[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 37 (Tuesday, April 9, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E464-E465]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


              JOHN BRADEMAS ON SCIENCE ADVICE TO CONGRESS

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. TIM ROEMER

                               of indiana

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, April 9, 2002

  Mr. ROEMER. Mr. Speaker, one of my distinguished predecessors in 
Congress was the Honorable John Brademas, who represented Indiana's 
Third Congressional District in the House for 22 years from 1959-81. 
During his service here, John established himself as one of our leading 
experts in the fields of education, the arts and humanities, and 
serving the needs of our nation's children, the elderly and the 
disabled.
  From 1981-92, John served as President of New York University, our 
nation's largest private university. He is the former chairman of the 
President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities and the National 
Endowment for Democracy. John also served as a member of the Carnegie 
Commission on Science, Technology and Government and chaired the 
Commission's Committee on Congress.
  John recently wrote a very interesting and provocative article 
entitled: ``The Provision of Science Advice to Policymakers: a US 
Perspective,'' which appears in the December 2001 issue of The EPTS 
Report, a publication of The Institute for Prospective Technological 
Studies, published by the Joint Research Center of The European 
Commission. I am pleased to offer this article for your review and 
consideration.

  The Provision of Science Advice to Policymakers: a U.S. Perspective

     (By John Brademas, President Emeritus of New York University)

       The horrific attacks of September 11, 2001, on the World 
     Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon outside 
     Washington, D.C., demonstrated how products of Western 
     science and technology--Jet aircraft and avionics--could be 
     employed to assault citadels of American economic and 
     military power.
       Clearly, the consequences of September 11 for makers of 
     U.S. policy--economic, foreign and military--are deep and 
     wide-ranging. The nation's intelligence and law enforcement 
     agencies, for example, have come under criticism for 
     weaknesses in tracking the September terrorists, who were 
     obviously not technologically illiterate.
       In Washington, D.C., an envelope containing anthrax was 
     targeted at the Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate, Tom 
     Daschle (D-SD), while in both Florida and New York City, 
     anthrax was apparently aimed at leading television and 
     newspaper journalists, one of whom, Judith Miller, is co-
     author, with her New York Times colleagues, Stephen Engelberg 
     and William Broad, of a new book, Germs: Biological Weapons 
     and America's Secret War (Simon & Schuster). A recent study 
     by the General Accounting Office found the Federal government 
     as well as state and local health departments unprepared for 
     this latest threat. Meanwhile Senators and Representatives 
     are holding hearings in Washington on the challenge of 
     bioterrorism.
       Although in office only a year, President George W. Bush is 
     confronted with decisions he surely did not anticipate. But 
     if reacting effectively to September 11 must now be his 
     overriding concern, there are other judgments the new 
     president and his team must make that are, like making war, 
     also laden with scientific and technological dimensions.
       Here is only a partial list of such issues: global warming, 
     missile defense, stem cell research, wireless technology 
     proliferation, energy, AIDS epidemics in Africa and India.
       Not only are the policy challenges the Bush Administration 
     must face complex and contentious but to meet them, the 
     President of the United States lacks the decision making 
     authority of a British Prime Minister. For in the American 
     separation-of-powers constitutional system characterized as 
     well, in contrast to European arrangements, by relatively 
     undisciplined political parties, in making national policy, 
     Congress counts! This is a lesson President Bush is learning 
     every day.
       All the more is the power of the elected Senators and 
     Representatives in Congress to shape policy made obvious by 
     the current political configuration in Washington, D.C: a 
     Republican in the White House, a Republican majority (narrow) 
     in the House of Representatives, and a Democratic majority 
     (one vote) in the Senate.


