NEWS | I N D E P T H
U.S. POLICY
Election stakes go beyond control of the Senate Funding, peer review, water rules, fusion, and other science issues on tap after the vote
Does science suffer an ‘innovation deficit’?
B
ehold the “innovation deficit.” U.S. science lobbyists coined the phrase last year to help make an economic argument for increasing federal funding of basic research, namely, that the current spending levels are too low for the United States to remain a global leader in innovation. Given political and budget realities, erasing this “deficit” anytime soon will take a minor miracle. But the phrase seems to be catching on, despite the fact that a one-time surge of funds could create its own problems. The chair of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, Senator Barbara Mikulski (D–MD), used the phrase three times in her opening remarks at a hearing last spring on how to spur U.S. innovation by boosting science budgets. Lawmakers have also embraced its logic in pending legislation to pump up the budget of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). NIH supports roughly half of all federally funded basic research, so a sizable increase for that
408
agency would go a long way toward meeting the community’s goal. But is the innovation deficit real? The argument rests on two claims: Research has paid handsome societal dividends, and current spending has fallen behind some past
long-term rate of growth. The first premise is undeniable. But there’s no clear evidence to support the second. Trends in federal spending over the past 20 years for what amounts to basic research suggest that the supposedly predictable and steady support for research may be illusory (see graph). In the case of NIH’s budget, for instance, the last 2 decades include two
What’s your line? Four scenarios for future U.S. spending on basic science PROJECTED
$170 Billions of constant 2014 dollars
By Jeffrey Mervis
ditional revenue. When Congress couldn’t agree on how to allocate the cuts, the socalled sequester took effect in March 2013 for the rest of that year’s budget. It meant a 5% cut to the National Institutes of Health and many other civilian science agencies. A budget deal last December suspended the mandatory cuts for 2014 and 2015, but they will come roaring back in 2016. Both Democrats and Republicans have said they despise the sequester (often for different reasons), and Obama has already hinted that the White House’s 2016 budget request, expected in February, will propose lifting the BCA’s spending caps. The 2011 law has done its job, the administration argues: The annual budget deficit for 2014 was $483 billion, the lowest since 2008; at 2.8% of the gross domestic product, it’s below the average for the past 40 years. It’s time to reinvest in science and other national needs, White House officials argue, if necessary by trimming some mandatory spending programs.
Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on March 14, 2015
F
or many political junkies, the 4 November U.S. election is about whether Republicans can win control of the U.S. Senate and rule both houses of Congress. If they succeed, Republicans would have even more leverage to block anything that President Barack Obama wants to do during his final 2 years in office. For many science advocates, however, the Senate’s fate is merely a sideline in their continued campaign to reverse stagnating science budgets and ward off new automatic, across-the-board budget cuts like last year’s sequester. They are also waiting to see how the next Congress and the White House resolve a bevy of science-related policy controversies. The drama will play out in two acts. The first opens when the current Congress returns to Washington, D.C., for a 6-week lame-duck session. The second will begin in
January after members of the 114th Congress are sworn in and get down to business. In the lame duck, the spotlight will be on budget issues. That’s because Congress couldn’t agree on a spending plan for the 2015 fiscal year, which began 1 October. Instead, it froze budgets at existing levels before recessing for the fall campaign. A final 2015 budget is more likely to happen if the election preserves the status quo, observers predict. In contrast, if Republicans capture the Senate, they may be more inclined to wait until the new session to act on spending issues. And their victory could well be seen as a mandate for fiscal restraint. Whatever the makeup of the next Congress, lawmakers will need to confront the specter of automatic, across-the-board cuts. This budget-cutting mechanism is enshrined in a 2011 law called the Budget Control Act (BCA), which requires a $1 trillion reduction in the deficit through 2021 by means of some combination of cuts and ad-
$150
$130 $110 $90 $70 $50 1997
2000
2003
Past spending
2006
2009
Keep pace with China
Original caps in 2011 Budget Control Act
2012
2015
2018
2021
Keep pace with U.S. GDP After mandatory cuts
sciencemag.org SCIENCE
24 OCTOBER 2014 • VOL 346 ISSUE 6208
Published by AAAS
PHOTO: DATA: CREDIT M.GOES HOURIHAN/AAAS HERE AS SHOWN; CREDIT GOES HERE AS SHOWN
By Jeffrey Mervis
It’s too early to know whether the new Congress will agree to tweak the BCA or how much of any “new” money would go to science. Research advocates are ready with a new catch phrase, the “innovation deficit,” to help them make a case for a funding boost (see sidebar, p. 408). But that’s just one issue that science advocates will be following closely. Here are others: NSF POLICY: The current session saw a bitter fight between the community and Republicans on the House of Representatives science committee over the panel’s
