serious
    about maintaining our leadership in science and technology.
        Finally, Dr. Droegemeier, while this hearing is about the
    budget request, we also need to discuss the larger environment
    for science under this Administration. While the cuts are
    ostensibly proposed in the name of budget austerity, in reality
    they appear to be driven by an ideology that aggressively seeks
    to undermine faith in science and scientists and to discount
    expertise at all levels of government and society.
        There have been some very high-profile cases of agency
    scientists and research managers being silenced by reassigning
    them to offices and jobs unrelated to their expertise. The U.S.
    Department of Agriculture research and data services are being
    gutted. The State Department is ignoring advice from CDC
    scientists, putting American lives at risk. The President
    himself tried to undermine the critical mission of NOAA to keep
    Americans safe during severe weather. And sadly, those cases
    making the news are just the tip of the iceberg. The silencing
    of experts is happening quietly across the government on a
    daily basis.
        Dr. Droegemeier, I welcome your testimony this morning, but
    I do not imagine that anyone will walk away from this hearing
    satisfied. While I believe you are personally committed to a
    thriving scientific enterprise, the budget proposal before us,
    and the actions taken to undercut the federal scientific
    workforce, are not worthy of this great Nation.

         Chairwoman Johnson. I now recognize Mr. Lucas, our Ranking
    Member.
         Mr. Lucas. Thank you, Chairwoman Johnson, for holding
    today's hearing. Good morning, and welcome, Dr. Droegemeier.
    It's always nice to have both a friend and a fellow Oklahoman
    before the Committee.
         Under Dr. Droegemeier's leadership, the White House Office
    of Science and Technology Policy has undertaken major efforts
    to advance our Nation's leadership in the industries of the
    future. At the same time, OSTP is taking action to ensure the
    research environment in the United States is safe, secure, and
    welcoming to the brightest minds and ideas.
         I'm looking forward to hearing about updates on the great
    progress OSTP is making on our Committee's research priorities,
    including standing up the National Quantum Institute, advancing
    a national artificial intelligence agency, developing clean
    energy solutions, and promoting the bioeconomy.
         I also appreciate the opportunity to hear about progress
    being made on other issues important to the Committee, from
    protecting American research from foreign influence to
    addressing sexual harassment in science.
         I commend the Administration for establishing the Joint
    Committee on the Research Environment (JCORE) to tackle these
    and other issues affecting the American scientific enterprise.
    This new interagency committee demonstrates a commitment to
    ensure that the American scientific enterprise remains a model
    for the world.
         The President's Fiscal Year 2021 budget request includes
    bold proposals for ensuring American leadership in priority
    areas, including artificial intelligence, quantum information
    science, and space exploration. The request proposes a doubling
    of funding for AI and quantum over the next two years and sets
    us on course to return astronauts to the Moon by 2024.
         These investments are in line with legislation that I
    introduced last month to double basic research over the next 10
    years and invest in R&D for the industries of the future that
    will keep America competitive.
         This Committee has a long, bipartisan record of support
    for funding fundamental research and development. Our challenge
    in Congress is to set funding priorities that ensure America
    remains a leader in science and technology, while also
    balancing the government's budget.
         I very respectfully remind my colleagues on both sides of
    the aisle that the President's proposal is just the start of
    the budget process. Ultimately, Congress decides how the
    government will be funded.
         Unfortunately, for the second year in a row it appears the
    majority in the U.S. House will fail to produce a budget. It's
    imperative that we work together in a bipartisan, bicameral
    fashion to advance a budget that funds our Nation's priorities
    while acknowledging our very real fiscal challenges.
         I know that Dr. Droegemeier believes, as I do, that
    American superiority in science and technology is fundamental
    to our economic competitiveness, our national security, and our
    way of life. I appreciate your commitment to advancing science
    in America, and I'm looking forward to your testimony today.
         And with that, Madam Chair, I yield back.
         [The prepared statement of Mr. Lucas follows:]

        Thank you, Chairwoman Johnson, for holding today's hearing.
    Good Morning and welcome Dr. Droegemeier. It's always nice to
    have both a friend and a fellow Oklahoman before the Committee.
        Under Dr. Droegemeier' s leadership, the White House Office
    of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) has undertaken major
    efforts to advance our nation's leadership in the industries of
    the future. At the same time, OSTP is taking action to ensure
    the research environment in the U.S. is safe, secure and
    welcoming to the brightest minds and ideas.
        I am looking forward to hearing updates on the great
    progress OSTP is making on our Committee's research priorities,
    including standing up the National Quantum Initiative,
    advancing a national Artificial Intelligence agenda, developing
    clean energy solutions, and promoting the bioeconomy.
        I also appreciate the opportunity to hear about progress
    being made on other issues important to this Committee--from
    protecting American research from foreign influence to
    addressing sexual harassment in science.
        I commend the Administration for establishing the Joint
    Committee on the Research Environment (JCORE) to tackle these
    and other issues affecting the American scientific enterprise.
    This new interagency committee demonstrates a commitment to
    ensuring the American scientific enterprise remains a model for
    the world.
        The President's Fiscal Year 2021 budget request includes
    bold proposals for ensuring American leadership in priority
    areas, including artificial intelligence, quantum information
    science, and space exploration. The request proposes to double
    funding for AI and Quantum over the next two years and sets us
    on course to return astronauts to the Moon by 2024.
        These investments are in line with legislation that I
    introduced last month to double basic research over the next 10
    years and invest in R&D for the industries of the future that
    will to keep America competitive.
        This Committee has a long, bipartisan record of support for
    funding fundamental research and development. Our challenge in
    Congress is to set funding priorities that ensure America
    remains a leader in science and technology, while also
    balancing the government's budget.
        I will remind my colleagues on both sides of the aisle that
    the President's proposal is just the start of the budget
    process. Ultimately, Congress decides how the government will
    be funded.
        Unfortunately, for the second year in a row it appears the
    Majority in the House will fail to produce a budget.
        It is imperative that we work together in a bipartisan,
    bicameral fashion to advance a budget that funds our nation's
    priorities while acknowledging our very real fiscal challenges.
        I know that Dr. Droegemeier believes, as I do, that
    American superiority in science and technology is fundamental
    to our economic competitiveness, our national security, and our
    way of life.
        I appreciate your commitment to advancing science in
    America and I'm looking forward to your testimony today.
        I yield back.

         Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Lucas.
         If there are members who wish to submit additional opening
    statements, your statements will be added to the record at this
    point.
         At this time I'd like to introduce our witness. Our
    witness today is Dr. Kelvin Droegemeier. He is the Director of
    the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy or
    OSTP. And as Director of OSTP, he serves as the President's
    science advisor and leads OSTP in its coordination of science
    and technology initiatives across the Federal Government.
         Before joining the White House, he served as Vice
    President of Research and Regents Professor of Meteorology at
    the University of Oklahoma. He served two 6-year terms on the
    National Science Board having been nominated by President
    George W. Bush and President Barack Obama.
         As our witness should know, you will have 5 minutes for
    your spoken testimony. Your written testimony will be included
    in the record for the hearing. And when you have completed your
    spoken testimony, we will begin the round of questions. Every
    member will have 5 minutes to question the witness.
         So now I will ask Dr. Droegemeier to make his statement.

                  TESTIMONY OF DR. KELVIN DROEGEMEIER,

           DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY

         Dr. Droegemeier. Thank you so much, Chairwoman Johnson.
    Good morning to you and good morning to Ranking Member Lucas
    and Members of the Committee. It is my great privilege to be
    with you today to discuss the President's budget for science
    and technology research and development in Fiscal Year 2021.
         You know, I've had the privilege of working with this
    Committee for many years, and I really deeply appreciate your
    support for science, your bipartisan support.
         In this month's State of the Union address President Trump
    declared--he said, we are pioneers who look at tomorrow and see
    unlimited frontiers just waiting to be explored. You know, this
    reminded me of the words written by Vannevar Bush, who was
    President Roosevelt's de facto science advisor. In 1945, 75
    years ago, Dr. Bush wrote, and I quote, ``The pioneer spirit is
    still vigorous within this Nation. Science offers a largely
    unexplored hinterland for the pioneer who has the tools for the
    task. The rewards of such exploration both for the Nation and
    the individual are great,'' unquote.
         You know, these words ushered in the modern research
    enterprise that we have today, and now, 75 years later, America
    is the unquestioned global leader in science technology. The
    Federal Government, the private sector, academia, and nonprofit
    organizations are all working together to leverage massive R&D
    investments, about $580 billion in 2018--I believe it's over
    $600 billion today--to capitalize on talents from every ZIP
    Code across America and from every country around the globe.
    And the purpose is to build the greatest discovery engine and
    innovation engine in the history of the world right here in
    America. And, as Dr. Bush predicted, the rewards indeed have
    been very great.
         Now, although America is the S&T leader today, undisputed,
    continued leadership is absolutely not guaranteed. In fact, as
    the coronavirus threat illustrates, the importance of our
    leadership, American S&T leadership, is only going to grow more
    pronounced in the decades to come.
         The Fiscal Year 2021 budget demonstrates the Trump
    Administration's commitment to American S&T leadership by
    investing $142.2 billion in Federal R&D. This does represent a
    significant 6 percent increase compared to the President's
    Fiscal Year 2020 budget last year.
         The President's budget prioritizes the critical industries
    of the future, which are--and I think you heard these a lot--
    artificial intelligence, quantum information science, 5G and
    advanced communications, biotechnology, and advanced
    manufacturing. These industries promise to open new frontiers
    in advanced computing and sensing and computation, advanced
    medical diagnostics. They promise to create high-paying jobs
    and also to transform the way that we as Americans communicate,
    travel, and also stay secure.
         Now, AI and quantum in particular hold tremendous
    potential as they intersect basically with every field of
    science and technology. The budget, as you know, includes major
    increases in quantum and nondefense AI research and development
    spending as part of the President's commitment to double the
    nondefense investment in these areas by fiscal 2022. The budget
    also includes investments that will equip more Americans with
    the skills necessary to support and advance AI and quantum, as
    well as the tens of millions of other jobs that require STEM
    know-how.
         Beyond these particular investments, the budget focuses on
    achieving sustainable deep exploration beginning with returning
    to the moon as a launchpad for the mission to Mars. Research
    and partnerships in ocean science and technology also are an
    Administration priority, and the budget advances systematic
    ocean mapping and research so that our Nation can both better
    understand as well as utilize our vast ocean resources.
         The Administration also recognizes--and I really want to
    underscore this point--that leadership not only requires
    strategic R&D investments but also, as Ranking Member Lucas
    mentioned, research environments that reflect our American
    values. To that end, nearly 10 months ago I launched the
    National Science and Technology Council's Joint Committee on
    the Research Environment or JCORE. JCORE is doing something
    quite unique. It's taking a whole-of-nation approach to develop
    policy recommendations and other suggested actions on four
    interrelated topics: first, strengthening the security of the
    American research enterprise; second, creating safe and
    inclusive research environments; third, reducing administrative
    workload on our federally funded researchers; and finally,
    improving rigor, integrity, and reproducibility in research.
         I wanted to specifically mention our research security
    efforts, as I know this topic is of particular interest to many
    of you. The JCORE Subcommittee on Research Security is engaging
    every sector of our scientific community to protect our
    research enterprise while also ensuring the openness that it
    needs to thrive.
         During the past several months, I have personally met with
    institutional leaders and faculty and students visiting several
    universities across the country to discuss these issues. And
    I've also met with allies abroad who are responding to similar
    challenges. We're also working very, very closely with your
    colleagues in Congress, which has shown very strong bipartisan
    support for JCORE. I especially want to thank you, Chairwoman
    Johnson and Ranking Member Lucas and others of you on the
    Committee, for engaging with OSTP on this very important set of
    issues.
         In conclusion, the Nation's R&D investments and policies
    must reflect and address urgent opportunities and challenges
    confronting us and also make use of every asset at our
    disposal. Federal investment is only one part of a much larger
    enterprise that unites, inspires, and rallies people from every
    organization from multiple sectors to a single common cause,
    and that is to improve the health, security, and prosperity of
    our great Nation. These are indeed times of unlimited
    exploration potential, new frontiers waiting to be explored,
    and the President's budget, in concert with other actions that
    I have mentioned and I'm sure we'll discuss, ensures that
    America will continue to lead the way.
         Thank you so very much, and I look forward to your
    questions.
         [The prepared statement of Dr. Droegemeier follows:]

    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

         Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much. We will now start
    our first round of questions.
         Dr. Droegemeier, in reference to climate change, you have
    frequently said more research on the topic is needed. While the
    existence of and human role in climate change are already
    clear, we welcome further research in the detailed dynamics
    about climate and how it is changing. However, this
    Administration has proposed to cut the Department of Energy's
    Atmospheric System Research program in the Office of Science by
    54 percent and the Environmental System Science program by 69
    percent.
         Similarly, climate change research is eliminated at EPA
    with the Air and Energy Research program being cut by 65
    percent and NOAA's research office being cut by 40 percent. Why
    are you proposing massive cuts to climate science when you
    admit yourself that it is a topic that needs more research to
    expand our understanding? Does that not strike you as
    contradictory or illogical?
         Dr. Droegemeier. Well, thank you for that very good
    question. And, as you say, we know the broad contours of the
    impact of greenhouse gases. We know that they are increasing.
    We know that there is a relationship with that and the increase
    of surface temperature. We don't need really super
    sophisticated models to tell us that. In fact, the very simple
    models, simple theories tell us that.
         What we don't know are, for example, how that really has
    local and regional impacts, the rate of the warming, a lot of
    the details. And so a climate scientist will tell you that, you
    know, we really need better fidelity. The way that we are
    operating our models today is not sufficient to provide the
    scientific guidance that's really needed to address the
    challenges that you mention, especially the local and regional
    challenges.
