Research Cuts Decried as Detrimental to U.S.

A “willy-nilly” rush by House Republicans to cut government research spending will destroy a quarter of the federal science establishment and result in the loss of U.S. leadership in key industrial technologies, a senior Clinton Administration official said Wednesday.

White House Science Adviser John H. Gibbons said proposed GOP cutbacks in bills now moving through Congress will profoundly hurt industries such as aviation, biotechnology and transportation--predicting that more Americans will be flying European-made Airbus Industrie jetliners rather than Boeing Co. or McDonnell Douglas craft.

In a meeting with reporters, Gibbons said the Republicans’ “pell-mell race” to cut science research will particularly hurt California, which gets a disproportionate share of federal research spending through major universities and laboratories in the state.

“All we have to do is slack off a little bit and our thin margin of leadership goes to second-rate,” Gibbons said. “I am not very comfortable with the situation.”

Although major U.S. corporations have strongly supported the overall Republican political agenda, the looming loss of federal research has prompted recent high-level protests.

The chief executives of TRW Inc., UAL Corp., Phillips Petroleum Co., Motorola Inc., General Electric Co. and DuPont, among others, recently signed a strongly worded letter published in major newspapers warning against cutbacks in university research spending.

But a spokeswoman for Rep. Robert S. Walker (R-Pa.), chairman of the House Science Committee, rejected Gibbons’ assertions, saying there is no need for the government to subsidize research at major corporations. The Republican cutbacks have spared spending on basic research, instead targeting programs that appear to directly support specific products or industries.

In addition, Gibbons’ estimates are wrong, the spokeswoman said. Walker estimates his cuts will amount to about 15% of the research spending that falls under his committee’s jurisdiction, which covers much of the federal establishment, with the exception of medical and environmental research.

But Gibbons’ data indicates that non-defense federal spending on research will drop from $40 billion in fiscal 1995 to about $30 billion by 2000. Those estimates do not include any of the roughly $30 billion in current defense research spending, which the GOP is not attempting to cut as heavily as civilian research, Gibbons said.

He defended the long record of federal support for research, which he said has paid untold economic dividends and counters the Republican contention that U.S. corporations should be investing their own money.