plan to revise peer review, cut social science funding, and make other operational changes at the National Science Foundation (NSF). The legislation never came to a vote on the House floor, however, and research advocates are hoping the next version hews closer to current NSF policies. WATERWAYS: A draft rule from the Environmental Protection Agency defining what kinds of waters federal agencies have the power to protect has upset farm groups, who fear it could give the federal government greater control over private land. Last
month, the House passed a bill that would block it. But the White House says the president would veto the measure if it were to pass Congress. RESEARCH REGULATIONS: Universities say they are making progress in persuading Congress to ease what they consider burdensome and unnecessary research regulations, such as grant-reporting requirements. In July, the House passed a bipartisan bill (H.R. 5056) creating a White House task force to review the rules. The Senate has yet to act. FUSION: Ballooning costs and slipping schedules for ITER, an experimental fusion reactor being built in France, have led the Senate to propose a U.S. pullout, with its contribution—$200 million this year— redirected to domestic fusion programs. The House so far has stood behind the multinational project despite its problems. IMMIGRATION: Efforts to enact comprehensive reform of the nation’s immigration system have collapsed in Congress, but the White House may bypass Congress and move administratively to expand the number of high-skill workers eligible for a green card work permit. Another option is legislation focused narrowly on that elite population. ■
sharp rises—a 5-year doubling between 1998 and 2003 and a one-time bolus of money in 2009 that increased NIH’s budget by roughly one-third. Those peaks stand out among stretches of essentially flat budgets, aside from a dip in 2013 because of mandatory cuts under the Budget Control Act (BCA), or “the sequester,” and a partial rebound this year. Another funding dip is coming in 2016 under the BCA, unless Congress and the White House strike a new long-term spending deal. In the meantime, a few Democratic legislators have offered a novel solution: Exempt NIH’s budget from the BCA on the grounds that biomedical research is too important to be subject to arbitrary reductions in the name of fiscal responsibility. Legislation sponsored by Senator Tom Harkin (D–IA) and Representative Rosa DeLauro (D–CT) would give lawmakers emergency powers under the BCA to boost NIH’s budget by 10% annually in 2015 and 2016 and by 5% for each of the next 5 years—without having to take the money from another federal agency. “This bill will put a plan in place for the Appropriations Committee to reverse the 10-year retrenchment in biomedical research funding over
the remaining years of the Budget Control Act,” Harkin said in July in introducing the Accelerating Biomedical Research Act. A second bill, by Senator Richard Durbin (D– IL), would create a trust fund that would provide a 5% annual increase after inflation for NIH, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and several military biomedical research programs. However, Durbin hasn’t explained how the trust fund would be financed. The bills stand almost no chance of becoming law this year. Still, some lobbyists hope that Harkin, who is retiring in December after 40 years in Congress, will make a last-ditch push to apply the exemption for NIH to the 2015 bill covering the entire federal budget that lawmakers will take up in their lame-duck session. Harkin’s proposal might be attractive to legislators, because it allows them to be generous to NIH without squeezing elsewhere. If adopted, however, Harkin’s approach to closing the innovation deficit could trigger yet another dramatic budget swing for NIH, especially if it were adopted only for 2015. Scientific leaders have long bemoaned such sudden fluctuations, saying they are disruptive and make long-range planning
nearly impossible. And upturns send false messages of hope that the good times will extend into the foreseeable future. The potential downsides don’t seem to bother science lobbyists. “We’re advocating for the [Harkin] bill because of the need to get NIH back on track,” says Jennifer Poulakidas of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities in Washington, D.C. “If there’s the possibility of expanding that approach to all federally funded research, then we’d be in favor of that, too. But the key is to take that first step. And you can make a special case for NIH because of the importance of finding cures and better treatments.” Jennifer Zeitzer, a lobbyist for the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology in Bethesda, Maryland, puts it simply. “We support anything that helps NIH. It’s our No. 1 priority.” Lobbyists outside of the biomedical field say such fervent support for the Harkin approach is understandable. “Biomedical advocates are so beaten down by a decade of flat funding,” says Joel Widder of Federal Science Partners, a boutique government relations firm in Washington, D.C., “that they will grab for anything they can get.” ■
PHOTO: PHOTO: CREDIT GOES ALAN LESSIG/AMERICAN HERE AS SHOWN; CREDIT ASSOCIATION GOES HERE FOR AS CANCER SHOWN RESEARCH
Representative David McKinley (R–WV), right, shakes hands with Jon Retzlaff, a government affairs official with the American Association for Cancer Research.
