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February 24, 2004

Remarks by the Hon. Bart Gordon before the American Society For Engineering Education

Rep. Bart Gordon (D-TN); Click photo to visit his websiteI want to thank Dean Glenn Johnson of Tennessee Tech for his gracious introduction.  I am proud to represent the Congressional District that includes his distinguished institution.

I also thank the other Tennessee engineering school officials in attendance today: Way Kuo and Lillian Mashburn of UT-Knoxville, Ken Galloway of Vanderbilt, Decatur Rogers of Tennessee State, Philip Kazemersky of UT-Chattanooga, Douglas Sterrett of UT-Martin, and Rick Warder of the University of Memphis for working closely with our Congressional delegation.  Your annual visits to Washington are invaluable to the Tennessee Congressional delegation.  A young woman or man in Tennessee with an interest in engineering has a lot of good choices within our state’s borders.

It is just a few weeks since I became the Ranking Democratic Member of the Committee on Science in the House of Representatives and this is my first opportunity since then to address an engineering society.  I can’t think of a better place to begin.  Collectively, the American Society for Engineering Education - the engineering deans and the engineering professors - will have a lot to say about the future of our country.  How well your schools do at instilling engineering values, know-how, and vision into this generation of students will help determine whether or not our children and grandchildren will be able to maintain our standard of living and move on to an even brighter future.  We in Congress want to be your partners in making these possibilities become realities.

I would like to divide my time with you into three parts.  I will tell you about the history of the Committee on Science and its responsibilities to help you understand better how we can work together.  I will discuss with you what the Congress will be like in 2004.  Finally, I would like to begin a dialog with you about how the engineering community and the Congress working together can address the major challenges we face in our portion of the 21st century.

The Committee on Science is relatively new as Congressional committees go.  We were established in a time of crisis in response to the launch of Sputnik by the Russians and were asked initially to concentrate on two problems.  We were made the Congressional focus for surpassing the Russians in space and for making sure that the Apollo program was a success.  We were also asked to make sure that American young people did not fall behind the Russians and other competitors in math and science skills.  In other words, when the United States felt threatened, Congress looked to engineering solutions and better engineering education as part of the answer.

In the 1970s, our Committee was given a much broader range of issues to address.  Our legislative jurisdiction was expanded to include the research programs of the Department of Energy, the Department of Commerce, and the Department of Transportation among others.  Science and technology was seen as the solution to a wider range of problems.

In the 1980s, the crisis we faced was the competitiveness of United States industry and the Science Committee’s response was to look to improve the framework in which technology is developed and implemented.  We passed legislation to encourage cooperation among universities, industry and the Federal Government.  Through the Bayh-Dole Act, we helped rewrite Federal patent policy to allow research results to go from the universities to the private sector more easily.  We worked with the Committee on Judiciary on modifying our antitrust laws to take away the legal impediments to joint research.  We also looked for ways to increase the resources going into science and engineering research.  We worked with the Small Business Committee on establishing the SBIR and STTR programs.

Over the years we have worked hard on legislative oversight.  Our hearings have educated the Congress on emerging fields like biotechnology and high performance computing at a time when these fields were largely unknown.

At various times, we have worked with the science and engineering communities on in-depth studies of science or technology policy.  We have been the Congressional voice of the science and technology community when basic concepts like peer review have come under attack or when scientists, engineers, and students from other countries have had trouble getting into the country.

Today we are the lead Congressional committee for most of the civilian research programs of the government - except for health and agricultural research - and our oversight jurisdiction extends to all of science and technology.  We also have legislative responsibility for science and technology issues that affect more than one agency.  Therefore, it would make sense for the engineering community to regard us as your main point of contact on Capitol Hill.  While some of your issues may go to other committees, we are the one congressional committee that has the primary responsibility to worry about the same problems you worry about.  I hope you will not hesitate to bring your concerns to our attention - including the attention of the committee staff.  If we are not the ones who can help you, we will help you figure out who can.

We also need your help.  About a tenth of the Members of the House of Representatives serve on our committee, but we all have other committee assignments and a wide variety of duties that compete for our time with Science Committee business.  We are supported by a professional staff of about 40, but no 40 individuals can be expert on all of science and technology policy.  We obviously need ready access to a wide cross-section of experts.  We value the help the engineering community has given us in the past, and we will need to establish an even stronger working relationship as we face the many major legislative problems that have an engineering or engineering policy component.

Let’s move on to 2004.  We, of course, are in a Presidential election year.  Voters will also choose all of the House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate this year.  It is difficult to pass significant legislation in a Presidential election year and the problem this year is compounded by the schedule.  The leadership’s current strategy seems to be to spend a great deal of time out of Washington.  We have been out of town more than we have been in session so far this year.  Recesses are scheduled for parts of April, May, June, July, September, and all of August.  October 1 is the target adjournment date.

This means that the primary focus of Congress will be on the budget and appropriations and that there will be relatively little legislative time for other major issues.

From a Science Committee perspective, the President’s budget is not pretty.  Virtually all of the R&D growth is in the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense.  Applied research programs in the rest of the government are especially hard hit.  Basic research funding is essentially level.  The budget is short on details for future years.

The President’s budget also contains a major change in math and science education.  It would move Math and Science Partnership money from the NSF budget to the block grant programs of the Department of Education that are not specifically focused on math and science education.  This idea was roundly criticized in our Committee’s budget hearings because we value improved math, science, and engineering education at the K-12 level.  Preserving the math and science partnerships will require diligence for the next several months both within the Congress and within the science and engineering education communities.

Another issue which cannot be ignored is the integrity of science and technology advice to the government.  Last week, the Union of Concerned Scientists released a report, endorsed 20 Nobel Prize winners and 42 other leading scientists.  This report alleges that the current administration is designing litmus tests for service on Federal scientific advisory committees.  We will be looking for ways to rectify this situation and welcome any suggestions you may have.

We cannot afford to waste the year 2004 even if major legislative activity is not likely.  Let’s make it the year in which we began the next phase of the Science Committee’s history.  Bring your advice to where it is welcome.  Let’s use this year to begin figuring out the engineering solutions to the major problems we face today.

We need the help of the engineering community to think outside the box and to help come up with the 21st century engineering solutions that will mitigate the gloomy financial projections.  How do we put to work the dramatic increase in computing power and the revolution in materials to meet future needs at lower unit costs?  Can we design living environments and support systems that will permit the elderly to stay in their homes longer so we don’t have to drain Medicare to pay for nursing home care?  Can highways and bridges be designed with dramatically lower life cycle costs so that we can afford the transportation systems we need for the future?

We need your help both in seeing the future and in designing and building it.

If the vision is there, the resources will follow.  If Americans can be shown what is possible, they will want it and they will work to make it happen.

Congress is a representative body and very responsive to what our constituents want.  I hope that you will join with me and my colleagues in our search for understanding by helping us apply the unique talents of the engineering profession to the problems we jointly face.