         If you look at the U.S. Global Change Research program
    budget, it's been about $2.2, $2.4 billion a year for the past
    several years. This is in--depending on constant dollars or
    current dollars, however you look at it. So the investments
    have been pretty robust. And I think the real focus now is to
    take our assets and really demonstrate a focus on how do we get
    to higher spatial resolution, which is something that DOE is
    doing through the acquisition of major new computers. That's
    one of the big limitations of our models is that we are running
    them at resolutions that cannot capture the details of clouds
    and precipitation, high-level clouds, the hydrologic cycle. The
    physics are there in the models, but we actually have to sort
    of run them at very coarse resolutions, which mean we don't
    really take advantage of the physics.
         So the investment in high-speed computation or high-
    capacity computing is really important, so a lot of the work
    that's been done in building the models is already an
    investment that's a sunk cost. Now we really need to utilize
    them and run them on these faster machines. And I think if we
    do that along with some other changes and, you know,
    improvements of physics using real data and things like that,
    we will work to eliminate the biases in the model and the
    drifts and things which are actually quite large. But that
    doesn't mean that it discounts what we already know about the
    warming of the surface temperatures globally, so we really need
    to do that to advance the climate science.
         Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much. I know that you
    are aware that in order to keep pace, we've got to make sure
    that we have the professional people available and skilled to
    do it, so I was really very disappointed to see that the
    President's budget proposal includes significant cuts to STEM
    education and broadening participation activities. At NSF the
    STEM education activities funded out of the research and
    related activities account are cut by 36 percent.
         The Robert Noyce Teachers' Scholarship program is cut by
    1/3, and the HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and
    Universities) Excellence in Research program is cut in half.
    The Hispanic-Serving Institutions program is cut by nearly 70
    percent, and the Tribal Colleges and University program is cut
    by 17 percent. At DOE the Workforce Development for Teachers
    and Students program is cut by 27 percent. And, once again, the
    President calls for the elimination of NASA's Office of STEM
    Engagement.
         I simply cannot understand the rationale behind the budget
    proposal that includes these large increases for technologies
    to drive industries of the future with huge cuts to programs
    that would help educate and train people to work in these
    industries. Can you help us understand why we have such large
    cuts critical to STEM education and why these cuts align with
    the STEM Education Strategic Plan of the OSTP published at the
    end of 2018?
         Dr. Droegemeier. Right. Thank you for that. So you
    mentioned the STEM plan. I think it's really an extraordinarily
    good plan. It's got three pillars, STEM-literate society,
    increasing STEM workforce, and the third one is broadening
    participation. As a STEM educator myself, somebody who's worked
    very hard and is passionate about STEM education, I think it
    really has the opportunity to move the needle.
         The U.S. Government spends about $2.9 billion a year
    across about 160-some STEM programs. There's a lot of wonderful
    flowers blooming out there. We also have nonprofits, for-profit
    companies investing very, very heavily in STEM. What we are
    trying to do through this plan is create a national alignment,
    a direction of where we're going as a nation, and it started by
    bringing about 200 people to Washington from every State, about
    two or three people from every State and territory, brought
    them to Washington, talked about where we want to go. They're
    teachers, superintendents, principals, parents, so on, where do
    we want to go and how do we align ourselves with that?
         So when you look at these programs, you realize that there
    are a lot of STEM programs out there, but they're not
    coordinating with one another. We don't get this economy of
    scale. There's a bunch of things happening, but we're not
    coordinating effectively. And that's one of the things that
    plan has done and is doing. And in fact we just released the
    year 1 annual report for that, and we have a matrix that
    describes how we're doing, and we're sort of holding ourselves
    to that report card.
         The point about the NASA office, NASA will continue to
    engage a lot of STEM programs. That office is extremely
    important, but actually NASA activities and, you know, what
    NASA does is actually used by many, many groups and inspires
    students to come into STEM fields and so on. So NASA is
    focusing its STEM activities on things directly related to its
    mission directorates. It's not giving up on STEM at all. It's
    really focusing on the things that are specifically related to
    its missions and partnering with NSF, with nonprofits, and with
    other organizations to take all of the wonderful resources and
    assets that NASA has and make them available to build these
    other programs. The Challenger Center is a great example of
    that.
         So I think, you know, you think about NASA overall, it
    really is sort of a big STEM program in and of itself, and it's
    quite inspirational but also provides tremendous resources so
    that other programs can thrive and grow. So I think this is
    really a focusing, a bringing together of disparate STEM
    programs into a much more critical mass and really continuing
    to leverage this nearly $3 billion-a-year investment.
         Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Thank you.
         Chairwoman Johnson. Mr. Lucas.
         Mr. Lucas. Thank you, Madam Chair.
         Doctor, our Committee has been very focused on ensuring
    the security of our research enterprise and addressing foreign
    influence while also ensuring that we maintain the open science
    enterprise that's made us the world's leader in science and
    technology. Could you elaborate on how OSTP is implementing the
    Securing America's Science and Technology Act and what other
    actions you're taking to address this threat?
         Dr. Droegemeier. Yes, sir. Thank you, Ranking Member
    Lucas. For those of you--I think you're all familiar with it
    but maybe folks in the audience, this act tasks OSTP with
    creating an interagency working group to do exactly what the
    Ranking Member mentioned and also work with the National
    Academies to stand up a set of roundtables to basically have
    conversations about addressing these important issues.
         So, as I mentioned in my opening statement, back May 6
    actually, almost 10 months ago, we started this thing called
    the Joint Committee on the Research Environment, one of the
    main dimensions of which is the issue of research security. So
    the key here is balancing the openness of our research
    enterprise, which is so important for our success today but
    also going forward with the fact that we are in a different
    environment today with countries, in particular China, that
    really did not hide their intentions about undermining our
    research enterprise. Taking unfair advantage, creating unlevel
    playing fields, and so on.
         So the key here is to make sure that we put in place
    policies that focus on addressing those issues while not unduly
    tying our own hands or increasing the administrative workload
    so high that we now have researchers instead of spending 44
    percent of their time on administrative activities, they're
    spending 60 or 70 percent of their time.
         I can tell you that universities are taking a lot of
    actions on this. We are developing policy mechanisms. We
    actually have some policies drafted right now. They're in a
    very good spot. A year ago I'm not sure I could have said that,
    but I think they've gotten to a very good spot of providing the
    appropriate balance between protecting and promoting our
    research enterprise. We're going to be rolling those things
    out. We're also working on best practices to universities,
    which are taking a lot of action, as I say, on their own, and
    also helping educate the community about what the threats are
    and what the challenges are.
         Personally, I see this as a great way to lean forward with
    American values because, you know, at the end of the day when
    you do research--Dr. Foster knows this very well. When you do
    research, you sign up to behave ethically, to have an openness,
    to share, to treat people with respect. And folks that come
    here a lot of times from other countries, that's not the
    environment they grew up in, but that's American values. That's
    who we are as Americans. But it's also who we are as a research
    enterprise.
         So it's a great opportunity for us to shine a bright light
    on what integrity looks like, what playing by the rules looks
    like, and it doesn't matter if you're from Oklahoma like Mr.
    Lucas and I are or if you're from some other country. If you
    come here, you need to play by the rules. And if you don't, if
    you intentionally break the rules, once you understand them and
    are taught the rules, you don't belong in our research
    enterprise, and we don't want you here because that means
    you're not following the rules of integrity that the taxpayers
    depend on us to follow. So we're very, very serious about this,
    and we've been going--we've been meeting twice a week for 10
    months on this. We're driving the agenda very hard.
         And I really appreciate your support on this. Members of
    Congress have been extremely supportive. You've put several
    bills on the table. I think the bill that the Ranking Member
    mentioned is a very thoughtful bill, and we're moving
    aggressively forward, and also engaging the National Academies.
         Mr. Lucas. Following along with the discussion that the
    Chair entered into on STEM education, I think you know, Doctor,
    I introduced the Rural STEM Education Act last fall, which is
    intended to address the many challenges rural schools face in
    providing quality STEM education. Could you please share how
    the Administration's 5-year strategic plan for STEM education
    will improve engagement in underserved communities, including
    rural students like Oklahoma?
         Dr. Droegemeier. Absolutely. It's a great question. And
    that second pillar of the STEM Education Strategic Plan, which
    again was put in place as a whole-of-nation approach, bringing
    everybody to the table so that when it was issued people in
    local school districts and rural areas could say, you know, I
    see myself in that. I see how I could engage with that.
         So one of the ways we do that is that pillar of broadening
    participation. That doesn't just mean, you know, race and
    gender and things like that. It means also rural, every ZIP
    Code in America. So one of the ways that we're doing that is
    engaging through things like apprenticeships. You know, STEM
    education isn't just degrees. It's apprenticeships. It's 2-year
    degrees. It's technical colleges, schools that give you a
    skilled technical workforce, which is very, very important,
    especially for rural areas.
         So we're working very much on that, also bringing
    broadband to rural areas, that's very important for education,
    for STEM skills, learning online, and things like that, so the
    American Broadband Initiative, of which OSTP is a part, the
    work that the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) is doing
    to put out the $20 billion in the--I think it's called the
    Connect America Initiative and other initiatives where they're
    taking money from the auctions to build connectivity to rural
    America. And this is a huge priority for the President, really
    help empower education in the rural communities. So it's
    really, really important that we do that, that no part of
    America gets left behind.
         The challenges we face in science and technology are
    great. The opportunities are great. We have to have everybody
    at the table, anybody who wants to participate has to be able
    to do that, and we're very committed to that.
         Mr. Lucas. Doctor, I hope that one of my colleagues in a
    little bit will ask the question about satellite data and 5G
    and weather forecasting. I'm out of time, but I'd like to hear
    from you about that----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Sure.
         Mr. Lucas [continuing]. Shortly. Thank you.
         Dr. Droegemeier. You bet. Thank you.
         Mr. Lucas. I yield back.
         Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much. Ms. Lofgren.
         Ms. Lofgren. Thank you very much, Doctor. I, like the
    Chairwoman, I have many questions about the budget, but I'll
    limit myself to two. The first has to do with the fusion energy
    project ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental
    Reactor). As you're aware, there were problems, a management
    problem a number of years ago. Dr. Bigot came in by all
    accounts and straightened them out, gotten the project back on
    track.
         We have received--had received estimates for what our
    contribution should be really to minimize cost to the taxpayer
    but also to keep the project on track, and the requested budget
    for the last several years has not met those estimates. The
    Committee has been trying to get current estimates, and the
    Department of Energy actually refused to send them to us.
         So I'm wondering if you, within the next week--since we
    have to make decisions on this, could you provide the Committee
    with updated estimates for the resources that are going to be
    required from the United States in the next fiscal year to
    maintain ITER's current schedule and to minimize its total
    project cost? Is that possible for you to do?
         Dr. Droegemeier. I will sure do everything I can to help.
    I will tell you I've worked very closely with the Department of
    Energy with Paul Dabbar, the Under Secretary, with Chris Fall,
    the head of the Office of Science, on ITER in particular, and
    we've looked at that project. And, you know, we're asking, OK,
    how do we move forward with it? It is a big, very expensive
    project, big goals, and so on, but we have commitments. We
    actually have treaty obligations with that project----
         Ms. Lofgren. Yes, we do.
         Dr. Droegemeier [continuing]. So we looked at that very
    carefully, and I'll be as helpful as I possibly can.
         There are lots of interesting opportunities and other
    projects that are of smaller scale that look at fusion, that
    are pretty far along actually, but I think, you know, we have
    to be mindful of commitments we make to international partners,
    so----
         Ms. Lofgren. Well, that's an important commitment, but I
    support the entire fusion budget.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Right.
         Ms. Lofgren. There are important developments going on
    funded not only by the science budgets but by NNSA (National
    Nuclear Security Administration) and--but the payoff ultimately
    is so monumental----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Yes.
         Ms. Lofgren [continuing]. We should not falter in this
    quest.
         Dr. Droegemeier. I think fusion is the future, the long-
    term future. It's very, very bright, so yes. Thank you. I'll be
    happy to be helpful wherever I can. Thank you.
         Ms. Lofgren. Let me ask you this. An issue I've been
    interested in for many years is open access, public access to
    federally funded research papers. And, as you know, we have
    kind of a convoluted system. Obviously, everybody wants peer
    review, but it's run by private for-profit companies, and so
    the federally funded research really doesn't get available.
         Now, we've made some progress, the 12-month rule. As
    you're aware I'm sure there were a lot of inquiries made in
    December from various scientific societies, publishers,
    stakeholders about the issue of public access. And last week,
    OSTP issued an RFI (request for information) on access to
    publications, data, and code. Now, publications I think is
    quite a different issue than the data and code question, and
    there's a very short timeframe. I'm wondering if it might be
    possible to extend the comment period at least to the
    publication issue because it is--I know what I think, but it is
    a complex issue, and I think that would help get the full flow
    of information in.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Sure.
         Ms. Lofgren. The other thing, I don't know if you can
    answer this yet, but is there consideration to change the 12-
    month period to make it a shorter time period?
         Dr. Droegemeier. So we have a subcommittee on Open Science
    within the National Science and Technology Council. It's been
    there for quite a while. And that's the mechanism by which we
    convene not only the interagency but the broader community. And
    we've had up to today about 100 or so meetings with various
    groups, publishers and researchers and so on. But you may know
    that recently we started holding roundtables, a little bit more
    visibility in terms of what we're doing, and the RFI absolutely
    to get the community's input.
         It's an incredibly complicated landscape, as you
    absolutely are right in saying, and we want to make sure that
    since this is such an important aspect of the research
    enterprise and that we kind of broadly call it scholarly
    communications--you say data, publications, code, things like
    that--that we want to make sure that any changes that we might
    make or continuations are done with--in the most thoughtful way
    with the most information we could possibly have because this
    is foundational to our enterprise for intellectual property,
    for credit that faculty and other researchers get. So we're
    absolutely working together all of that information.