SCIENCE sciencemag.org
24 OCTOBER 2014 • VOL 346 ISSUE 6208
Published by AAAS
409
U.S. POLICY
Election stakes go beyond control of the Senate Funding, peer review, water rules, fusion, and other science issues on tap after the vote
Does science suffer an ‘innovation deficit’?
B
ehold the “innovation deficit.” U.S. science lobbyists coined the phrase last year to help make an economic argument for increasing federal funding of basic research, namely, that the current spending levels are too low for the United States to remain a global leader in innovation. Given political and budget realities, erasing this “deficit” anytime soon will take a minor miracle. But the phrase seems to be catching on, despite the fact that a one-time surge of funds could create its own problems. The chair of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, Senator Barbara Mikulski (D–MD), used the phrase three times in her opening remarks at a hearing last spring on how to spur U.S. innovation by boosting science budgets. Lawmakers have also embraced its logic in pending legislation to pump up the budget of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). NIH supports roughly half of all federally funded basic research, so a sizable increase for that
408
agency would go a long way toward meeting the community’s goal. But is the innovation deficit real? The argument rests on two claims: Research has paid handsome societal dividends, and current spending has fallen behind some past
long-term rate of growth. The first premise is undeniable. But there’s no clear evidence to support the second. Trends in federal spending over the past 20 years for what amounts to basic research suggest that the supposedly predictable and steady support for research may be illusory (see graph). In the case of NIH’s budget, for instance, the last 2 decades include two
What’s your line? Four scenarios for future U.S. spending on basic science PROJECTED
$170 Billions of constant 2014 dollars
By Jeffrey Mervis
ditional revenue. When Congress couldn’t agree on how to allocate the cuts, the socalled sequester took effect in March 2013 for the rest of that year’s budget. It meant a 5% cut to the National Institutes of Health and many other civilian science agencies. A budget deal last December suspended the mandatory cuts for 2014 and 2015, but they will come roaring back in 2016. Both Democrats and Republicans have said they despise the sequester (often for different reasons), and Obama has already hinted that the White House’s 2016 budget request, expected in February, will propose lifting the BCA’s spending caps. The 2011 law has done its job, the administration argues: The annual budget deficit for 2014 was $483 billion, the lowest since 2008; at 2.8% of the gross domestic product, it’s below the average for the past 40 years. It’s time to reinvest in science and other national needs, White House officials argue, if necessary by trimming some mandatory spending programs.
Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on March 14, 2015
F
or many political junkies, the 4 November U.S. election is about whether Republicans can win control of the U.S. Senate and rule both houses of Congress. If they succeed, Republicans would have even more leverage to block anything that President Barack Obama wants to do during his final 2 years in office. For many science advocates, however, the Senate’s fate is merely a sideline in their continued campaign to reverse stagnating science budgets and ward off new automatic, across-the-board budget cuts like last year’s sequester. They are also waiting to see how the next Congress and the White House resolve a bevy of science-related policy controversies. The drama will play out in two acts. The first opens when the current Congress returns to Washington, D.C., for a 6-week lame-duck session. The second will begin in
January after members of the 114th Congress are sworn in and get down to business. In the lame duck, the spotlight will be on budget issues. That’s because Congress couldn’t agree on a spending plan for the 2015 fiscal year, which began 1 October. Instead, it froze budgets at existing levels before recessing for the fall campaign. A final 2015 budget is more likely to happen if the election preserves the status quo, observers predict. In contrast, if Republicans capture the Senate, they may be more inclined to wait until the new session to act on spending issues. And their victory could well be seen as a mandate for fiscal restraint. Whatever the makeup of the next Congress, lawmakers will need to confront the specter of automatic, across-the-board cuts. This budget-cutting mechanism is enshrined in a 2011 law called the Budget Control Act (BCA), which requires a $1 trillion reduction in the deficit through 2021 by means of some combination of cuts and ad-
$150
$130 $110 $90 $70 $50 1997
2000
2003
Past spending
2006
2009
Keep pace with China
Original caps in 2011 Budget Control Act
2012
2015
2018
2021
Keep pace with U.S. GDP After mandatory cuts
sciencemag.org SCIENCE
24 OCTOBER 2014 • VOL 346 ISSUE 6208
Published by AAAS
PHOTO: DATA: CREDIT M.GOES HOURIHAN/AAAS HERE AS SHOWN; CREDIT GOES HERE AS SHOWN
By Jeffrey Mervis
It’s too early to know whether the new Congress will agree to tweak the BCA or how much of any “new” money would go to science. Research advocates are ready with a new catch phrase, the “innovation deficit,” to help them make a case for a funding boost (see sidebar, p. 408). But that’s just one issue that science advocates will be following closely. Here are others: NSF POLICY: The current session saw a bitter fight between the community and Republicans on the House of Representatives science committee over the panel’s
