Ranking Member Johnson's Floor Statement for General Debate on the CJS Appropriations Bill
Mr. Chairman, funding for research, innovation, and STEM education is an investment in our future, perhaps the single most important investment we make. Many of our competitors understand this and are striving to surpass the United States in innovation capacity and in the creation of a highly skilled 21st century workforce.
It used to be that the world’s best and brightest flocked to our shores. Now many of our own best and brightest are finding better opportunities in other countries, or we are chasing them away from STEM careers altogether.
In 2007, and again in 2010, the U.S. Congress passed the America COMPETES Act, recognizing the importance of increased investment in research, innovation, and STEM education. They were signed into law by Presidents Bush and Obama respectively.
Appropriations have not kept pace with authorizations, but not for a lack of effort and commitment by my appropriations colleagues, CJS Appropriations subcommittee Chairman Wolf, Ranking Member Fattah, Chairman Rogers, and Ranking Member Lowey. I want to thank my colleagues for their enduring support for science even when it has meant making very difficult cuts elsewhere.
As this is Chairman Wolf’s last CJS bill, I want to express my gratitude to him in particular for being a strong and unwavering champion for the National Science Foundation and for STEM education. We will miss him greatly.
In sad and puzzling contrast, last week my own Committee debated Competes reauthorization legislation that would turn back the progress we have made in securing our nation’s future innovation capacity and voted out a Committee substitute today without a single Democratic vote.
Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues, in the strongest possible terms, to add their own vote of confidence in our nation’s premier science agency. The National Science Foundation is the only agency to fund basic research across all fields of science and engineering, including, importantly, the social and behavioral sciences.
The returns on our 65-year investment in the National Science Foundation are too many and too significant to list here. But perhaps NSF’s most important investment is the investment it makes in human capital – the great scientists, innovators, and job creators of tomorrow and the workforce for tomorrow’s high-skilled, high-paying jobs.
Some of my colleagues’ efforts to cut funding, to impose political review over peer-review, to establish a message of distrust of scientists, and to inhibit the normal advance of science, are sending a chilling message to smart young people across the nation to not bother entering or sticking with STEM studies or careers.
A vote to retain the modest 2.9 percent increase to NSF in today’s legislation is a vote to hold onto our nation’s future innovators and job creators.
I will make just a few brief remarks about other agencies within this appropriations bill.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology is playing an increasingly critical role in cyber security, forensics, advanced manufacturing, nanotechnology, and so many other topics critical to our nation’s security and wellbeing. I just wish we could do more for NIST in this bill, but I understand this was one of the difficult decisions that the appropriations committee confronted.
I also want to thank Chairman Wolf and Ranking Member Fattah for their support for NASA. While I would like to see NASA funding at even higher levels, commensurate with the tasks that we are asking the agency to carry out, I am pleased that this bill proposes to fund NASA at an increase of about 1.4 percent over the Fiscal Year 2014 enacted appropriation.
In particular, I support the bill’s sustained funding levels for exploration and the Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System, which are being prepared for critical flight tests in 2017 and 2021, and which will enable our nation’s return to human exploration of deep space.
I also support the Committee’s emphasis on the need to enhance research on the International Space Station, a unique and perishable asset that is important for both basic and applied research and for enabling our goals in human exploration of outer space.
I am also pleased that the Committee has sustained robust funding for NASA’s science programs and, in particular, restored funding to NASA’s planetary science program, which has experienced cuts in recent years.
In addition, I applaud the Committee for providing a robust increase for NASA’s aeronautics program, which provides critical R&D to benefit our nation’s commercial aviation industry and helps sustain our nation’s competitiveness in global aviation.
Finally, I must express one significant concern, and that is the large cut to climate research activities at NOAA. The level proposed in this bill is 44 percent below the President’s request and 23 percent below current spending.
A number of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle continue to bury their heads in the sand as it relates to climate change, but cutting the research that will improve our understanding of and our ability to adapt to the impacts associated with climate change is not the answer. If anything, given the uncertainties that remain, we should be supporting increased funding not less. I hope the needed funding will be restored when this bill is conferenced with the Senate.
In closing, I again want to thank you, Chairman Wolf, Ranking Member Fattah, and the rest of your committee members for your efforts to protect and grow our nation’s science and innovation capacity.
With that, I yield back.
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