                        Instruments of Congress

       In influencing policy, the U.S. Congress has three 
     principal instruments: writing the laws that authorize the 
     activities of the government, appropriating (or not 
     appropriating) funds necessary to carry out the laws, and 
     overseeing their implementation.
       Although Senators and Representatives wield great and often 
     decisive authority in setting policy, and despite the 
     ballooning relevance of scientific and technological factors 
     to more and more of the questions on which Congress votes, 
     very few legislators have been educated as scientists or 
     engineers. Given the kinds of persons attracted to 
     campaigning for election to public office, this observation 
     should surprise no one.
       Nearly thirty years ago, in 1972, Congress responded to its 
     perceived need for science and technology advice by creating 
     the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA).
       Governed by a Technology Assessment Board, consisting of 
     six Senators and six Representatives, evenly divided between 
     Democrats and Republicans, OTA was advised by, in addition to 
     its professional staff, a group of ten experts from the 
     public. During its lifetime, OTA produced evaluations 
     requested by Congress to help the legislature ``understand 
     and plan for the short-and long-term consequences of the 
     applications of technology. . .''
       In 1995, however, following the elections of 1994, with 
     Republican victories in both Senate and House of 
     Representatives, Congress, by refusing it funds, killed OTA. 
     Said Lord (Wayland) Kennet, a British leader in technology 
     assessment, ``The Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) was 
     the trailblazer for all the later European institutions. . 
     .''
       ``The disappearance of OTA has not only been of sad 
     importance to all who work in parliamentary technology 
     assessment in Europe: it has been a bit baffling. That the 
     leading technological state in the world, a democracy like 
     us, should have abolished its own main means of democratic 
     assessment left us aghast. . .''
       The demise of OTA has obviously not resolved the question 
     of how Congress gets S&T advice. Indeed, last June, a group 
     of scholars, Congressional staffers and leaders of industry 
     met in Washington to explore prospects for filling the 
     knowledge gap left by the death of OTA.


                               A New OTA?

       Suggestions for enabling Congress to obtain S&T advice 
     developed at the June meeting as well as from other quarters 
     are even now under consideration on Capitol Hill. Congressman 
     Amo Houghton (R-NY); John H. Gibbons, former Science Advisor 
     to President Clinton and former director of OTA; and M. 
     Granger Morgan, Professor and head of the Department of 
     Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie-Mellon University, 
     Pittsburgh, joined recently to propose in effect a new OTA, 
     also bipartisan and bicameral, but in response to criticisms 
     of the old OTA, one with ``strategies'' to perform studies 
     more rapidly, to ensure that the needs of the minority are 
     well served, and to supply technical advice . . . to other 
     congressional support organizations. . .''
       Representative Rush D. Holt (D-NJ), one of two physicists 
     in Congress, has introduced legislation to re-establish OTA; 
     since September 11, prospects for action have dimmed. Senator 
     Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), however, is still pressing for $1 
     million for a technology assessment pilot project in the 
     General Accounting Office.
       Given that Members of the House of Representatives serve 
     terms of but two years, some lawmakers had charged that OTA 
     took too much time to complete its studies. Many Republicans 
     also criticized OTA analyses of defense and environmental 
     issues as too ``liberal''.
       Conversations with former OTA leaders cast a different 
     light on such complaints. Requests for rapid response reports 
     were, indeed, answered but with caveats. On the allegation of 
     ``liberal'' bias, OTA directors countered that the objections 
     were often to the substance of OTA's conclusions, for 
     example,

[[Page E465]]

     to OTA's skepticism about the technological feasibility of 
     missile defense proposals.
       ``People want science-based decisions, and they're all for 
     that until the scientific consensus is politically 
     inconvenient,'' House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood 
     Boehlert (R-NY), has observed.
       Certainly the issues Congress confronts that are freighted 
     with scientific or technological considerations are often 
     politically volatile--stem cell research, genetically 
     produced foods, alternative energy sources, missile defense 
     policy, global warming, nuclear power.