         One thing I can tell you is that when you get different
    folks in the room, they learn a lot that they kind of thought
    they already knew, and there were some surprises in these
    meetings. It was like, wow, I didn't realize that that's the
    way it worked, yet people seem to have entrenched positions. So
    I'm really pleased that people are open-minded about learning
    about this complicated enterprise. And I'm really personally
    committed to getting it right because, as a professor, this is
    truly important to me, but I know how important it is to
    research and to the world. So thank you for your support. Happy
    to keep you updated on that.
         And extending the RFI, we do that a lot of times, and so
    my philosophy is if you go out for an RFI, you take a lot of
    time, people are putting time in doing it, so make sure we give
    enough time to get the thoughtful input. Let's not rush it. So
    we're certainly open to that.
         Ms. Lofgren. Thank you very much.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Sure.
         Ms. Lofgren. My time is expired, Madam Chairwoman.
         Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you. Mr. Posey.
         Mr. Posey. Thank you very much, Madam Chair, for holding
    this hearing today. These are exciting times for space. It's
    exciting to have Jim Bridenstine as our NASA Administrator.
    We're thrilled to have Bob Cabana back to head up the Kennedy
    Space Center. Thank you for that. It's exciting to have a
    President that loves space. That's clear. And it's thrilling to
    have a Vice President who loves space and heads up the National
    Space Council and see that active again and moving forward. And
    it's especially great to see that space is still largely a
    bipartisan issue and probably the least daggers in this
    Committees of all the Committees in the House. And that's
    really a good thing.
         Not many things were recommended for an increase like the
    NASA budget was, and we're all grateful to you for that. And
    pleased to see that you want to continue to make significant
    investments in our Nation's space program. Most of the increase
    will go toward the Artemis program, which is wonderful, and I
    think we're all excited about that.
         But we do want to talk about some other objectives that
    are important, and that is ground support systems. We've always
    in the past received strong funding for ground support systems,
    and we'll work to continue to do that. You can have the best
    rockets and the best people on those rockets and the best
    people making those rockets----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Right.
         Mr. Posey [continuing]. But if you don't have the ground
    support systems in place, nobody goes anywhere. And we don't
    want to be on track for that. And it's a possibility we might
    be on that track, and we need to make necessary adjustments to
    that to make sure our ground support systems are going to
    actually help us go back to the moon and then ultimately to
    Mars.
         In today's strong economy and the huge job demand, space,
    like most other industries, is a little bit in a bad spot for
    recruiting of skilled workforce people. So we often hear about
    the importance of internships and apprenticeships in STEM,
    which the Administration's 5-year plan also identified, and I'm
    just wondering if you'd speak to us about the steps the office
    is taking and the appropriate Federal agencies are doing to
    support such activities, including those working in skilled
    trades who don't require a 4-year degree.
         Dr. Droegemeier. No, thank you for that. And you're spot
    on. One of the things that I talk about and I really
    increasingly am seeing in the country is what I call kind of a
    seamless STEM enterprise. And so, you know, sometimes research
    universities would look at a 2-year college and say, you know,
    well, kids that come to the university are not very well-
    trained, so we have to do a lot of remediation. We need to all
    work together. We need to all lift each other up.
         And so, for example, I did a visit recently down to
    Virginia to a company that builds all the nuclear reactors and
    fuel and everything for our Navy submarines and ships. The
    people that were working on doing incredible things with
    welding and so on, none of them had a 4-year degree. They were
    all skilled tradespeople working with incredible computers.
         So things like apprenticeships, programs like the National
    Council of the American Worker; the reskilling and upskilling
    of individuals who might be a traditional arc welder with an
    acetylene torch now will be running a computer. And you say,
    well, gee, is it going to displace that person? No, it's going
    to put them to a new level of economic earning because we still
    need their skills in operating that equipment because they're
    still welding at the end of the day. The robot is not doing it
    all on its own. There has to be somebody there guiding it
    along.
         And so I think this is a tremendous opportunity with these
    industries of the future, AI and advanced manufacturing, 3-D
    printing, and things like that will really enable a lot of
    capabilities. So the apprenticeships programs, the skilled
    technical workforce, the National Council of the American
    Worker, the pledge to the American Worker that Ivanka is
    championing, upskilling and reskilling activities are really
    extraordinary.
         And, you know, STEM is not just going to college and
    getting a STEM degree. It's the whole enterprise. And somebody
    who's getting, say, in the skilled technical job maybe goes to
    a 2-year school, maybe later on they get a 4-year degree, but
    if they don't, they can come out starting to make $70-80,000 a
    year. That's a pretty good living. And so I think the President
    has been very, very clear and strong on this point of making
    sure that we don't disenfranchise those folks but we continue
    to support that type of activity because we need a whole
    spectrum of skills in this country.
         Mr. Posey. Well, I'm very pleased to hear you say that,
    and, you know, an economy where you have more job openings than
    you have people looking for work increases the economic value
    of every single person in the workforce. And of course we want
    to continue that.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Right.
         Mr. Posey. I see my time is expired, and I yield back,
    Madam Chair.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Could I just say one quick thing? You
    mentioned the ground systems. You look at big experiments like
    LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) and
    telescopes and stuff. People have to run those systems. They
    have to manage, maintain the HVAC (heating, ventilation, and
    air conditioning) systems on things like that. A lot of those
    people don't have a degree, they don't need a degree, but you
    need their tremendous skills. And so those folks are just as
    important to science as the scientists actually doing the work.
    Sorry. Thanks.
         Mr. Posey. Thank you.
         Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much. Mr. Lipinski.
         Mr. Lipinski. Thank you. First question, very simple and
    easy, Doctor. How do you pronounce your last name?
         Dr. Droegemeier. I pronounce it Droegemeier. My parents
    pronounce it Drag Meyer, and nobody can ever spell it right
    that way, so----
         Mr. Lipinski. All right. So, Dr. Droegemeier, I am--I've
    been very active on the issue of climate change for, you know,
    my entire 15 years here in Congress, and I think we're finally
    getting some--the concern has been raised so much that I think
    maybe we are going to make--potentially have some action soon.
    But I share the Chairwoman's concerns about the cuts in the
    research funding. I'm also concerned about the cuts to the
    Department of Energy's Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
    program and the ARPA-E program because I think those are
    programs that can help tremendously to advance us to new clean
    fuel sources, and I think that's critically important. Do you
    share my concern that climate change is something significant
    that we need to address?
         Dr. Droegemeier. Well, thank you, Mr. Lipinski. And I want
    to thank your staff for working with me several years ago
    before I came to the White House on a bill that you had
    dropped. I don't know if it ever went anywhere, but it was to
    look at IP (intellectual property) at universities and what
    buildings--so Sofya Leonova, who used to work for you, she was
    terrific, so thank you for that.
         One of the things that we've highlighted in the OMB
    (Office of Management and Budget) OSTP yearly guidance memo on
    R&D priorities was predictability of the Earth system. And it's
    really important in terms of understanding climate projections,
    weather predictions, things like that, how predictable are
    these sorts of things? But, as I mentioned, you know, the
    sophisticated models that we have today are--the way we have to
    operate them is really well below the capabilities that are
    needed to guide decisions about coastal sea-level rise, things
    like that, or local changes in climate extreme events, and so
    on, so we really feel, No. 1, predictability is important but
    also providing the assets and resources we need to actually
    operate these models and do the socioeconomic scenarios that
    really drive climate change models. We don't really understand
    much about those. We're moving into a new era now with so-
    called SSPs (Shared Socioeconomic Pathways), which I think will
    be quite helpful, but we don't even assign a likelihood to any
    of those. So there's a lot of good work, and I think it could
    be enabled by artificial intelligence, for example.
         I visited DOE not long ago and really looked at a lot of
    the good work they're doing in energy storage technology. They
    have a Coal FIRST program. They have an Energy Storage Grand
    Challenge. They're doing really amazing things. But what really
    struck me was what's happening in the private sector. There's a
    company that is now developed a capability to----
         Mr. Lipinski. But wouldn't it be helpful with those
    programs that you said are great programs and I agree----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Yes.
         Mr. Lipinski [continuing]. The private sector is also
    important, but you know, ARPA-E was created because there are
    things that the private sector will not invest in----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Right.
         Mr. Lipinski [continuing]. That the public sector must.
    But let me--so I want to move on because it's sort of--and
    related to that, can you describe how the President's budget
    will support the development of Aurora and other similar
    supercomputer efforts? Because I think that fits in with what
    you're talking about here, Aurora at Argonne National Lab,
    which I represent.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Yes, absolutely. Aurora is a high
    priority. It's coming in, what, in a couple of years I believe,
    and then Frontier will replace the Summit system at Oak Ridge
    National Lab, and I think they're vying in a friendly
    competition between two national labs to see which one has the
    fastest computer.
         But what is really important about that is that, you know,
    one of the issues with our climate models today, for example,
    is the fact that they extract about 4 to 5 percent of the peak
    theoretical performance of a computer. Back in the day when I
    was doing computing, it was 70 to 80 percent. And so what's
    nice about these new architectures is they have a lot of
    heterogeneity to them, different types of processors, so I
    think there's some promise there that we're going to actually
    be able to operate these models in the ways that we really need
    to operate them and with the level of sophistication that they
    already have to start addressing some of these questions and
    also address the issues of bias in the models and things like
    that, which continue to trouble us.
         Mr. Lipinski. Yes. So is the Administration committed to
    the funding that's needed for Aurora?
         Dr. Droegemeier. I'd have to go look at the budget,
    Congressman, but I believe so. I mean, the last time I talked
    to the Director of Argonne and to Thomas Zacharia at Oak Ridge
    I believe those things were on track, but I could get back to
    you. I'd have to----
         Mr. Lipinski. OK. Thank you.
         Dr. Droegemeier [continuing]. Look at that specifically.
         Mr. Lipinski. One last very quick thing, the concern
    about--you talk about openness. There's been some talk about
    it. I have received a letter from a number of universities in
    the State of Illinois that have concerns about the denial of
    visas and other issues that have happened outside of the State
    Department and other processes that Customs and Border Patrol
    has been turning down visas, for example. And I just want your
    commitment to working with other parts of the Administration to
    make sure that, you know, as long as people are cleared to come
    here to study, to research, that they are not stopped at some
    other part by some other part of our Government.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Yes, sir. In fact, this JCORE
    Subcommittee on Research Security, we work with the State
    Department. In fact, these folks come to the meetings. They're
    part of a State Department, Homeland Security, FBI (Federal
    Bureau of Investigation), National Security Agency. They're all
    involved at the table, and so we are looking at all of those
    issues, yes.
         Mr. Lipinski. Yes, because, I just--I've heard that--and
    it's great what you have done with it, and I--but I've heard
    that there are problems that exist even after that process is
    completed. So if you would just look into that----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Absolutely.
         Mr. Lipinski [continuing]. But I'm over my time.
         Dr. Droegemeier. You bet. Thank you, sir.
         Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much. Mr. Babin.
         Mr. Babin. Yes, ma'am. Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
    And thank you, Dr. Droegemeier.
         You mentioned briefly the need and importance of rural
    broadband. And as a representative of a rural district, I would
    agree wholeheartedly. I want to thank the President and the
    Administration for their commitment to connecting the entire
    country, including our rural communities, to the broadband and
    that issue. Could you elaborate on where we currently stand on
    this and the progress that we're making in terms of getting
    rural--I represent nine counties.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Right.
         Mr. Babin. Part of that's in Houston, certainly no problem
    there, but the upper--what we call deep east Texas, we--we're
    way behind. And it's something----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Right.
         Mr. Babin [continuing]. That really means a lot to me.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Sure.
         Mr. Babin. If you could elaborate on that.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Yes, sir. Absolutely. Thank you for that
    good question. A couple of dimensions to the answer. From an
    OSTP perspective, we're--we co-chair the American Broadband
    Initiative on behalf of the White House. Also, we're part of
    the Rural Prosperity Task Force, and so being from Oklahoma, I
    definitely----
         Mr. Babin. Absolutely.
         Dr. Droegemeier [continuing]. Resonate with your question.
    In the last C.R. (continuing resolution) there was a $600
    million of funding I think, as you all know, to USDA to do
    grants and bring other resources to bear on connecting rural
    America. The estimate that I've heard is about $40 billion
    overall to do this. So to give that as a context, the Connect
    America Fund, which again is auction proceeds that the FCC has
    made available, they've done this in various ways. They've
    provided $1.4 billion overall to connect a little over 600,000
    homes and businesses. But the biggie right now is the Rural
    Digital Opportunity Fund. Again, the FCC provided $20 billion
    over 10 years, so that kind of gets us halfway to this--to the
    completion.
         And the other point here I would mention is part of the
    issue of connecting has to do with spectrum availability----
         Mr. Babin. Right.
         Dr. Droegemeier [continuing]. And that's something that
    we're working on within the White House. Larry Kudlow leads
    that as the National Economic Council Chair, a very important
    issue. And the Ranking Member mentioned with regards to whether
    we look at who's using the spectrum, can it be shared, can it
    be vacated, all of those kinds of important issues. So that's
    part of the issue of making sure that it's available to rural
    broadband and also making the business case that's deploying in
    those areas where the populations are not as dense is still a
    very important one because of farming in rural communities are
    just a tremendous part of our economy----
         Mr. Babin. Sure.
         Dr. Droegemeier [continuing]. And a very important part of
    America. So we're making that case. I think the President is
    very, very strongly committed to that.
         Mr. Babin. Would you agree to work with me and my staff
    and give us maybe some pointers that----
         Dr. Droegemeier. You bet.
         Mr. Babin [continuing]. Some things that we might be able
    to do? I would appreciate.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Yes, sir. We can dive deeply----
         Mr. Babin. OK.
         Dr. Droegemeier [continuing]. Into that, you bet.
