[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 16]
[House]
[Page 23397]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



      IMPORTANCE OF GOVERNMENT FUNDING OF SCIENCE IN TODAY'S WORLD

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Ehlers) is recognized for 5 minutes.

  Mr. EHLERS. Mr. Speaker, I have been giving a series of comments in 
special orders about the importance of science in today's world, and 
also the importance of government funding of science, because the 
question often asked is why should the Federal Government be spending 
good taxpayers money to conduct scientific research.

  One very obvious reason: Over half of the economic growth of this 
country comes from the scientific research which we have funded in the 
past. I can give numerous examples, and I have given some in the past, 
but let me just point out a few tonight.

  When computers were first developed, one of the difficulties was how 
computers could talk to each other. That was resolved fairly readily. 
But then some bright individuals in the Defense Advance Research 
Project Agency began wondering how can we network a large number of 
computers. And then, beyond that, how can we connect the networks so 
that we have what is really an internet, a connection or a network of 
networks. That was not easily resolved, but it has had far-reaching 
implications when it was solved.

  The basic method is to create what is called a packet of information 
that travels along the telephone lines from one computer to another. 
There is a certain protocol of what is in that packet, what is at the 
lead, what is in the middle, what is at the end, so that you can keep 
track of these. After that was developed, the interest of the Defense 
Advance Research Project Agency was to tie together all the military 
laboratories in the United States. That eventually came to include 
other laboratories. And then the NSF got involved and developed what 
was called the NSF net, which broadened it to all universities. And 
that was the basis from which the Internet was developed.

  Now, who can question the value of the Internet today? So many people 
use it for so many purposes, we have trillions of dollars flowing on 
the Internet every day, indicating the commerce we have between banks 
and other places. If an individual's check is deposited by electronic 
fund transfer, that money was probably transferred over the Internet.

  I have been told, and I have not had a chance to check this for 
myself to be certain it is true, but I have been told that there is 
more money transferred electronically over the Internet each day than 
we have in the entire Federal budget for a year. That illustrates some 
of the importance of the Internet for this and for various other 
purposes.

  One little sidelight that might be interesting to my colleagues. As 
we developed these packets to go on the Internet, someone got the 
bright idea why not do the same thing with telephone information. In 
other words, treat voice information just as we treat computer 
information. So today, when we place a telephone call, our voices are 
chopped up and put in all these little packets, they travel over 
telephone lines by various routes, and when they reach their 
destination they are unscrambled, and no one on either end knows that 
this has happened. That has greatly increased the capacity of our 
telephone lines for carrying voice and data transmissions.

  Mr. Speaker, I now yield some time to my scientific colleague, the 
gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt), who is a fellow physicist. We 
often work on science issues together. This is obviously a bipartisan 
issue, and I am pleased to yield to him.

  Mr. HOLT. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Michigan. It is a great 
pleasure to talk about these things. We do not have occasion to talk 
about them enough here on the floor of the House.

  First, I would like to recognize how much the gentleman does in 
support of science and science education. We all appreciate it.

  I would like to just add two comments to what the gentleman talked 
about. One is the importance of research that we do not necessarily 
recognize the value of at first. Many of our colleagues here in this 
chamber, many of our family members have had MRIs, magnetic resonance 
imaging. Most people do not realize this came out of studies on nuclear 
magnetic resonance, on which I believe the gentleman has worked in the 
past. This was once regarded as pure research but has turned out to be 
of very practical value.

  The return on investment in science is enormous.

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