Joint Letter to President Bush Urges Increased Federal Support for Scientific Research
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PUBLIC AFFAIRS FORUM An analysis of public policy issues and how they affect MRS members and the materials community...
Joint Letter to President Bush Urges Increased Federal Support for Scientific Research Throughout 2002, Materials Research Society officers and volunteers joined with the leaders of other societies to engage elected officials in Congress about the support of scientific research. One of the outcomes of this effort was that Congress authorized a 2003 spending plan for the National Science Foundation that was significantly larger than the original budget proposal from the White House, and provided for steadily increasing budgets over a five-year period. This was eventually signed into law by President Bush. January 3, 2003 The President The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President: We write to you as leaders of organizations representing more than 1.5 million scientists and engineers throughout the United States to express our concern about diminishing federal budgets for many portions of the R&D portfolio. We thank you for signing the National Science Foundation Research Act and the commitment it carries with it, and we commend you on your support of the National Institutes of Health. However, we are troubled that many areas of research are being left behind at a time when the sciences have become increasingly interdependent. Following the November 5th election, you identified national security and job creation as two of your highest policy goals for the coming year. We agree with your goals but note that achieving them will require continued advances in science and technology across disciplines. The federal government must take steps to strengthen its support of science and engineering research, many aspects of which have suffered significant declines for more than a decade. This very harmful trend has been particularly true for the physical sciences, as your distinguished science and technology advisers point out in PCAST’s recent draft report, “Assessing the U.S. R&D Investment.” But it has also been true for many life science subfields outside of biomedicine and for the social sciences. We urge you to adopt the report’s recommendations, and we offer you our assistance in implementing its objectives. ■
Except for the National Institutes of Health and only very recently the National Science Foundation, most federal agencies have seen their research budgets stagnate or decline in purchasing power for more than a decade. And as the recent RAND report, “Federal Investment in R&D,” notes, the pipeline for the future science and technology workforce is now in jeopardy.
Programs within the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Energy, and the Interior all make critical contributions to the nation’s scientific enterprise as do independent agencies such as NASA and NSF. Yet your MRS BULLETIN/MARCH 2003
In order to influence the 2004 science budget, MRS and several other scientific societies have again joined together, but this time they started one step fur
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