         Mr. Babin. Great. And the next question, China's
    investment and development and not on basic research implies
    that they're building their technological success on the basic
    research developed in the United States and other countries.
    We've even seen the infiltration of Chinese influence in our
    university systems on several different occasions at our top
    institutions here in just the last few weeks. We had a chemist
    that was arrested.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Right.
         Mr. Babin. How do we ensure that foreign nationals from
    China coming to study at our universities do not undermine our
    open system of research? And how seriously do you believe that
    university leaders are taking this threat?
         Dr. Droegemeier. That's a very, very good question. First
    of all, I would say from the data that we have China is really
    investing more in the applied--and I'm talking about the
    Chinese Government, let me be clear--investing more in the
    applied and the--sort of the experimental development, more the
    practical applied end, whereas we tend to invest Federal
    Government resources, I think very appropriately so, in the
    early stage research. So where is their basic research coming
    from?
         Mr. Babin. Yes.
         Dr. Droegemeier. The question is a little bit obvious
    there. They do invest in basic research.
         I can tell you in meeting with university leaders all over
    the country, and my own university included, university leaders
    are taking this very, very seriously. And I think that's a
    development that has changed over time frankly. I think for a
    while it was, well, how real is this? And then you start to see
    these cases come up, University of Kansas, Emory, M.D.
    Anderson, Harvard. People realize, yes, this is real.
         So what we're doing in JCORE is, again, really taking a
    behavior-based approach to this. And it really is about foreign
    government influence not just, you know, say, people coming
    here wanting to do bad things. There's strong influence on
    individuals in China in particular who come here and are under
    duress frankly with their families back in China and so on.
         The best thing we can do is make sure that those who come
    here share our values and that we vet them appropriately, but
    once they're here, we help them understand what our values are
    and how to live by them and then monitor that. And one of the
    ways we do that is through disclosures of things like conflicts
    of interest, are you part of a talent program, and so on. And,
    again, for the individual at Harvard, he was not a Chinese
    national. He was not ethnically Chinese.
         Mr. Babin. Right. Right.
         Dr. Droegemeier. So it doesn't matter where you're from.
    You've got to play by the rules, and if you don't, well, simply
    you don't belong and we toss you out of the research
    enterprise. And you lose all credibility anyway. And that's I
    think the value of the integrity that we as researchers hold
    dear, that if you don't play by the rules, we don't want you,
    frankly.
         Mr. Babin. Thank you. I know my time is out, but I want to
    say one quick thing. I'm the Representative of Johnson Space
    Center in Houston, and I would also like to commend the
    President and his budget people for giving NASA a 12 percent
    increase in that budget. We are very appreciative. Thank you,
    sir.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Thank you.
         Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much. I want to say
    that Mr. Lucas has a bill that has passed the House on--I think
    it's passed--rural broadband. OK. It's waiting to be voted on
    in the House.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Ah, OK.
         Chairwoman Johnson. But he's been very thoughtful, and I
    want to point out that it doesn't have to be deep east Texas.
    It can be deep south Dallas----
         Mr. Babin. Amen.
         Chairwoman Johnson [continuing]. Where we need the
    broadband.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Now, Mr.--Ranking Member Lucas, should we
    tell her we call that Baja Oklahoma? We don't want to say that,
    right?
         Chairwoman Johnson. Yes.
         Dr. Droegemeier. We won't go there.
         Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you. Ms. Bonamici.
         Ms. Bonamici. Thank you, Chairwoman Johnson and Ranking
    Member Lucas. We could use some rural broadband in Oregon as
    well.
         Dr. Droegemeier, welcome.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Yes, good to see you.
         Ms. Bonamici. Thank you for being here. First, I want to
    align myself with Mr. Lipinski's concerns about the cuts in the
    Department of Energy to ARPA-E and the Energy Efficiency and
    Renewable Energy budgets.
         The climate crisis is an existential threat, and I'm
    extremely concerned that in your first appearance here before
    this Committee this Congress you didn't even mention climate
    change except for when you were responding to questions from
    the Chairwoman and Mr. Lipinski. You're the President's top
    advisor on science policy, and with your background working on
    extreme weather issues, I'm alarmed frankly by the
    Administration's failure to take this issue seriously and to
    fund research on climate science.
         And I do have a budget question, but first, I want to ask
    a couple questions, yes or no questions, about something that
    concerns many of us here, as well as many in the scientific
    community. Dr. Droegemeier, should Federal agencies use the
    best available science to inform regulatory decisions?
         Dr. Droegemeier. Yes.
         Ms. Bonamici. Good. I think so, too. Should agencies
    implement policies that limit the scope of science that could
    be used in making decisions, yes or no?
         Dr. Droegemeier. Limit the scope of science? I'm not sure
    what you----
         Ms. Bonamici. That can be considered. Should the scope of
    science that can be considered in making regulatory decisions
    be limited, yes or no?
         Dr. Droegemeier. Well, I think if it's the best science,
    it's the best science. Yes, you just put the best science on
    the table. Yes.
         Ms. Bonamici. And were you consulted on the Environmental
    Protection Agency's proposed rule titled ``Strengthening
    Transparency in Regulatory Science?'' Were you consulted about
    that?
         Dr. Droegemeier. No.
         Ms. Bonamici. It's our understanding that this draft
    supplemental rule was submitted to the Office of Management and
    Budget for interagency review, so has OSTP offered comments on
    the draft supplemental rule during the interagency review
    process?
         Dr. Droegemeier. I would have to check on that, and I'd be
    happy to do that and get back to you.
         Ms. Bonamici. Thank you.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Sure.
         Ms. Bonamici. I would appreciate that.
         Dr. Droegemeier. OK.
         Ms. Bonamici. If the President's top science advisor and
    in light of OSTP's role in leading interagency efforts on
    science policy, are you aware of any larger Federal efforts to
    limit or otherwise censor science?
         Dr. Droegemeier. I'm not.
         Ms. Bonamici. Yesterday, there were news reports
    suggesting that the Interior Department will soon release a
    proposed Promoting Open Science Rule, which appears to have a
    similar objective to the EPA's proposed rule. And I have to say
    I share the concerns of many who are deeply troubled by these
    proposals that would limit the scope of science used in
    decisionmaking, jeopardize bedrock environmental standards, and
    endanger the health and well-being of our communities, so I
    wanted to share that concern.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Thank you.
         Ms. Bonamici. So, Dr. Droegemeier, in your testimony you
    noted that research and partnerships on ocean science and
    technology are a priority for the Administration. And I know
    that OSTP organized a summit on this issue unfortunately
    without congressional participation last year. Yet the
    President's budget request would slash funding for the National
    Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Ocean Service
    by 37 percent and reduce funding for the Office of Oceanic and
    Atmospheric Research (OAR) by 40 percent. I also noticed the
    concern about the elimination--total elimination of the Sea
    Grant program that's proposed.
         Last year, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on
    Climate Change (IPCC) released a special report on the ocean
    and cryosphere in a changing climate that found that the ocean
    is warming rapidly, it's becoming more acidic, it's losing
    oxygen, and becoming less habitable to the species that reside
    in it as a direct result of human-caused greenhouse gas
    emissions. So how do you reconcile those findings of the IPCC
    and the Administration's identified priorities with such
    drastic funding cuts?
         Dr. Droegemeier. No, thank you for that. So I'm privileged
    to serve on the Ocean Committee that was created with the
    executive order that the President signed. It's got two primary
    components and two subcommittees. One is on ocean science and
    the other one is on ocean resource management.
         So the S&T part of it is really the critical thing to look
    at all the aspects of ocean--things that you just mentioned.
    But also in the summit that we had, it was kind of a
    multisector summit. And frankly it was the first time really
    that there was such a summit. So it brought together nonprofits
    who are investing very heavily in ocean S&T and ocean
    exploration and also for-profit companies and the government
    and the university community.
         So when you look at all those equities, you look at all
    the resources, for example, the research vessels that
    nonprofits like Paul Allen's group is bringing to the table,
    you know, we partner with them and we get this tremendous
    multiplier effect. So even though there are cuts to the budget,
    it doesn't mean that the science research is being cut because
    when you partner like that, you're actually leveraging what
    investments are being made thoughtfully in the government,
    against all these other folks who have equities as well. And it
    was an extraordinary event actually where people were saying,
    OK, now we have a direction where we're going to go in that
    science and technology for the oceans.
         Ms. Bonamici. And I appreciate the partnership, but I know
    that solving this crisis is going to require those types of
    partnerships. However, in light of what we know and what we
    have learned and how it's affecting not only the health of the
    ocean, which of course reflects the health of the planet, but
    also the industries like our shellfish industry in Oregon, for
    example, very concerned. Our fishing industry, very concerned
    about the warming waters, about the acidic conditions. It seems
    like this would be a time in light of that recent report to
    increase those investments and of course work with the private
    sector----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Right.
         Ms. Bonamici [continuing]. But it's not a time to cut. And
    my time is expired. Thank you, Madam Chair. I yield back.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Thank you.
         Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much. Mr. Gonzalez.
         Mr. Gonzalez. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Dr.
    Droegemeier, for being here.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Good morning.
         Mr. Gonzalez. Good morning. I want to start and probably
    spend my whole time on the implementation of SASTA (Securing
    American Leadership in Science and Technology Act of 2020)
    through the JCORE Research Security Subcommittee. And thank you
    for the work that you've done standing that up and kind of
    pushing that forward. That was a bill that I was pleased to
    introduce and to see the fruits of that labor are exciting in a
    lot of ways. But first with the line of questioning I want to
    start by asking you to help us frame the China challenge
    specifically at the research institutions. How are they
    actually going in and influencing the policies at the
    universities, as well as stealing the technology?
         Dr. Droegemeier. It's a great question. So it actually
    takes many forms. One form is the fundamental issue of academic
    freedom. So sometimes you have individuals that are coming in
    and pushing back against certain folks who are being invited to
    campus to talk. Maybe they're from Tibet or whatever, so
    there's that dimension.
         Another dimension that we've seen is, for example, taking
    a proposal which is a very, you know, well-conceived, highly
    rated proposal and sending it to China--we have evidence of
    this--so that others over there could act on it before our own
    investigators have a chance to act on it. And sometimes there
    are groups of people that get together and they agree to review
    a proposal poorly so it actually won't get funded here and you
    take that really highly rated proposal and send it over to
    China.
         Another thing of course is actually taking physical
    materials. We've already seen this, vials of biological agents
    and things like that that are taken, sharing intellectual
    property, taking photographs of things, for example, that are
    export-controlled. So there's a whole variety of ways from
    undermining the fundamental integrity of the openness of our
    research enterprise vis-a-vis academic freedom to specific
    activities that seek to grab hold of particular things of
    interest to the Chinese Communist Party.
         Mr. Gonzalez. So using our own values of academic freedom
    against us in some ways, right? What percentage of the theft is
    conducted directly by folks who are a part of talent programs
    as opposed to outside of talent programs but still connected to
    the Chinese Government?
         Dr. Droegemeier. That's a great question. We don't really
    have specific data on that. I think one of the things that we
    are seeing is that the talent programs that go by a particular
    name, they tend to morph. They tend to go underground. They're
    a little bit like a virus. You know, it morphs and it changes.
    And so we're remaining vigilant to that.
         And also I think really trying to educate folks, this is
    something we've done on our subcommittee, develop best
    practices, examples of contracts of what the language actually
    says--if you're part of this talent program you agree to share
    this information, you agree to not disclose it to a Federal
    agency or, you know, things like that. It's completely
    antithetical to our values. Yes.
         Mr. Gonzalez. But you said, and I think this is right,
    that the names of these things morph and they go underground,
    right? So I guess I have a little bit of a concern on the
    reliance of the disclosures specifically because, two things.
    One, it's a self-disclosure----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Right.
         Mr. Gonzalez [continuing]. Right, but then the second is
    if you're asking about specific talent programs, they could
    just change the name tomorrow, right?
         Dr. Droegemeier. Right.
         Mr. Gonzalez. So kind of help me get more comfortable
    around that.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Sure. No, you're absolutely right. And
    disclosure is a really big issue and this issue of self-
    disclosure, it's been that way for a long time. So, No. 1,
    universities are ramping up their use of these disclosures much
    more dramatically. No. 2, there has to be periodic audits of
    these things just like getting pulled out of the----
         Mr. Gonzalez. Is that happening today?
         Dr. Droegemeier. We're setting up to do that.
         Mr. Gonzalez. OK.
         Dr. Droegemeier. With 54 FBI field offices----
         Mr. Gonzalez. OK.
         Dr. Droegemeier [continuing]. You know, universities are
    not set up to do it. They don't have the information----
         Mr. Gonzalez. Right.
         Dr. Droegemeier [continuing]. So the audits need to be
    done by law enforcement.
         The third thing I would say is that we want to make sure
    that, you know, this stuff is actually shared. And sometimes
    you can't share information, say, from university to a Federal
    agency to a private company. And people kind of go underground.
    They hide by changing institutions, and legally, that
    information can't be shared. So we're looking now at
    mechanisms, legal mechanisms or possibly coming to Congress and
    saying we need to change the laws because if you're not sharing
    the information, then sometimes people can skirt the rules----
         Mr. Gonzalez. OK.
         Dr. Droegemeier [continuing]. And we can't have that.
         Mr. Gonzalez. And I trust you'll update us on any changes
    that are----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Absolutely. And anytime you want to have
    an update, we're happy to come over and do that. And again,
    thank you. You've given some tremendous input. I met with some
    Members the other day, very, very helpful input, and we always
    welcome that.
         Mr. Gonzalez. Great.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Yes.
         Mr. Gonzalez. Again, I'll end with what I started with. I
    just--I thank you for your work on this.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Thank you.
         Mr. Gonzalez. It's a major initiative. I'm somebody who
    thinks we should be increasing our research across the board
    and making sure we're always at the cutting-edge, but alongside
    of that we have to secure.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Right.