plan to revise peer review, cut social science funding, and make other operational changes at the National Science Foundation (NSF). The legislation never came to a vote on the House floor, however, and research advocates are hoping the next version hews closer to current NSF policies. WATERWAYS: A draft rule from the Environmental Protection Agency defining what kinds of waters federal agencies have the power to protect has upset farm groups, who fear it could give the federal government greater control over private land. Last
month, the House passed a bill that would block it. But the White House says the president would veto the measure if it were to pass Congress. RESEARCH REGULATIONS: Universities say they are making progress in persuading Congress to ease what they consider burdensome and unnecessary research regulations, such as grant-reporting requirements. In July, the House passed a bipartisan bill (H.R. 5056) creating a White House task force to review the rules. The Senate has yet to act. FUSION: Ballooning costs and slipping schedules for ITER, an experimental fusion reactor being built in France, have led the Senate to propose a U.S. pullout, with its contribution—$200 million this year— redirected to domestic fusion programs. The House so far has stood behind the multinational project despite its problems. IMMIGRATION: Efforts to enact comprehensive reform of the nation’s immigration system have collapsed in Congress, but the White House may bypass Congress and move administratively to expand the number of high-skill workers eligible for a green card work permit. Another option is legislation focused narrowly on that elite population. ■
sharp rises—a 5-year doubling between 1998 and 2003 and a one-time bolus of money in 2009 that increased NIH’s budget by roughly one-third. Those peaks stand out among stretches of essentially flat budgets, aside from a dip in 2013 because of mandatory cuts under the Budget Control Act (BCA), or “the sequester,” and a partial rebound this year. Another funding dip is coming in 2016 under the BCA, unless Congress and the White House strike a new long-term spending deal. In the meantime, a few Democratic legislators have offered a novel solution: Exempt NIH’s budget from the BCA on the grounds that biomedical research is too important to be subject to arbitrary reductions in the name of fiscal responsibility. Legislation sponsored by Senator Tom Harkin (D–IA) and Representative Rosa DeLauro (D–CT) would give lawmakers emergency powers under the BCA to boost NIH’s budget by 10% annually in 2015 and 2016 and by 5% for each of the next 5 years—without having to take the money from another federal agency. “This bill will put a plan in place for the Appropriations Committee to reverse the 10-year retrenchment in biomedical research funding over
the remaining years of the Budget Control Act,” Harkin said in July in introducing the Accelerating Biomedical Research Act. A second bill, by Senator Richard Durbin (D– IL), would create a trust fund that would provide a 5% annual increase after inflation for NIH, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and several military biomedical research programs. However, Durbin hasn’t explained how the trust fund would be financed. The bills stand almost no chance of becoming law this year. Still, some lobbyists hope that Harkin, who is retiring in December after 40 years in Congress, will make a last-ditch push to apply the exemption for NIH to the 2015 bill covering the entire federal budget that lawmakers will take up in their lame-duck session. Harkin’s proposal might be attractive to legislators, because it allows them to be generous to NIH without squeezing elsewhere. If adopted, however, Harkin’s approach to closing the innovation deficit could trigger yet another dramatic budget swing for NIH, especially if it were adopted only for 2015. Scientific leaders have long bemoaned such sudden fluctuations, saying they are disruptive and make long-range planning
nearly impossible. And upturns send false messages of hope that the good times will extend into the foreseeable future. The potential downsides don’t seem to bother science lobbyists. “We’re advocating for the [Harkin] bill because of the need to get NIH back on track,” says Jennifer Poulakidas of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities in Washington, D.C. “If there’s the possibility of expanding that approach to all federally funded research, then we’d be in favor of that, too. But the key is to take that first step. And you can make a special case for NIH because of the importance of finding cures and better treatments.” Jennifer Zeitzer, a lobbyist for the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology in Bethesda, Maryland, puts it simply. “We support anything that helps NIH. It’s our No. 1 priority.” Lobbyists outside of the biomedical field say such fervent support for the Harkin approach is understandable. “Biomedical advocates are so beaten down by a decade of flat funding,” says Joel Widder of Federal Science Partners, a boutique government relations firm in Washington, D.C., “that they will grab for anything they can get.” ■
PHOTO: PHOTO: CREDIT GOES ALAN LESSIG/AMERICAN HERE AS SHOWN; CREDIT ASSOCIATION GOES HERE FOR AS CANCER SHOWN RESEARCH
Representative David McKinley (R–WV), right, shakes hands with Jon Retzlaff, a government affairs official with the American Association for Cancer Research.
SCIENCE sciencemag.org
24 OCTOBER 2014 • VOL 346 ISSUE 6208
Published by AAAS
409