                        The Carnegie Commission

       A revived-and-reformed-OTA is not the only vehicle to which 
     Congress could turn for S&T counsel. Ten years ago, while 
     serving on the Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, 
     and Government and, having previously been a member of the 
     House of Representatives (D-IN) for twenty-two years (1959-
     1981), the author chaired the Commission's Committee on 
     Congress. The Carnegie Commission produced a series of 
     reports on how all three branches of the Federal government--
     executive, legislative and judicial--could more wisely and 
     effectively deal with issues with scientific or technological 
     dimensions. This article will only cover the aforementioned 
     committee concerning Congress.
       One of our reports addressed the question of expert S&T 
     advice from outside Congress while another focused on the 
     analysis and advice Congress received from OTA, the 
     Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress, 
     General Accounting Office and Congressional Budget Office.
       The third report focused on organizational and procedural 
     reforms, with particular attention to long-range planning and 
     goal setting, committee structure and the budget process.
       Although recommending several reforms in its operation, our 
     Committee found the activity of the Office of Technology 
     Assessment resulted in a product, ``full-scale assessment . . 
     . that is widely used and appreciated by Congress, the 
     scientific con-tmunity, the public, and individuals and 
     organizations in other nations.''
       We also pressed the National Academy of Sciences complex to 
     communicate more regularly, and deeply, with members of 
     Congress and their staffs.
       We said, too, that scientists and engineers should become 
     more active in policy making and that Federal agencies, 
     academic institutions, corporations and professional 
     societies should encourage such involvement.


                         Federal Funds for S&T

       Just one indicator of the S&T universe to which the 
     President and Congress today direct their decisions is that 
     in the Fiscal Year 2001, the Federal government will spend 
     over $90 billion on Research and Development (R&D), a figure 
     some observers estimate could next year easily exceed $100 
     billion.
       With expenditures of tax dollars of such magnitude, it is 
     not surprising that in his recent book, Science, Money and 
     Politics, the nation's leading science journalist, David S. 
     Greenberg, has written a brilliant, irreverent but powerfully 
     documented study of the ties that bind American science to 
     money and politics.
       Greenberg's sharply critical analysis demonstrates how the 
     ability of American scientists to win Federal funds is 
     brought to bear with great effectiveness not only on the 
     executive branch but also on Congress.
       Indeed, Greenberg warns:
       ``. . . Science is too powerful, too potent in its effects 
     on society, and too arcane to be entrusted to the expanding 
     alliance between a profession that has retreated into a 
     ghetto and the commercial sector, with their shared focus on 
     making money. While this relationship flourishes, a deadening 
     complacency has settled over the institutions that should be 
     protecting and advancing the public interest in science: the 
     research agencies of the executive branch of government, 
     Congress, the press, and, within science, leaders who should 
     be stewards of scientific tradition, rather than apologists 
     for its neglect. Science finds advantage and claims virtue in 
     its detachment and aloofness from politics. But politics is 
     the medium through which a society decides upon and 
     implements its values and its choices. That the political 
     system frequently goes awry and fails to work to its full 
     potential of beneficial effects is a reason for involvement, 
     not withdrawal. And this is especially so for an enterprise 
     that draws heavily on the public purse and radiates powerful 
     effects in all directions and on all things . . .''
       One obvious example of Congressional muscle is the practice 
     of Senators and Representatives taking advantage of 
     appropriations bills to earmark funds for specific 
     institutions and facilities in their own constituencies. This 
     practice, under which Congress votes monies for buildings and 
     research projects without peer-reviewed competition, spurred 
     President Bush's Director of the Office of Management and 
     Budget, in the hope of ending the phenomenon, a few weeks ago 
     to bring together science policy and university leaders to 
     discuss the question.
       Most observers, however, agree that achieving success in 
     persuading politicians no longer to look to the interests of 
     their own constituencies is an unlikely development.
       A dramatic demonstration of congressional power to affect 
     science is the response of the Senate and House of 
     Representatives to the call in 1992 of Nobel Laureate Harold 
     Varmus, former Director of the National Institutes of Health, 
     to double the funds for science in over a decade--and that's 
     happening. For, as a former OTA director told me, ``When 
     individual citizens believe that basic research and science 
     can lead to life-saving cures, Senators and Representatives 
     will continue to vote to increase appropriations for the 
     National institutes of Health''.
       It may be tempting to throw up one's hands in despair or 
     acknowledge with cynicism that elected politicians engage in 
     politics. Yet experience demands that we keep pressing the 
     case for finding ways and means of making it possible for 
     legislators, especially those who serve in assemblies that 
     are more than rubber stamps for the Executive, to have 
     effective access to the best possible information, 
     intelligence and counsel on issues crucial to the future of 
     their country, indeed, to the future of all humankind. This 
     means advice on issues of science and technology.

     

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