         Mr. Gonzalez. And I know that that's a mandate that you
    share. So----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Absolutely.
         Mr. Gonzalez. With that, I thank you and I yield back.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Thank you, sir.
         Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much. Ms. Wexton.
         Ms. Wexton. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you, Dr.
    Droegemeier, for joining us here today.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Sure.
         Ms. Wexton. Dr. Droegemeier, are you familiar with the
    Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food
    and Agriculture both within USDA? Are you familiar with those?
         Dr. Droegemeier. I've heard of it, but I'm not--I wouldn't
    say I'm familiar with it, no.
         Ms. Wexton. So I will let you know a little bit about what
    they do.
         Dr. Droegemeier. OK.
         Ms. Wexton. These are two research agencies within the
    USDA. The Economic Research Service or ERS is USDA's science
    arm, and it produces statistical analyses to inform policy and
    industry decisions with real impacts on farmers, consumers,
    rural communities, and natural resources. The National
    Institutes of Food and Agriculture or NIFA----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Yes, that I know. I know NIFA.
         Ms. Wexton. It funds hundreds of millions of dollars in
    research grants for agricultural concerns and best practices,
    things of that nature. So you're aware of that.
         Dr. Droegemeier. I'm aware of NIFA, yes.
         Ms. Wexton. OK. So are you aware that last year, these two
    agencies were relocated from Washington, DC, to Kansas City?
         Dr. Droegemeier. Yes.
         Ms. Wexton. And that was done on an expedited basis,
    correct?
         Dr. Droegemeier. I just know they were relocated, yes. I
    don't know if it was expedited or not, but----
         Ms. Wexton. Did you know that they were--they've been
    operating with a skeleton crew ever since that relocation took
    place?
         Dr. Droegemeier. I've heard something along those lines,
    yes, that they haven't been able to bring in as many people to
    re-staff.
         Ms. Wexton. In fact, at least 75 percent of the staff has
    left, including all of the publishing staff at ERS and all of
    the grants management NIFA. And as of last month, ERS had 180
    vacancies to fill due to the mass attrition from the expedited
    agency move. So there's been not only a big loss of workforce
    but a huge brain drain from those agencies.
         And at the time the move that was proposed Secretary
    Perdue justified it by saying it would ensure that USDA was,
    quote, ``the most effective, most efficient, and most customer-
    focused agency in the Federal Government.'' And OMB Director
    Mick Mulvaney referred to the Federal employees quitting en
    masse as ``a wonderful way to streamline government and do what
    we haven't been able to do in a long time.''
         So now the President's current budget request for ERS
    includes a decrease of $22.6 million or more than 1/4 of its
    budget from last year for ERS. Almost 70 percent of that cut
    comes directly from further proposed reductions to full-time
    staff in ERS from 329 to 187 positions.
         So, Dr. Droegemeier, has the departure of hundreds of
    employees from ERS and NIFA, which Mr. Mulvaney referred to as
    ``a wonderful thing,'' improved the function of Federal science
    at USDA?
         Dr. Droegemeier. I honestly don't have enough information
    to answer the question, but I appreciate your explanation. I
    would have to get more information to really thoughtfully
    answer that because I really don't know. I haven't looked at
    the science output and what the staffing levels are, and need
    to be. And these things tend to get complicated when you look
    more in detail at them. So I'm happy to do that, absolutely.
         Ms. Wexton. Well, if all the grants management staff has
    left NIFA, does that make it pretty likely that they're not
    able to manage grants?
         Dr. Droegemeier. Well, it depends on if that function has
    been transferred somewhere else. Given the fact that they were
    moved, maybe that function exists somewhere else. So, you know,
    again, I'd have to really look at the big picture to see, but
    I'm happy to do that.
         Ms. Wexton. So is OSTP doing anything to support ERS and
    NIFA in rebuilding the full science capacity of both these
    agencies?
         Dr. Droegemeier. Not to my knowledge.
         Ms. Wexton. OK. Will you commit to do something about that
    or----
         Dr. Droegemeier. I'll certainly look into that. Yes, I'm
    aware of it, but, you know, they are a Cabinet-level agency, so
    they certainly have freedom to manage their department. But I'm
    happy to be helpful however I can.
         Ms. Wexton. OK. Very good.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Yes.
         Ms. Wexton. And both these agencies have vacancies in key
    leadership positions right now. The ERS Administrator and
    multiple top-level science leadership positions at NIFA remain
    vacant or acting. So would you agree that these temporary
    appointments and vacancies are limiting the representation of
    USDA's science efforts and specifically the NSTC Committee on
    Science?
         Dr. Droegemeier. Honestly, I couldn't answer that today as
    I sit here, but I'd really love to get schooled up on this and
    learn more and be able to answer that.
         Ms. Wexton. Absolutely. If you would----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Yes.
         Ms. Wexton [continuing]. Please look into it and report--
    --
         Dr. Droegemeier. Sure.
         Ms. Wexton [continuing]. Back about your findings because
    this is really important, and it's been a big attack on science
    and as----
         Dr. Droegemeier. OK.
         Ms. Wexton [continuing]. Science and technology policy, I
    think that you would want to get that----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Yes.
         Ms. Wexton [continuing]. Corrected.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Thank you. Yes, I'll certainly do that.
         Ms. Wexton. Thank you very much. And I'll yield back.
         Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much. Mr. Baird.
         Mr. Baird. Thank you, Madam Chair.
         And, Dr. Droegemeier, I appreciate your commitment to
    science and particularly to research and development. And the
    fact that you are from rural Oklahoma, I represent a rural are
    of Indiana, and so I can appreciate the commitment to high-
    speed internet.
         But also, as a meteorologist, I know you're aware that the
    weather forecasts are dependent on satellite data. There's been
    a great deal of concern in the weather community that the
    deployment of the 5G could interfere with forecasting
    capabilities. And, as you are aware, that could impact
    agriculture and, you know, we're extremely dependent on weather
    and weather forecasts as we decide what kind of planting,
    harvesting, or spraying activities we might do. So would you
    mind sharing your thoughts on that issue and what steps you're
    taking to help advocate or mitigate that?
         Dr. Droegemeier. Right, absolutely. No, thank you. So OSTP
    is in fact a part of that conversation in the interagency.
    Again, Larry Kudlow leads that activity. And with regard to the
    weather satellites in particular, it was I believe last fall we
    were looking at that issue. I'm trying to remember exactly the
    band. It was three--well, anyway, I won't worry about that, the
    gigahertz band that it was.
         But the question was when you have a transmission from a
    particular 5G antenna, what is the so-called outer band
    emission? Does it leak over to an area where the passive
    satellites are? Because the satellites are just listening.
    They're not transmitting. They're listening for very weak
    signals. So the concern was if there is interference, it could
    really inhibit the getting of the satellite data.
         The challenge with all this is--and of course we all know
    we don't ever have as much information as we want, but we don't
    really have ubiquitous 5G deployment. There's not been
    extensive testing in the field of these things, so we had to go
    based on a lot of theoretical analyses and assumptions about
    what 5G would look like. So we made a best decision which I
    thought was good but also with the proviso that if there are
    problems, we left enough wiggle room to be able to address
    them. You can't go up and change the satellites--they're
    already flying around--but we came to a spot that I thought was
    really, really good that will both, you know, be a thoughtful
    deployment now, but if things go south, we are prepared to be
    able to address those issues.
         Mr. Baird. Thank you. Well, then my second question I want
    to switch back a little bit to the STEM skills. And we've
    talked a lot about that. We talked a lot about that in this
    Committee. And I really appreciate you mentioning vocational
    schools and so on, mentioning welders and the need to really be
    digitally literate, and it doesn't matter----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Right.
         Mr. Baird [continuing]. And you mentioned even though a
    lot of those machines and robots operate I wouldn't say on
    their own, but they still take a human touch and an
    understanding of the digital concepts, so I just wondered if
    you might elaborate on that a little more ensuring every
    American----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Sure.
         Mr. Baird [continuing]. Has the opportunity to----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Yes, I think there's tremendous
    opportunity, and I have to say, you know, it's wonderful to
    hear the National Science Board, which governs the National
    Science Foundation, doing a report on the skilled technical
    workforce. You would think, well, they're focused on Ph.D.-
    level people. They have this concern and really well-placed,
    and so they're very thoughtful. And they'll actually be
    collecting data, which we don't have a lot of data on the
    skilled technical workforce.
         But I think folks in America can be very, very pleased
    that President Trump focuses on these types of jobs as being
    valuable, as providing mechanisms to actually get on a pathway
    toward--if you're a welder, if you're a plumber, if you're an
    electrician--not just, you know--you can continue to do what
    you're doing, as an entrepreneur, you can start your own
    business, but you can also get on to a higher level of skill
    and pathway. And so now we're working with companies who
    actually don't look at, oh, what degree do you have or what--
    you look at the skills because at the end of the day a degree
    or a job it's just a bunch of skills, so we're kind of taking
    this down to the fundamental level of skills of the worker,
    skills of the employer, skills of the producer, whether it's a
    technical school, a college, or whatever and saying what skills
    are you really looking for? Don't tell me you need a 4-year
    degree and 5 years' experience. What are you really looking
    for? And that is opening enormous horizons for individuals,
    including our military.
         And I want to thank you all for your work with the
    Veterans STEM Act that the President just signed into law,
    very, very exciting for our men and women in uniform to really
    look at how do they, you know, get on to different pathways of
    prosperity for their own skills.
         So it's something that the President, Ivanka, and
    everybody is committed to, and it's making a difference. You
    look at the data, you know, and the middle class is rising,
    these folks are getting jobs, they're making more money. That
    increases the tax base. It's great for the country, it's great
    for them and their families. It's just a no-lose situation as
    far as I can see.
         Mr. Baird. Thank you very much for that.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Yes, sir.
         Mr. Baird. And I yield back. I'm out of time.
         Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much. Mr. Foster.
         Mr. Foster. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Dr.
    Droegemeier, for appearing here.
         You know, one of the great things that's happened in
    Congress, which is sort of rare these days, is the bipartisan
    consensus that we ought to something like double our research
    budgets----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Right.
         Mr. Foster [continuing]. Over some time like over the next
    10 years and these--you know, they've been put forward by my
    Republican colleagues here. There are Democratic proposals, and
    there's also a lot of enthusiasm for that in the Senate. This
    is obviously a very big contrast with what we're hearing from
    OMB.
         And, you know, so I sort of feel like that situation with
    the Cuban missile crisis back in the 1960s where the
    Administration was faced with two very different communications
    from the Russians and had to just choose to respond to the one
    that they found favorable. And I think that's sort of what
    we're going to end up doing here I hope.
         But, you know--and there's sort of a narrative that goes
    with that, that it's no harm, no foul since the really
    destructive budgets that the Administration is proposing won't
    really damage things because Congress will fix it. And that's
    not quite true, and I wanted to dig into that. The problem is
    the planning, that when you engage--when you're forced to
    engage in planning exercises that are constrained by
    unrealistically decreasing budgets whereas the congressional
    intent is actually to increase, then you don't undergo the
    planning and you don't get the projects lined up that will
    actually be funded. And, you know, there's a danger frankly to
    the money when it arrives from Congress may end up being
    misspent. And so that's one thing I worry about, that the
    pipeline of future projects is sort of artificially being
    drained out because you're not allowed to plan for
    unconstrained or actually increasing budgets in many areas.
         And so one of the things I'd like to direct your attention
    to as a way of solving that given the pipeline is dangerously
    empty of future projects is that you can temporarily solve it
    with dealing with the infrastructure deficit at the Department
    of Energy, NIST (National Institute of Standards and
    Technology), and other places. You know, I am very proud to be
    the Co-Chair of the National Labs Caucus and--because I spent
    23 years at Fermi National Labs. And I made it one of my
    missions in Congress to drag as many of my colleagues as I can
    to each of the 17 DOE national labs and others. Just last week,
    we actually visited Ames Lab, and we're heading to Argonne and
    Fermilab next month. But--and you can see at every one of these
    labs that the infrastructure has been underinvested in a while.
         This gives you the opportunity when Congress does deliver
    a more favorable budget to immediately transfer a big slice of
    that money into an area where it's unlikely to be misspent,
    that as you define new projects to absorb you know, the--what
    we hope to be the eventual doubling of budgets that you--the
    first thing you do is fix the deficit that exists.
         And so I was wondering if you can comment on that and, you
    know, specifically in the context of what we hope are
    realistically increasing budgets. Are you--will you advocate
    for American scientific infrastructure from, you know, just
    completing the construction of experimental facilities that
    have not the full complement of things, just simply, you know,
    repairing things? And can you say something about that?
         Dr. Droegemeier. Absolutely. No, it's a great point. And
    in fact, you know, I think science infrastructure is a
    legitimate part of infrastructure. We talk about roads and
    bridges and other infrastructure, but obviously to be the world
    leader in S&T we do need science infrastructure, absolutely the
    case.
         I am a huge fan of the 17 DOE labs. I talk about them all
    the time, and I think they're absolutely the crown jewel that
    sets us far apart from other countries that may be investing
    heavily in AI and quantum and things like that, but we've got
    our DOE labs, and there's no equal to them anywhere in the
    world, no question about that.
         Back to your other point, though, there was a lot of
    planning that went into the budget with regard to prioritizing
    industries of the future and AI and quantum in particular. And
    so when you do set these priorities, you know, you really do go
    through a lot of planning. And so when the agencies plan their
    budgets, you know, OMB gives them a guidance level but then
    they give them, you know, above guidance and so on. And there
    are a lot of times the agencies will look well above guidance.
    They know what their appropriated levels were. So they're not
    surprised if----
         Mr. Foster. It's my understanding that actually from, you
    know, talking to people that probably shouldn't be talking to
    me that actually that level of planning did not take place.
