Uncertain Times Ahead for U.S. Science Policy, Scholar Norman Ornstein Says at AAAS

Despite strong financial and policy support from the White House, the U.S. agenda for science policy and research funding could face significant challenges in the near future because of a weak economy and the emergence of an angry populism, scholar Norman J. Ornstein told a AAAS audience.

Speaking at the sixth annual Leadership Seminar in Science and Technology Policy, the trenchant columnist and TV pundit said that a deep public frustration with elites—elected officials, financial leaders, and top corporate executives—has thus far spared science and technology leaders. But in sharply polarized political environment, he said, issues such as climate change, science funding, and visa reform may face significant opposition, he said.

Norman J. Ornstein

Dealing with such issues “would be a challenge in a functional political process,” Ornstein said, “but it becomes and even bigger challenge now. That challenge, along with others, poses a significant risk to a lot of the engines of our future prosperity, stability, and growth. And that’s despite the fact that we have a president who professes determination to protect and enhance science.”

The AAAS Leadership Seminar is a crash-course in U.S. science and technology policy, modeled after the highly acclaimed orientation program that AAAS provides for its new S&T Policy Fellows each fall. From 16-20 November, 35 people spanning a range of fields and disciplines—not only science and technology, but government, education, business, health, and diplomacy—heard top U.S. policy leaders provide a clear, candid look at science policy and the R&D budget across a range of issues.

The Leadership Seminar was organized by Al Teich, director of Science and Policy Programs at AAAS, along with associate director Stephen Nelson and project administrator Bethany Spencer.

Ornstein is a resident scholar the American Enterprise Institute, who, in an accomplished career as an author and pundit, has specialized in the workings of Congress. He writes a weekly column for Roll Call, and has served as an election analyst for CBS News. He has written for the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post and Foreign Affairs, and has appeared on a range of television programs, from “The Charlie Rose Show” to “The Colbert Report.”

In a talk on the opening day of the Leadership Seminar, he acknowledged that he had little positive news for the audience. In his 65-minute presentation, he suggested that climate change—and the U.S. government’s difficulty in addressing it—embodies many of the ways in which economic issues, dysfunctional politics, and the sour national mood have hamstrung the policy-making process on a critical science-related challenge.

According to Ornstein, President Barack Obama calculated that health care reform had to be resolved before his administration could take up climate change in earnest. Some experts thought that might take eight months. But the timetable was set back by the loss of two powerful allies: Obama’s chosen health-care czar, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, who was unable to clear the nomination process, and U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Massachusetts), an influential champion of health reform until he died earlier this year. Many Americans have been concerned about the potential cost of health care reform and its impact on existing care; talk radio and highly partisan cable television shows have fueled that concern, Ornstein said, fanning it into public fury over “death panels” for seniors and creeping socialism.

The slow progress on health care has had a direct relationship to the slow progress on climate legislation, Ornstein said.

The weak economy has deepened public concerns that aggressive plans for reducing the use of fossil fuels could be a long-term drag on economic recovery and growth. Republicans have little incentive to give Obama a legislative victory, Ornstein said, and Democrats from coal producing states will be reluctant to cast a vote that seeks to phase coal out over the long-term.

Earlier this year, the U.S. House of Representatives passed cap-and-trade legislation—in essence, a regime for controlling emissions by allowing utilities and other industries to buy and sell permits to emit set amounts of greenhouse gases. But a similar measure has stalled in the Senate.

While there’s “a very substantial core of people [in Congress] who understand that you’ve got to find a way to transcend” the partisan gridlock, Ornstein concluded, “the likelihood of a serious cap-and-trade bill going through the Senate is small.”

Now, with world leaders due to begin negotiations on a new climate change treaty in Copenhagen on 7 December, global U.S. leadership and leverage on the issue is undermined by the lack of domestic consensus.

Obama and his allies do have additional options, Ornstein said. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency has the power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. And the fiscal stimulus package has set aside billions of dollars for the development of alternative energy and a 21st-century “smart grid” for distributing electrical power.

But these alone cannot answer the challenge of climate change, he said.

Ornstein in the past has recommended that, in light of the economic crisis and climate change, the United States should swap its current payroll tax for a tax on carbon. “It seems to me there’s a great logic: Tax the things you want to reduce [greenhouse gases] and stop taxing things that you want to expand, like jobs,” he said.

He acknowledged, however, that there is little support for such an approach.

In Ornstein’s view, similar economic, political, and social dynamics are playing out in different patterns across the policy landscape. “We’re in the most interesting phase of the most interesting year in our policy and political process that I can remember,” he told the AAAS audience. The election of Obama by a strong majority of voters represented “as clear an expression of public desire for change and as clear a mandate as we’ve had in our lifetimes, with the possible exception of 1980, when Ronald Reagan swept into office.”

Almost of necessity, he said, Obama has adopted the most ambitious agenda of any modern president. To address critical problems, the White House has set a long list of priorities, one more difficult than the next: financial recovery and the rewriting of the nation’s financial regulations; managing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while finding a way to replenish and renew that armed forces; blocking nuclear proliferation in Iran and the North Korea; ending torture and closing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay; reforming the nation’s health care system to improve both care and efficiency, and to reduce its staggering costs to the economy; finding a way to solidify the finances of Medicare, Medicaid and the Social Security system; and addressing climate change and the need for energy independence.

Ornstein briskly explained how the rhythms of the election cycle practically require a president to front-load his agenda and to achieve early, significant successes. Obama’s agenda would have been profoundly difficult even with a strong economy. But with the nation still facing a risk of deflation, depression, or a lengthy economic stagnation, an old strain of American populism has re-emerged—a condition marked by hostility for elites, isolationism, and a suspicion of immigrants and foreign entanglements.

Populism seeks scapegoats, and has found them in corrupt financiers, clueless corporate leaders, and, increasingly, in elected officials of both parties, Ornstein said. “So far,” he added, “scientists have managed to stay outside of the scapegoat spotlight. But this year still has time, and there’s always next year.”

While the economic stimulus package will provide a significant boost for R&D, the White House desire to support robust research will likely come into conflict with other fiscal imperatives, Ornstein said.

Fixing the economy—stimulating growth while preventing inflation or deflation and then moving to reduce unprecedented deficits—is an extraordinarily difficult assignment. Ornstein compared it to an imagined stunt by the late daredevil Evel Knievel: He revs his motorcycle, accelerates to 200 miles per hour, hits the ramp and soars across the Grand Canyon—only to find, on landing, that the Snake River Canyon is just 30 yards beyond it.

“He’s got to put on the brakes immediately,” Ornstein said, “or fall into that abyss.”

Visa policy might seem a modest issue by comparison, but it, too, is shaped in a vortex of economic and social forces. Science, engineering, and academic organizations have been sharply critical of the visa limits imposed after the terror attacks of 11 September 2001, describing repeated instances in which accomplished foreign scientists and promising graduate students are denied visas to study or attend conferences in the United States.

But while Obama and others have expressed support for more discerning visa policies, Ornstein said, populism brings with it a strain of nativism that is hostile to foreigners.

And while science may struggle to find its footing in this evolving environment, Ornstein, in response to a question, envisioned a further challenge: The science journalists who once provided a link to the public are being phased out at many mass market publications and broadcast outlets. Such work is expensive, he said, and in a market geared for controversy and conflict, science doesn’t galvanize the audience as well as opinion does.

That creates the need for new ways to communicate with the public, new ways to convey the excitement and importance of research and discovery. And who will carry that message? “That’s where the burden is on you,” Ornstein told the audience.

Edward W. Lempinen

30 November 2009