The Bush-43 Years: 2001-09 1
15.4 American Competitiveness Initiative
Evidently, Bush was listening. In his 2006 State of the Union message, he announced that he would ask Congress to enact an American Competitiveness Initiative. On August 7, 2007, he signed into law the America Competes Act of 2007. During his rst term, Bush had not been receptive to pleas for increased R&D support. But in his press conference following the signing of the America Competes Act into law, Bush noted that in his previous State of the Union speech he had asked Congress to expand America's investments in basic research, so we can support our nation's most creative minds as they explore new frontiers in nanotechnology or supercomputing or alternative energy sources. I asked Congress to strengthen math and science education so our children have the skills they need to compete for the jobs of the future.
I asked Congress to make permanent the research and development tax credit, so we can encourage bolder private-sector initiatives in technology.
Congress, however, did not appropriate funds to support Bush's objectives. Although the administration continued to pursue its American Competitiveness Initiative in subsequent budget requests, appropriations enacted by the Congress fell short of meeting such objectives as doubling the budget of the NSF. On the other hand, appropriations for the NSF, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the DoE's Science Oce did increase substantially over previous years.15
15.5 PCAST
When Bush announced his twenty-two candidates for PCAST membership in December 2001, the list in-cluded only one working scientist, with more than half coming from industry and many having served under Bush's father.16 According to Marburger, the dearth of scientic expertise is deliberate. . .. The goal is to get advice from leadership in higher education and industry and not necessarily at the scientic level.
15During the Reagan Administration, the mandate of the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) was expanded and rechristened as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
16Sciencescope, Science (December 21, 2001), 2455.
During the Bush administration, PCAST issued considerably fewer public reports than its Clinton ad-ministration predecessor. These reports were:
• Maximizing the Contribution of Science and Technology within the Department of Homeland Security
• Assessing U.S. R&D Investment
• S&T Collaboration: Ideas for Enhancing European-American Cooperation
• Federal State Cooperation: Improving the Likelihood of Success
• The National Nanotechnology Initiative at Five Years: Assessment and Recommendations of the Na-tional Nanotechnology Advisory Panel
• The Energy Imperative: Technology and the Role of Emerging Companies
• Federal Networking and Information Technology R&D (NITRD) Program Review
• The National Nanotechnology Initiative: Second Assessment and Recommendations of the National Nanotechnology Advisory Panel.17
15.6 NSTC
The National Science and Technology Council continued to meet regularly with the same federal organizations as it had during the Clinton administration, and continued the practice of ignoring Allan Bromley's wish that only principals attend. Most of the NTSC's business was conducted by standing committees consisting of lower-level member agency sta.18 The nine committees under Clinton were reduced to four under Bush:
Environment and Natural Resources, Homeland and National Security, Science, and Technology.
15.7 Science and International Relations
With the exception of a nuclear treaty with India allowing that country to buy civilian nuclear technology from the U.S. and other countries, the Bush administration made scant use of science as an instrument of foreign policy. This appears now to have been part of a general, if unstated, Bush administration policy of downplaying the importance of science in government.
15.8 Assessment
Although Bush did try to increase the budgets of the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the Department of Energy, few of his requests survived the congressional appropriations process. And outside of these budget initiatives, his administration has been criticized for muzzling administration scientists who opposed administration ideology, and for doctoring ocial reports.
Although specialists have long recognized that science can and should be only one factor that policymakers consider in coming to a decision, the Bush administration was probably the rst in American history to distort rather than simply to marginalize science as an instrument of governance. Bush himself, for example, while not openly advocating creationism, did suggest the legitimacy of teaching intelligent design along with evolution in high school biology classes. He forbade the use of federal funds to harvest embryonic stem cells beyond the lines available when he announced his decision. Perhaps most famously, he persistently ignored mounting evidence for human contributions to global warming, and worldwide calls for action to reduce carbon emissions.
17http://www.ostp.gov/cs/pcast/documents_reports (<http://www.ostp.gov/cs/pcast/documents_reports>).
18http://www.ostp.gov/cs/nstc (<http://www.ostp.gov/cs/nstc>).
Regardless of some R&D budget increases, the Bush administration's attitudes toward science during its eight years would most likely be regarded as among the darkest in recent memory. Chris Mooney has argued that Bush's adversarial stance towards science is nothing particularly new, since right-wing Republican attacks on science go back as far as the New Deal, and intensied during the Nixon and Reagan administrations.19 Even so, it appears that Bush was the most eager presidential recruit for the far right's war on science.
19Chris Mooney, The Republican War on Science (New York: Basic Books, 2005).