    They were not allowed to say what would you do with a doubled
    budget, that that was--typically, they were more--they were
    saying what would you do if your budget was cut by 50 or 80
    percent----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Yes.
         Mr. Foster [continuing]. Or maybe if you're lucky held
    flat? But there was not planning for what would you do with a
    double budget. And that's, you know, the danger there is you
    won't have the----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Yes.
         Mr. Foster [continuing]. Well-planned-out----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Right.
         Mr. Foster [continuing]. Projects that would absorb that
    money.
         Dr. Droegemeier. I think not with a double budget, right,
    but, you know, the agencies look at appropriated levels and
    they say, OK, you know, this is the President's budget. That's
    what we write our budget to, but if it turns out that Congress
    appropriates more, we can't all of a sudden say, oh, what do we
    do with that. So they do plan for much larger increases
    depending on what Congress does because you do hold the purse
    strings and they realize that, so they're not caught flat-
    footed I guess is my point.
         Mr. Foster. Well, yes, but still, you know, there's a lot
    of effort that goes into these budgets, and----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Right.
         Mr. Foster [continuing]. That ended up being ignored, you
    know, and so I think that--I'd just like to urge you to
    transmit all the way down the chain that you can that we need
    to start planning for what we all hope to be realistically a
    doubling of the budgets here and come up with a set of
    projects. And I think the good starting place for that is, you
    know, I just last week--because I've been worried about how
    this would happen, Congressman Lujan and I introduced the
    National Lab Restoration Modernization Act to authorize----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Right.
         Mr. Foster [continuing]. Yes, $6 billion, and that is a
    short-term starting point, but we need the long-term budget
    planning to--thank you. And I will----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Good point. Thank you.
         Mr. Foster. I'm over time and----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Thanks, Dr. Foster.
         Mr. Foster [continuing]. Yield back.
         Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much. Mr. Murphy.
         Mr. Murphy. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and welcome, Dr.
    Droegemeier. I appreciate your appearing before us today.
         Budgets are a hard thing to work out with, and we all wish
    we had an infinite money stream and priorities need to be made.
    And I congratulate you and give you condolences on how to deal
    with those.
         I want to circle back a little bit on the academic issues
    with China. A former academic and around that environment for
    long time, I just want to talk a little bit about the
    challenges that we face with intellectual property and
    integrity and everything. Obviously, you know, as one of our
    former Congressmen noted, there are issues going on with China
    with the theft of intellectual property. And I'm just wondering
    what are we doing about getting that down on a granular level
    to college, universities, presidents, vice presidents, faculty,
    tenured, et cetera? Because, you know, having served on Board
    of Trustees previously, it's nice when people from other
    countries want to come in and pay full fare to expensive
    universities, and those are welcomed by university presidents
    and everybody else because they help pay the budget. But on the
    other hand if these individuals are coming off and literally
    stealing our country's technology and everything, there is a
    balance. So how are you guys approaching this? How are we
    educating our academics to not only the problem but to
    solutions to this?
         Dr. Droegemeier. Yes.
         Mr. Murphy. It's a real major problem.
         Dr. Droegemeier. And it's an excellent question, too. And,
    you know, I think a lot of the IP theft, you know, actually
    occurs within private companies, not within the academic
    enterprise. But what we've heard Director Wray say of the FBI
    is that there are over 1,000 open cases now with the China
    nexus that are mixture of universities and private companies or
    a mixture of probably illegal activities and also failure to
    follow government rules, which maybe are not illegal but they
    could in the case of Harvard lead to an indictment if you're
    lying to the government or whatever.
         With regard to the level of faculty, you know, as a
    professor, I realize when I came to OSTP, as we were doing
    this, that a lot of the conversation that needed to happen was
    not happening with boots-on-the-ground researchers and frankly
    graduate students and postdocs as well, so there have been a
    lot of great discussions with chancellors and presidents, and
    provosts, but the folks on the frontlines are faculty.
         So in going around the country, that's what we've been
    doing is convening these regional meetings. We've had close to
    a dozen of those, but also I put out a broad letter to the
    community from a researcher myself to other researchers to say
    here's what we're doing, we need your input. And that's why the
    RFI is out there, to provide that kind of input.
         We also work with all the professional societies,
    Association of American Universities, APLU (Association of
    Public and Land-Grant Universities), Association of American
    Medical Colleges, all of them, constantly meet with them. They
    meet with professors. We go to their annual meetings and so on
    to communicate. But we're also developing a best practices for
    universities. And I say we. I'm not saying OSTP but--we're
    leading the effort but we bring in the community to all develop
    best practices together and then share those, but also
    educational materials. You're absolutely right. We have to
    teach people about this.
         And we also have to teach them about research values. A
    lot of folks, they wake up in America even if they're from here
    they don't think about the values and what researchers adhere
    to.
         So we're doing all of those things, as well as looking at
    policy activities focused around disclosures and monitoring
    disclosures and things like that. I can tell you the
    universities are very open to this. Again, if I have a bit of a
    fear, it's that universities are going to overreach and layer
    on more than what's needed and create additional administrative
    burden for the universities, for the researchers. And we also
    have to be mindful of the agencies as well. So we've got to
    have the balance of openness and not overreach in terms of
    addressing the issues. But I think we're finding the sweet
    spot.
         Mr. Murphy. Yes, I mean that's excellent. Do you feel that
    the boots on the ground are understanding the gravity of the
    problem?
         Dr. Droegemeier. Yes, definitely. It's way different than
    it was a year ago.
         Mr. Murphy. OK. All right.
         Dr. Droegemeier. It's been a sea change frankly, and I
    think a lot of it is what you see in the press. We get asked a
    lot of times, well, how pervasive is this? Well, the answer is
    we don't really know, but we know there's a lot of it out
    there. We can't give you a percentage, but I don't think it
    takes many examples from across the spectrum of institutions
    for people to say, yes, there's something to this. And we go to
    classified briefings and we're trying to open up more
    information that isn't classified that we can share with our
    university colleagues.
         Mr. Murphy. Yes, will thank you. I mean, that's excellent.
    I'm heartened to hear that.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Yes.
         Mr. Murphy. We're going to be probably experiencing much
    more of a need for free flow of information now with the
    coronavirus and some of these other----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Great example.
         Mr. Murphy [continuing]. Issues and----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Yes.
         Mr. Murphy [continuing]. You know, China has been hiding
    really what is truly going on over there, and so we have to be
    open to getting that information from them but also protecting
    our own information----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Right.
         Mr. Murphy [continuing]. At the same time, so----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Yes, sir.
         Mr. Murphy. In lieu of my time, I'll yield back.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Thank you, sir.
         Mr. Murphy. Thank you.
         Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much. Mrs. Fletcher.
         Mrs. Fletcher. Thank you, Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you
    for holding this hearing today, and thank you, Dr. Droegemeier,
    for your testimony.
         I'm glad to see you here today, and true to form, when you
    arrive late and you go at the end, sometimes other people ask a
    lot of your questions, so I just want to reiterate my interest
    and concern. You've addressed some of the things that I was
    concerned about, but I join my colleagues, Mr. Lipinski and Ms.
    Bonamici, in their concern about the cuts to ARPA-E budget and
    the widespread budget cuts at DOE. I serve as the Chair of the
    Subcommittee on Energy on this Committee, and I'm very
    concerned about the research efforts at DOE. In fact, as we
    look at our energy future, I think we need to be investing more
    rather than less on innovative research. And I understand from
    your prior testimony that, you know, you share some of those
    concerns. And I just want to reiterate the proposed elimination
    of the ARPA-E budget is deeply troubling.
         I also share the concerns raised by Dr. Baird about 5G,
    and I'm sure that this is something you know well, the
    potential impact of 5G on our Nation's weather forecasting
    capability and impacts on NOAA and NASA, those are very real
    concerns here as well.
         But since they have covered those, I want to move on to
    the--some questions about the EPA because the EPA has a mission
    to protect public health and the environment. And as a
    regulatory agency, EPA's public health protections are built on
    a foundation of sound science. States, tribes, and local
    governments look to the EPA to provide scientific and technical
    expertise to deal with environmental concerns because many
    don't have the resources or the knowledge to conduct the level
    of scientific inquiry that is required. In fact, I was just
    meeting with some constituents yesterday talking specifically
    about needing EPA guidance in order for them to continue to do
    certain work. So it's especially evident, and what we were
    talking about yesterday was the issue of PFAS (perfluoroalkyl
    substances) contamination, trying to understand lead in water,
    various issues that are really critical environmental
    contaminants.
         So despite the need for this clear and robust scientific
    enterprise within the EPA, the President's budget seeks to cut
    the Agency's topline budget by $2.4 billion and cut the
    Agency's R&D budget by 44 percent. How will gutting the R&D
    capacity of the Nation's premier public health agency help
    protect the environment and human health?
         Dr. Droegemeier. So I think they're focusing their
    energies, if I could say it that way, on six integrated
    programs, air and energy, chemical safety, homeland security,
    human health risk assessment, safe and sustainable water
    resources, and sustainable and healthy communities. And within
    that framework the three topline things are PFAS research, lead
    research, and harmful algal blooms, which are very much aligned
    with our work in emerging contaminants. We chair--we actually
    co-lead the National Science and Technology Council Task Force
    on contaminants of emerging concern. We just actually had a
    meeting yesterday that I was involved with that talked about
    the money that is--I think Congress appropriated this, but it's
    going to, for example, places like Flint to replace lead pipes,
    so there's a lot of activity there. Also water availability and
    quality is something that we have a task force on within NSTC
    as well, within OSTP. So these are really key areas.
         And one of the things that we do at OSTP is to look at
    what is the research agenda? What do we really need to be
    doing? How do you identify these chemicals? What are the health
    impacts? How do they get into the water to begin with and, you
    know, how do we remediate them? Do we simply replace the pipes
    or, you know, what about groundwater and so on? So we look at
    that. And we actually developed a plan, a strategic plan, and
    there's also--I think the DOE has a water security grand
    challenge, so they're going out and basically saying, if you
    want to win this prize, grand challenge, how do we do this? And
    so it is really engaging the broader community.
         So I think the research and development is really focused
    within EPA on these very specific activities and what they call
    their--you know, their research program, their portfolio, yes.
         Mrs. Fletcher. Well, thank you for that. And I do
    appreciate it. I think it is encouraging to see the modest
    increases in the President's budget to R&D efforts on those
    issues, homeland security, PFAS----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Right.
         Mrs. Fletcher [continuing]. Lead in the water. But some of
    the other cuts to the other research programs and staff within
    the agency--and certainly we are looking at the closure of the
    EPA Region 6 office in our area and very concerned about the
    impact of that as well. So, you know, there are serious
    concerns about what is happening overall at EPA, and in fact, I
    would like to ask for unanimous consent to enter an article
    from the American Journal of Public Health that discusses how
    recent EPA actions have eroded our leadership and our
    international leadership in environmental health. And I'm
    running very low on time, but I'd like to enter this in the
    record and maybe just conclude with your thoughts about how we
    address the concerns of prominent environmentalists and health
    professionals that the EPA is no longer leading the global
    environmental health community.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Well, I think ultimately we want to make
    sure that we are tackling the most important science challenges
    that we have, whether they're health-related, whether they're
    environment-related because they're sort of all in together----
         Mrs. Fletcher. Right.
         Dr. Droegemeier [continuing]. And that we're focusing our
    assets. We see this with the coronavirus. You know, all of a
    sudden within 42 days we have a private company that's taken
    messenger RNA and created a vaccine for phase 1 clinical trial.
    So I think there's tremendous capability out there that
    sometimes we just don't realize until it's needed. So I think
    ultimately the thing we've done in the President's budget is
    focus on the high-priority items. Other things of lesser
    priority do have to maybe move aside or get less funding, but
    if we really prioritize and we're being very strategic with our
    assets, and I think that's what the President's budget tries to
    do.
         Mrs. Fletcher. Well, I appreciate you being here this
    morning to answer my questions. I've gone over my time, so I
    will yield back. Thank you.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Thank you.
         Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you. Your statement will be
    entered into the record. Mr. Weber.
         Mr. Weber. Thank you, ma'am. Dr. Droegemeier, I appreciate
    you being here.
         I appreciated the President's commitment to maintaining
    American leadership really in a whole variety of ways but also
    in nuclear science. In 2018 he signed into law some legislation
    I was privileged to be part of the lead on, the Nuclear Energy
    Innovation Capabilities Act. With that in mind, the next round
    of nuclear reactors, can you discuss exactly how nuclear energy
    fits into the Administration's clean, I want to emphasize
    clean, energy agenda and how the President's budget request
    supports development of the advanced nuclear reactors in these
    United States of America?
         Dr. Droegemeier. Absolutely. Thank you for that question,
    sir. I would say that nuclear energy is a very high priority.
    The versatile test reactor at DOE is really a top line. It's
    actually in the so-called analytical perspectives of the budget
    chapter of the document that came out. It is a high-energy
    neutron reactor, and basically the only one that exists
    anywhere on the planet right now is in Russia. And so we really
    cannot depend upon Russia to be developing our next-generation
    capabilities in nuclear. This thing allows us to develop new
    nuclear fuels, next generation fuels, but also actual reactor
    design. And so there's an effort underway to develop this at
    DOE, and I may get the year wrong but I think it's 2024, 2025
    that this thing will be up and running, so that's very
    important.
         Mr. Weber. So you're saying that Russia will help us with
    our elections, just not with advanced nuclear design?
         Dr. Droegemeier. Not with advanced nuclear reactors, yes.
         Mr. Weber. I got you. Keep going.
         Dr. Droegemeier. There's also the transformational
    challenge reactor at Oak Ridge National Lab, an incredible
    laboratory. The thing is 3-D printed, so you can imagine
    developing a reactor that's 3-D printed. So that's really
    critical. And there's also a Nuclear Reactor Innovation Center
    at DOE. So those are some of the areas that I think are
    extraordinary.
