By Robert V. Duncan
For the Journal
The United States is usually loath to concede a fight easily. Yet with the fierce competition for global science leadership from China, India and other countries, President's Bush's fiscal year 2006 budget request for science research stops just short of waving a white flag.
The situation was similar last year, but Congress, behind the leadership and commitment of Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., managed to keep the United States in the ring. We need to support Domenici this year as Congress faces an even more difficult challenge.
The stakes are high: the countries that are at the forefront of science and technology research and that have the best trained high-tech workforce will have the best chance of hosting the high-paying, high-tech jobs that flow from future innovation.
For decades, the United States has been the world leader. As a result, our economy and productivity have been the envy of other nations. Now the rest of the world is challenging us for top billing, and we run the risk of becoming road-kill on the international high-tech super-highway.
Here in New Mexico, our prowess in science and technology provides our high standard of living. If the United States doesn't maintain its edge, then the state's high-tech jobs are in danger of evaporating.
The offshore-outsourcing of high-tech jobs that dominated the news last year is but one sign that other countries are rapidly building up their science and technology infrastructures. Another sign is that the latest gizmos at Best Buy are no longer made exclusively in the United States.
Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore are making great strides, but it's China and India that are growing the fastest and have the greatest potential to deliver a knock-out punch. In the mid-1990s China surpassed us in granting university degrees in the natural sciences and engineering and today produces 50 percent more such degrees than do U.S. universities. And China is only beginning to flex its tech muscle.
In the United States, our investments in basic research in the physical sciences are lagging, resulting in fewer and fewer of America's brightest getting doctorates in these fields.
Industrial CEOs are beginning to discover what many science and engineering deans have known for the last few years, namely that foreign-trained scientists and engineers are generally every bit as capable on graduation as their counterparts educated within the United States.
Craig Barrett, CEO of Intel, New Mexico's largest manufacturer with more than 5,000 employees, warns that high-tech companies will put new plants where the talent is.
Since we can't compete on wages or population numbers, we must strengthen our stagnant federal investment in physical science research to make certain that we remain the world's leader in scientific discovery and innovation.
Aside from the National Institutes of Health, the Bush administration's proposed budget for fiscal year 2006 would reduce spending on scientific research by 2 percent. Taking into account inflation, our level of scientific effort would decline by 5 percent.
For the Department of Energy's Office of Science, the largest federal sponsor of research in the physical sciences, the proposed cut is even steeper: 4 percent in real dollars or 7 percent with inflation. Such a reduction would seriously undermine U.S. science leadership and concede even more canvas to our competitors in the global economic ring.
The proposed cuts could hurt New Mexico substantially, since the DOE Office of Science funds $150 million in science research here each year. Thanks in part to Domenici, Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories host a new state-of-the art facility to explore the potential of nano-science and nano-materials. It's from such research that the next "big thing" could come, which might spur the creation of a whole new industry and give New Mexico's high-tech sector a dramatic new punch.
The Office of Science also funds the national MIND Institute housed at the University of New Mexico, which applies neuroimaging in the study of mental illness, putting Albuquerque on a track toward becoming a leader in this area of research.
Fortunately, both our senators fought these cuts. Domenici raised the budget of the Office of Science by 3 percent. He was supported by the hard work and advocacy of Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., who cosponsored a letter signed by 68 senators urging rejection of the administration's proposed cuts to the Office of Science.
Residents of New Mexico also need to weigh in and support our senators to protect the high-tech future of our state and our nation. Robert Duncan is the associate dean for research in the College of Arts and Sciences and a professor of physics at the University of New Mexico. These views represent his personal opinion rather than an official position of UNM.
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