President Obama issued a veto threat to yet another Republican attempt to starve and deny science and science-based programs.
If put on his desk as is, the President will veto science-slayer Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX)’s bill,
H.R. 1806,
the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2015, in part because it
“would set an extremely harmful precedent of political interference in
the scientific integrity of the regulation process”.
The Republican bill takes partisan aim at things
like climate change research at the
Department of Energy, so the
reality based community would prefer it if Republicans like Congressman
Smith kept his nose out of things he doesn’t understand or respect.
From the White House:
The Administration
strongly opposes House passage of H.R. 1806, the America COMPETES
Reauthorization Act of 2015, which would undermine critical investments
in science, technology, and research. The Administration believes that
H.R. 1806 would be damaging to the Administration’s actions to move
American competitiveness, innovation, and job growth forward through a
world-leading science, technology, and innovation enterprise.
The Administration strongly opposes the bill’s appropriation
authorizations for the Department of Energy (DOE), the National Science
Foundation (NSF), the National Institute of Standards and Technology
(NIST), and the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) that
would establish maximum funding levels significantly below those
provided in the President’s FY 2016 Budget. For example, H.R. 1806
would weaken investments in critical clean energy research and
development and grid modernization by providing authorization levels at
less than half of the funding levels proposed in the President’s Budget
for DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, Office of Energy
Efficiency and Renewable Energy, and Office of Electricity Delivery and
Energy Reliability. Additionally, the legislation would shortchange
efforts to support fundamental research to address diverse and critical
global challenges by providing an authorization level for the DOE Office
of Science biological and environmental research program far short of
the funding levels proposed in the President’s Budget. The America
COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2015 would also establish NSF
authorizations levels for geosciences, education and human resources,
international and integrative activities, and administrative activities
well below the funding levels proposed in the President’s Budget, as
well as an NSF authorization for social, behavioral, and economic
sciences research that is 58 percent below the President’s Budget.
Additionally, the legislation would undermine efforts to implement sound
science and technology policies by providing an authorization level for
OSTP nearly 20 percent below the President’s Budget.
In addition to its strong opposition to the
authorized funding levels in H.R. 1806, the Administration has serious
concerns with several other provisions in the bill and looks forward to
working with the Congress to address its concerns. For example, the
Administration opposes barring Federal regulatory authorities from
relying on the results of certain Federally-supported research and
development. This provision would set an extremely harmful precedent of
political interference in the scientific integrity of the regulation
process, which would undermine the value of the Federal research and
development enterprise as a whole. The Administration also objects to
the increased administrative burdens that the bill imposes on NSF and
its awardees without commensurate benefit. In addition, the
Administration opposes reducing oversight at the DOE National
Laboratories, which would increase the exposure of the Federal
Government to risk and liabilities while also conflicting with the
execution of the DOE mission.
H.R. 1806 undermines key investments in science,
technology, and innovation and imposes unnecessary and damaging
requirements on Federal support of research. If the President were
presented with H.R. 1806, his senior advisors would recommend that he
veto the bill.
Introduced on April 15, the
Republican authorization of appropriations bill
claims to “provide for technological innovation through the
prioritization of Federal investment in basic research, fundamental
scientific discovery, and development to improve the competitiveness of
the United States, and for other purposes.”
Or, as Jeffrey Mervis and Adrian Cho of
Science Magazine explained when Smith first introduced his bill:
Representative Lamar
Smith (R-TX) has never hidden his desire to reshape federal research
policy—
often over the objections of much of the scientific
community—since he became chair of the House of Representatives science
committee 2 years ago. Last week, he introduced legislation that lays
out those plans in unprecedented detail, and the reaction was
predictable. Although academic leaders say that some parts of the new,
189-page bill are better than previous versions, they believe it would
seriously damage the U.S. research enterprise.
The bill not only sets out funding levels for
several research agencies that in some cases depart sharply from those
the Obama administration requested for 2016; it would also reshape key
policies and priorities guiding those agencies.
Republicans are trying to kill science any way they
can. On one hand they are busy denying science as a thing, favoring the
childish notion of equating the opinion of financially invested parties
with the opinion of experts and on the other, they are killing through
defunding. Or, as they call it when running for office, “sustaining” a
program by not outright murdering it, which would be bad press.
Republicans prefer to starve programs instead, so
that when the program stops working due to lack of funds, Republicans
can use that dysfunction to validate their ideology that government is
unnecessary. This, of course, is a big win for big business, but a big
loss for science and other reality based programs.
Luckily, President Obama is in the White House and can put a stop to this anti-science Republican nonsense.
Bill Clinton