         And again, I visited a company down in Lynchburg,
    Virginia, about 3 weeks ago and was absolutely astounded at
    what I saw in terms of nuclear energy. Small modular reactors
    as we call them, are very, very safe. The new fuel being
    developed, you know, basically if the reactor--there's an
    explosion or whatever, the thing doesn't melt down. It's
    incredibly safe, could generate 100 megawatts of electricity,
    up to 300 megawatts, and these things are just, you know, the
    size of a building column and they're very, very safe. And you
    look at distributed energy. You look at putting these things
    in, you know, remote outposts at our military bases. They're
    really extraordinary.
         So I think the issue really right now is economics. Do
    these things compete with the tremendous energy advances we've
    made under President Trump with clean energy, with fracking,
    with shale gas, things like that. Right now, as we heard in
    this company, there's not--it's not economically as
    advantageous as we would like. But the research goes on, and I
    think it's very important to do that, to get the reactor power
    up, to size down, you know, the issues of fuel disposal and
    things like that taken care of. So I'm really excited about the
    great things happening in nuclear.
         Mr. Weber. Well, I'm glad to hear you say that. And of
    course part of that is the permitting process and all the
    revelatory stuff----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Right.
         Mr. Weber [continuing]. That we've got to go through, and
    if we can----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Yes.
         Mr. Weber [continuing]. Get that as--and obviously, we
    want to use good science.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Right.
         Mr. Weber. That's been talked about earlier in this
    hearing. But we want to be sure that we can make it as
    extremely affordable. It's so clean. I'm pleased to hear that
    the President's focus is on that.
         I'm going to switch gears. The DOE's Fiscal Year 2021
    budget request includes robust funding for both the development
    and application of artificial intelligence and machine-learning
    technologies across its many, many programs, particularly
    within the Office of Science. It also reflects the recent
    establishment of the Department's new Artificial Intelligence
    and Technology Office. As the Ranking Member of the Energy
    Subcommittee, I feel very strongly that with its best-in-the-
    world computing resources and scientific capabilities DOE is
    uniquely qualified to play a lead role in any national AI
    strategy. With that in mind, in OSTP's national effort to
    maintain American leadership in AI, what role do you have in
    mind for the Department of Energy, Doctor?
         Dr. Droegemeier. Yes. DOE is--you know, is an
    extraordinary agency, but the laboratories are doing amazing
    things. For example, the Frontier computer that will be
    displacing Summit down at Oak Ridge in about 2 years I believe
    is really designed around AI. So it will have incredible
    capabilities of processing AI. Just Oak Ridge alone is doing
    some things in cancer screening research in AI, in job
    reskilling. They're doing some things in, you know, job
    displacement, things like that.
         I just got a note from the Under Secretary of Science
    yesterday. He said we are actually using this information on
    these computers now with the coronavirus to look at how you
    actually simulate the virus or you simulate vaccines for the
    virus to get way out ahead to look at what possible pathways
    are the best ones. DOE, you think, well, why would an energy
    lab do that? Because they have the capability, and they're part
    of the American R&D enterprise.
         So the AI component of the industries of the future is
    incredibly important and, you know, we are--right now, we just
    released the 1-year report. We're celebrating the anniversary
    of the American AI initiative. We just released this report.
    But in addition to the funding for AI development, very, very
    important regulatory principles and also a fair use of AI,
    making sure that we're using it with integrity. We just,
    through the Office of Management and Budget, led the
    development of international principles and also a regulatory
    framework for AI to avoid, you know, potential misuse and
    things like that, guidance to agencies for private-sector
    deployment of AI. It's very important.
         And Michael Kratsios, the Chief Technology Officer of the
    United States, has been leading this effort, doing an
    extraordinary job, and gets to issues of fairness and
    discrimination of AI and avoiding, you know, misuse of AI. It's
    very, very important, a huge thing. And certainly the public
    has to trust AI systems. And as the military said the other
    day, we have to be able to turn it off if we see a problem with
    it. So those things I think are equally important to the
    research which are tremendous capabilities for that and job
    development and so on, yes.
         Mr. Weber. Well, thank you. I think that's a long way of
    saying you're in favor of it.
         Dr. Droegemeier. I love it.
         Mr. Weber. So I appreciate that.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Yes, sir.
         Mr. Weber. Madam Chair, I yield back.
         Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much. Ms. Horn.
         Ms. Horn. Thank you. Thank you very much, Chairwoman
    Johnson.
         Dr. Droegemeier, it's good to be here with you today. I'm
    sad that I missed the introductions earlier. It's always great
    to have a fellow Oklahoman in this position. And to echo
    Congresswoman Fletcher's--her sentiments, there are many things
    that I'm concerned about that were addressed. But I want to
    turn our attention now to something that we haven't had the
    chance to discuss and something you may or may not be familiar
    with. I think you are. And that's the weather forecasting
    research and the needs for that in this budget.
         As you are undoubtedly aware, this Committee has held
    several hearings in this Congress when we talked about the need
    for weather forecasting. And as Oklahomans, we understand that
    immensely. And as the Chair of the Space and Aeronautics
    Subcommittee, the importance of our ability to invest in these
    critical capabilities is incredibly important.
         And with the authorization of the Earth Prediction
    Innovation Center or EPIC at NOAA and the need to continue to
    improve weather prediction forecasting especially with the
    changing climate issues and take it from research to
    integration and operations, I'm concerned that, despite the
    direction of Congress and the importance of this issue, that
    the budget request seeks to cut the budget of NOAA research by
    40 percent.
         So my question is, as a meteorologist and your experience,
    can you speak about the importance of research to developing
    the models? And what is the impact on NOAA? Because it's a
    place that has been chronically underfunded. So what is the
    likely impact if we're not investing in this research for
    weather predictions?
         Dr. Droegemeier. No, it's a really great question and, you
    know, we have a lot of NOAA facilities in Norman, at the
    National Weather Center, so I'm very, very familiar with that.
    So very, very good point.
         The thing about EPIC, I think we're doing something that
    frankly is epic honestly. We're putting a part of our
    enterprise where it belongs, out into the community, out into
    the research community. And that's been a long-standing
    challenge of the United States where sort of everything was
    done within NOAA. EPIC is now putting a lot of the development
    of the models, a lot of the innovation capabilities out into
    the community, which is going to leverage the private sector,
    the academic sector. I'm not sure about nonprofits but for sure
    those sectors. And so that really, again, gives us this force
    multiplier effect.
         So research is incredibly important, but I think also the
    transition and experimentation of research activities in the
    operational context, which is one of the things we do at Norman
    really well, the so-called hazardous weather testbed where we
    have researchers sitting right next to--literally right next to
    operational forecasters testing new technologies. EPIC will
    allow us to do that.
         So I think the NOAA budget cuts in OAR, again, it's an
    issue of priorities, but I think that the thing is we're
    leveraging the tremendous asset of these other communities,
    including NSF funding and NASA and places like that, which EPIC
    is this multifaceted, you know, multisector part of the
    enterprise.
         And one of the things that we've been tasked to do I think
    by the Weather Act is--in OSTP is to look at restructuring the
    weather enterprise administratively, and we're working actively
    on that now. I think we'll get a lot of efficiency and a lot of
    focus and still be able to do the great things you're talking
    about.
         Ms. Horn. And just to echo--wow, that's loud. Congressman
    Foster's concerns about making sure that we have sufficient
    research capabilities where--on the cutting edge of developing
    these technologies where there is yet----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Right.
         Ms. Horn [continuing]. To be a commercial sector that is--
    that there's a----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Right.
         Ms. Horn [continuing]. There's an interest and an
    ability----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Right.
         Ms. Horn [continuing]. To do that.
         Turning my attention now just in the last minute or so to
    space research and development and OSTP's place in that, one of
    the issues that we have addressed on the Space and Aeronautics
    Subcommittee and on this Committee as a whole is the needs
    around space weather and the implications for that. So I'd like
    for you to speak just briefly on what--if you're working on
    anything or planning to develop any space-related strategies,
    especially around space weather?
         Dr. Droegemeier. Right. That's a great question. We
    actually have a subcommittee in the National Science and
    Technology Council on space weather and security and hazards,
    and it includes things like near-Earth objects and so on. So I
    think it was about a year ago, it was sometime last year, we
    released the Space Weather Strategy and Action Plan, and so
    we're now executing on that. We have working groups to look at
    implementing that and also working internationally because of
    course space weather is both a national and an international
    thing. It also has implications for national security in terms
    of electromagnetic pulses. It has some similar things there.
         So I'd say we're awfully active in that arena, and I'd be
    happy to sort of do a deeper dive on that with you because it's
    really important. The challenge of space weather is it's not
    top of mind to a lot of people, but if something bad happens,
    it's a big deal.
         Ms. Horn. Exactly. And the national security, the economic
    consequences, and so many other things on down the line. And of
    course near-Earth objects also incredibly important----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Right.
         Ms. Horn [continuing]. With our reliance on space
    technology. I'd like to dig into this a little bit further----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Sure.
         Ms. Horn [continuing]. But I'm over my time, so I yield
    back. Thank you.
         Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much. Mr. Casten.
         Mr. Casten. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you so much for
    coming.
         Dr. Droegemeier, in your opening testimony you said,
    quote, ``We are committed to taking the wise and necessary
    steps to ensure that America remains the world leader in
    science and technology research and education for generations
    to come.'' And I think you went on to say that the--talk about
    the importance of government research as a catalyst for
    innovation and boasted about the budget proposal's 6 percent
    increase in funding over last year's proposal. It would take a
    particularly sadistic boss to cut someone's salary by 50
    percent and then give them a 6 percent raise and ask for praise
    for the raise. That's essentially what the budget does. It's a
    16 percent cut in DOE R&D funding, 35 percent cut in EPA R&D.
    ARPA-E is totally eliminated. The programs that are doing
    critical work to decarbonize the economy and stem the climate
    crisis are being gutted. I'm not impressed with 6 percent.
         And you're sitting here telling us that the President is
    championing the things that he is destroying. To totally
    misquote Shakira, the math don't lie, and it is imperative that
    our lips don't either.
         Having said that, I want to shift to a separate matter. I
    applaud the focus on innovation. I am all for new technology.
    But there is no meaningful spend here on technology deployment.
    On a proportional basis deployment, there--it's the last D in
    RD&D (research, design, and development) is way down. And the--
    there was a recent International Monetary Fund analysis that
    said that the United States subsidizes the fossil fuel industry
    to the tune of $550 billion a year. That is almost a TARP
    (Troubled Asset Relief Program) per year.
         So my first question is, is it the Administration's
    position that distorting capital markets to the tune of $550
    billion a year does not interfere with the efficient allocation
    of capital in those markets?
         Dr. Droegemeier. Well, I don't know that I'm qualified to
    speak to that from an economics point of view, but I can tell
    you that----
         Mr. Casten. Well, hang on. I mean----
         Dr. Droegemeier. OK.
         Mr. Casten [continuing]. Just as me--as an individual
    because, I mean, I can tell you I spent 20 years in the energy
    industry. Five hundred and fifty billion dollars a year really
    does distort those markets. If you just want to stipulate
    that's true, that's OK, but I can't imagine we need an
    economics degree to say that if you throw $550 billion at
    something, you might actually change things. Put another way,
    are you up for taking the subsidies away?
         Dr. Droegemeier. Subsidies for energy?
         Mr. Casten. The $550 billion that the IMF has said is out
    there.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Well, I don't really have--you know, I
    haven't thought about that deeply, so I'm happy to do that, but
    let me do address one of the points you made, though, in terms
    of tech development. I think it's--this goes back to Vannevar
    Bush and post-World War II. You know, it's very important for
    the Federal Government to invest in basic research. We all know
    that that's the seed corn of innovation. We use different
    terms, but it's very critical. But if you look at the
    experimental development, the fund that you talked about today,
    85 percent of that is funded by industry and 13 percent by the
    Federal Government. That seems to me to be the right balance
    because we want the----
         Mr. Casten. I'm asking a different question.
         Dr. Droegemeier. OK.
         Mr. Casten. If you distort markets as much as the
    International Monetary Fund says our markets are being
    distorted, we cannot fall back on this lazy assumption that
    efficient markets will allocate the capital because markets
    ain't efficient when they're being distorted that much. That is
    my concern. And, you know, basically I don't expect you to
    opine on whether we'll take these barriers away, but----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Yes.
         Mr. Casten [continuing]. If we are not going to take those
    barriers away, then why are we--why bother innovating? Because
    all you're doing is putting more technologies at the back of
    the line that's not moving. We have got to be focused on
    deployment.
         And I want to maybe shift from there that I have a concern
    that this Administration continues to hide behind R&D as a
    response to the climate crisis. I am glad to see that people
    are now embarrassed to stand up in public and deny that climate
    science is real as an excuse for inaction, but when we have all
    these distortions in the market, when we know that the markets
    actually like cheap energy, you know, and if you--if you build
    a power plant that doesn't have any marginal fuel costs, it's
    cheap, drives power costs down, markets want it.
         But when we know that we need to solve these deployment
    problems, shifting to a commitment to say, well, we can't move
    forward because--until the technology is ready is changing the
    excuse to delay. We don't have time to delay. And we can't
    celebrate an excuse to delay just because this excuse is
    somewhat more palatable than the last excuse that said we're
    going to deny climate science.
         So what is the Administration going to do to decarbonize
    our economy now with technology that exists today?
         Dr. Droegemeier. Well, I think there's a couple of things.
    One of the technologies that's really not a technology is
    trees, right? And the President committed at Davos to join the
    Trillion Trees Initiative. But I--again, I just got back from
    DOE the other day looking at tremendous work that they're doing
    in clean energy from the Coal FIRST program that they have
    looking to build coal plants that are more efficient, that
    actually get to emissions levels that are equivalent to actual
    natural gas plants----
         Mr. Casten. Look, I'm out of time but there isn't a coal
    plant----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Yes.
         Mr. Casten [continuing]. In the world today that's
    economic. If you add more capital costs and operating costs to
    the plant, you're just making them less economic. We have to
    stop delaying. That is an excuse. I yield back.
         Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much. Ms. Stevens.
         Ms. Stevens. Thank you, Madam Chair. And nice to see you,
    Dr. Droegemeier. Thank you for your courage and your
    commitment. As the Subcommittee Chair of Research and
    Technology, we know we have a dotted line to the White House
    Office of Science and Technology Policy. I've had a lot of joy
    over the years of working with OSTP and seeing your work in
    action. We're delighted that the PCAST (President's Council of
    Advisors on Science and Technology) has been revived and that
    new members have been added.
         I wanted to ask about PCAST. Are you working with them
    pretty closely in your role?
         Dr. Droegemeier. Oh, yeah.
         Ms. Stevens. You're overseeing and you're----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Yes.
         Ms. Stevens [continuing]. A member of PCAST? And have they
    been involved in the budget process at all?
         Dr. Droegemeier. No.
         Ms. Stevens. OK.
         Dr. Droegemeier. No.
         Ms. Stevens. Yes. And I didn't know if they were weighing
    in because we've got--well, we got Dow and S.C. Johnson and
    H.P. labs. We even have--I find this so interesting--a Chief of
    Operations and Technology Officer from Bank of America.
    Cybersecurity? Is----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Partly that, but what is fabulous about
    her is that she brings a completely different perspective to
    science.
         Ms. Stevens. Yes.
         Dr. Droegemeier. You know, she doesn't think necessarily
    like a scientist does, and that's refreshing. So she'll bring
    up ideas and it's like, wow, I wouldn't have thought of that,
    you know? So it's been my experience in serving in boards over
    the years that when you bring folks in from a completely
    different sector, they add extraordinary value and
    perspective----
         Ms. Stevens. Yes.
         Dr. Droegemeier [continuing]. That you wouldn't have
    otherwise.
         Ms. Stevens. Diversity of viewpoints and women.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Yes. Here, here.
         Ms. Stevens. We love that. That's great, yes. Well, we
    look forward to maybe having them weigh in and, you know, as--
    particularly as we're juggling some of this because I know some
    of these agents--or these representatives care deeply about
    these programs that we've been talking about today. Obviously,
    ARPA-E is celebrated on both sides of the aisle. I believe
    we'll do our job in Congress and recommit to funding it,
    recommit to prioritizing climate. The Manufacturing Extension
    Partnership centers, they're essential. And the voice that you
    all provide is important as well, and we're glad to be seeing,
    I think, a commitment to basic research funding as a whole of
    Committee. And I think we've heard you on that today. We're
    going to give the message back to the White House that we would
    like to see these programs fully funded, and we'd like to also
    maybe ask PCAST to weigh in, too, on some of their broader
    visions and maybe even spend some time together, you know, if
    you'd be open to a meeting along those lines.
         Scientific integrity has been a big topic of conversation
    in this Committee. And we've had a couple of hearings about it.
    I--you might be aware of the GAO (Government Accountability
    Office) study----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Yes.
         Ms. Stevens [continuing]. That came out, and they
    reference a 2018 survey conducted by the Union of Concerned
    Scientists that found that, you know, under this current
    Administration some scientists have experienced some censorship
    of their work and some of it's been--it's really unfortunate.
    It's related to climate change, and we don't know why they're
    doing that. It seems like it's undue political influence. So
    are you doing anything about this in your role with OSTP to
    make sure we're not muzzling these voices?
         Dr. Droegemeier. So this came up in my hearing last year,
    and, you know, I absolutely believe that science has to speak
    for itself. You know, I don't believe in political interference
    in science. When policy is made--science and policy are very
    different of course--but the science itself has to be
    unfettered. Absolutely, I'm committed to that. In fact, in 2010
    OSTP issued a memo in fact that the GAO study that came out in
    April referenced, and it looked at nine agencies, you know, how
    well are you living up to the principles that OSTP put forward
    there, and so on. And so I'm absolutely completely committed to
    that.
         And we are looking at integrity in the context of JCORE in
    terms of research integrity, that sort of thing, which is
    different than what you're talking about, but I'll make the
    same offer here that I did last year, and that is if you want
    to engage on that topic, we're always happy to look at that
    issue. But I'm glad that the GAO did that study. I thought it
    was a very important study.
         Ms. Stevens. Yes, it was--look, it's a useful study and,
    you know, I mean, censorship is a big word. We like to expect
    best intentions. On the other hand, you know, we kind of have
    this climate crisis that is going unaddressed, and we want to
    make sure that we have the adaptations and the utilization of
    all our great technologies. And so I'd love to encourage you--
    and I don't know in terms of, you know, how much you're meeting
    with cabinet officials or different--you know, the--there's
    Council of Economic Advisers, there's the Council on
    Environmental Quality----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Right.
         Ms. Stevens [continuing]. And things along those lines
    that give you maybe conduits to talking to people in the
    agencies as well. I'm someone who worked in a Federal agency as
    well, so I think the more that they can break down those
    interagency barriers----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Yes.
         Ms. Stevens [continuing]. And have those conversations
    with you and, you know, look, bureaucracies are bureaucracies,
    but on the other hand, the pursuit of truth is very, very
    important for us here. And maybe the PCAST board as well can be
    helpful with that. So I don't know if----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Yes.
         Ms. Stevens [continuing]. You're doing anything along
    those lines.
         Dr. Droegemeier. We have great relationships with the
    agencies. I talk to the agency heads all the time and the Under
    Secretaries and stuff, really, really close working
    relationship.
         But I really appreciate you mentioning PCAST. It's
    important. And, you know, it got started late enough in the
    first term that we decided to sort of bring forward some things
    we wanted them to work on so they could do their own thing but
    we thought--really focus on AI, quantum, industries of the
    future----
         Ms. Stevens. Right.
         Dr. Droegemeier [continuing]. Workforce, that kind of
    stuff. And they are running headlong into that.
         The other cool thing is two things I just mentioned
    quickly. We've done the first-ever joint meeting between them
    and the National Science Board, which I think is really great--
    --
         Ms. Stevens. Fabulous.
         Dr. Droegemeier [continuing]. Because they're very
    different organizations but with the same goals in mind. We're
    also going to be launching a committee of undergraduate
    students, graduate students, postdocs, and early career
    nonacademic professionals in PCAST, the subcommittee, because,
    you know, they own the future, right? And their voice needs to
    be at the table. So we were talking about faculty in terms of
    research security. These young folks who have brilliant ideas,
    they've got great creative energy, we want them at the table
    thinking about policy now. So we're very excited. It's never
    been done before, so we're super excited about it.
         Ms. Stevens. Well, let's commit to spending some time with
    the subcommittee----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Yes, sure.
         Ms. Stevens. --PCAST. This conversation----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Please do.
         Ms. Stevens [continuing]. Could certainly continue----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Sure.
         Ms. Stevens [continuing]. Especially along the lines of
    quantum. Thank you.
         Dr. Droegemeier. I would love to do that, thank you.
         Ms. Stevens. I'm over. I'll yield back, Madam Chair. Thank
    you. Thanks, Doctor.
         Dr. Droegemeier. My fault.
         Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you. Mr. Tonko.
         Mr. Tonko. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for the
    opportunity here to share some thoughts with Dr. Droegemeier.
    And thank you for your leadership, sir.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Yes, sir.
         Mr. Tonko. I very much enjoyed our earlier conversation on
    scientific integrity.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Yes.
         Mr. Tonko. And I enjoyed hearing what you stated to
    Representative Stevens about juxtapositioning of politics and
    science. Unfortunately, many of my colleagues have told me that
    they worry that supporting strong scientific integrity policies
    can come off as a partisan issue or an attack on the current
    Administration. As an engineer with a deep respect for science,
    Federal scientific integrity standards have been a concern of
    mine for many years predating the current Administration.
         Here in the Science Committee Ranking Member Lucas and
    Research Committee Ranking Member Baird worked with me to find
    common ground on scientific integrity legislation that passed
    out of the Committee in a bipartisan manner. Scientific
    integrity is a long-standing concern that transcends any one
    party or political Administration. In fact, I began working on
    the Scientific Integrity Act in the summer of 2016 when we had
    a Democratic Administration. And the fact remains whether a
    Democrat or a Republican sits in the Speaker's Chair or the
    Oval Office, we need strong scientific integrity policies.
         So, Dr. Droegemeier, in your view should supporting strong
    scientific integrity policies be a partisan issue?
         Dr. Droegemeier. Oh, no, sir.
         Mr. Tonko. And during our Science Committee legislative
    hearing on the Scientific Integrity Act, both Republican and
    Democratic witnesses spoke of the need for strong scientific
    integrity policies that transcend politics or partisanship.
    So--and, Dr. Roger Pielke, the Republican witness, agreed
    calling on Congress, and I quote, ``quickly and in bipartisan
    fashion pass scientific integrity legislation,'' close quote.
         As you know, the Scientific Integrity Act, H.R. 1709,
    would establish consistent scientific integrity policies across
    all of our U.S. agencies. Do you support the goals of the
    legislation and believe that strong scientific integrity
    policies are indeed important?
         Dr. Droegemeier. Well, I'd have to look at the
    legislation, sir, but scientific integrity to me, if we're
    talking about having our researchers do it, we need it
    everywhere. It's not one place that it exists and another place
    that it does not, so I don't want to give an official position
    on it, but I----
         Mr. Tonko. How about the goals of the legislation? Do you
    agree with them?
         Dr. Droegemeier. It's been a while since I read it. I'm
    sure I have read it, but, you know, if the goal is scientific
    integrity, I'm all for that, yes, absolutely. I'd be happy to
    get back to you more specifically if that would be helpful.
         Mr. Tonko. Thank you. It would be.
         If Congress passes this bill and the President signs it
    into law, would you support this work to have strong scientific
    integrity policies across all agencies?
         Dr. Droegemeier. I think we absolutely need integrity
    across all agencies to be consistent with our American values
    and what we're asking our own researchers to do, so absolutely.
         Mr. Tonko. Well, and we live in a science-driven world, so
    it only makes sense to incorporate that into our policy
    thinking but to leave it as pure science.
         Dr. Droegemeier, last year, the President issued an
    executive order to all Federal agencies to significantly reduce
    their number of Federal Advisory Committees commonly referred
    to as FACAs. The National Science Foundation determined that
    each of its FACAs were essential for the proper stewardship of
    its highly technical research programs and thus sought and
    received an exemption to this order. But my understanding is
    that the DOE's Office of Science sought no such exemption and
    is required by the Department to make recommendations regarding
    the elimination of several of its FACAs. Is this correct?
         Dr. Droegemeier. I'm familiar with the NSF situation, not
    with DOE. I wasn't aware that they had not requested any
    exemptions. I do note that past Administrations have done the
    same thing in terms of FACA committees, asked to reduce by like
    1/3, both Republican and Democrat Administrations.
         Mr. Tonko. Well, then why do you believe that some of the
    Office of Science's FACAs are no longer of value to guide its
    advanced research activities?
         Dr. Droegemeier. I wasn't aware that they actually hadn't
    sought a dispensation from removal, so I'd have to talk to Paul
    Dabbar about that.
         Mr. Tonko. And how is cutting so many of our critical
    Federal agency research investments in half or more going to
    improve American innovation?
         Dr. Droegemeier. I think the key thing here, Congressman,
    is to really focus and prioritize and realize that it's not
    just the Federal Government, it's actually the private sector,
    nonprofits, and so on. We get together, we innovate. Six
    hundred billion dollars is what was expended I believe probably
    this year, so I think the key thing is working together to
    leverage our assets. And the Federal Government absolutely has
    a critical role to play in funding basic research, no question
    about it. That's why the President is proposing $142.2 billion.
         Mr. Tonko. Well, I can understand leveraging additional
    private-sector investment, but why would we reduce the
    commitment of the Federal--I mean, that means all the more
    private-sector investment we could get if we don't rollback
    that Federal commitment.
         Dr. Droegemeier. Well, I think, again, the question is
    what is our priority, and the lesser priorities don't get as
    much funding. We really put our eggs in the priorities which
    are AI and quantum for industries of the future and certainly
    things like nuclear energy and other activities that are
    expressed in the budget, yes.
         Mr. Tonko. It seems to me that the agenda for research is
    steep and that any rollback from Federal commitment as a
    partnership to leverage those private-sector dollars is not
    good sense.
         In 2018 the National Institute of Standards and Technology
    released a green paper with a number of recommendations for
    improving technology transfer from Federal labs to the private
    sector. What is the status of implementing those
    recommendations?
         Dr. Droegemeier. I'd have to check with Walt Copan, but
    they're moving forward with it, and I think it was--the thing
    is, it wasn't a specific set of activities that were going to
    be done. It was a set of broad recommendations for America
    essentially. And I think a lot of them in terms of intellectual
    property were really well-structured. So I believe they're--
    they are moving forward. We actually have somebody at OSTP that
    works on that. I haven't asked them specifically for an update
    recently, but I certainly could do that and get back to you.
         Mr. Tonko. Thank you. Madam Chair, I exceeded my time, so
    I yield back. I'm sorry.
         Chairwoman Johnson. That completes our round of
    questioning, but before we bring this hearing to a close, I'd
    like to thank you, Dr. Droegemeier, for testifying before the
    Committee and say that we are pleased to be working with you.
         The record will remain open for 2 weeks for additional
    statements from members and for any additional questions that
    the Committee may want to ask the witness. The witness is
    excused----
         Dr. Droegemeier. Thank you.
         Chairwoman Johnson [continuing]. And the hearing is
    adjourned.
         [Whereupon, at 12:03 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]

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