Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2015
Floor Speech
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Mr. FOSTER. Mr. Chairman, I rise today to offer an amendment to increase overall spending for the Department of Energy's Office of Science.
The underlying bill provides a budget allocation approximately $40 million below the President's request for the Office of Science. My amendment would restore the funding level to the President's request. Our national labs and the major user facilities housed at those labs are some of the greatest tools that we have to offer researchers and industry. My amendment would ensure that our national labs are on a sound footing to maintain our role as a global leader in innovation and scientific research.
The greatest long-term economic and national security threat that our country faces is the prospect of losing our role as world leaders in science and technology. Nothing is more critical to preserving our role as world leaders than the fundamental and applied scientific research that is supported by the DOE Office of Science.
As a physicist who worked at Fermi National Accelerator Lab for over 20 years, I understand the productivity and the potential of the Department of Energy's national lab system, their contributions to our economy, and the wide range of scientific research that they support.
The Chicago area is home to a number of scientific centers, including Fermilab and Argonne National Laboratory. The economic impact of Argonne and Fermilab in Illinois alone is estimated to be more than $1.3 billion annually.
The work done at Argonne and Fermi national labs not only supports our local economy, employing roughly 5,000 people in Illinois, but it is critical to our Nation's long-term economic success.
Despite the economic benefits of scientific research, Federal investments in research and development are at historically low levels. In 2014, our Federal spending on R&D, both defense and nondefense, amounted to less than 1 percent of our GDP, a trend that simply must be reversed.
In fact, over the last 3 years, Federal research and development expenditures decreased by 16.3 percent, which is the steepest decline over a 3-year period since the end of the space race.
We simply cannot sustain this downward trend and still expect to be at the cutting edge of scientific research and innovation.
The Office of Science is responsible for supporting research that is too big for any single company or university to develop. Our national labs are critical research tools to academics and industry alike. For example, Eli Lilly conducts nearly half of its drug discovery research at the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne.
The Office of Science is also home to the Department's newest ventures, the innovation hubs, which seek to discover and develop the next generation of energy sources and delivery systems.
Programs like the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research, headquartered at Argonne, and the Fuels from Sunlight Hub, headquartered at the California Institute of Technology, bring together multiple teams of researchers who are working to develop energy advancements that have the potential to transform energy systems.
The Office of Science also invests in fusion, a safe, clean, and sustainable energy source that has the scientific potential to provide the U.S. with energy independence and a nearly limitless energy supply.
Through the Office of Science's Biological and Environmental Research programs, we have become world leaders in biofuels research. This research is laying the foundation for a revolution in biofuel production that will help to lessen our dependence on foreign oil.
And the list goes on.
The investments in the DOE Office of Science have also supported research driven by intellectual curiosity alone, such as the discovery science at the forefront of high energy and particle physics, astronomy, or the physics of ultracold atoms.
These investments have led to the development of new technology such as the construction of accelerators and detectors that enable our scientists to discover new particles, including the top quark, the heaviest known form of matter, and the Higgs boson, that help explain the fundamental nature of the universe.
But perhaps most importantly, the Office of Science has supported the training of scientists, mathematicians, and engineers for more than 60 years.
At a time of continuing economic stress, we must continue to develop the next generation of American technical workforce. As other world powers are growing and challenging our position as a global leader in science and innovation, we cannot afford to let the number of American scientists and researchers, or the quality of their research facilities, diminish.
Funding scientific research and development results in one of the highest return on investments that our Nation can make. It is essential that we continue to fully support funding for our national labs to preserve our global competitive advantage.
I rise in strong support of my amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. FOSTER. Mr. Chairman, I am proud to offer this amendment on behalf of Representative Rush Holt, who is, even as we speak, being honored for his many years of service to science, to Congress, and to the citizens of New Jersey.
Our amendment simply transfers funds within the Department of Energy's Office of Science account with the intent of restoring the National Undergraduate Fellowship Program, sometimes affectionately referred to NUF.
The Department of Energy's FY 2015 budget request would zero out funding for NUF while increasing funding for the Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internships, sometimes referred to as SULI.
Our amendment would simply reallocate the additional SULI funding back to NUF, allowing the program to continue. The elimination of NUF would reduce the overall slots available for those wishing to study plasma physics.
Additionally, the goal of NUF is to support a very specific workforce need, and an analysis of the numbers proves that this program has been remarkably successful, particularly in encouraging female participation in the sciences.
According to the data collected by program administrators, since 2000, almost three-quarters of the undergraduate students who have participated in NUF have entered a doctoral program in physics, and nearly half have studied plasma physics or related fields.
The program has succeeded in encouraging women to study plasma physics. The Division of Plasma Physics of the American Physical Society has a female composition of only 7 percent, yet 51 percent of female NUF participants enter a Ph.D. program, with almost half of those entering the plasma physics Ph.D. program.
I urge support for this amendment, which would restore the NUF program, and I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. FOSTER. I thank Chairman Simpson and Ranking Member Kaptur for their work on this bill and for their support of this amendment.
Before I yield, Mr. Chairman, I would like to read a section from a June 21, 2014, report by the Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee, which assessed workforce development needs and the importance of a wide education pipeline:
A complete picture of the scientific workforce must be understood in the context of the broader education pipeline. There are many reports that discuss the challenge of training highly qualified individuals in the so-called STEM--science, technology, engineering, and mathematics--fields. We believe that a robust workforce for fusion energy sciences requires a wide pipeline that starts with precollege activities and ends with strong employment opportunities. This pipeline should also tap into the full potential of the American populace, with opportunities to attract women and groups that are traditionally underrepresented in STEM fields.
The adoption of our amendment today will help address this point in part, but we would also like to state our opposition to the Department of Energy's plan to remove precollege science education activities from its mission portfolio.
The Department of Energy labs provide world-class facilities, where students and scientists conduct groundbreaking research. These facilities should operate both as hubs of innovation and as research tools to engage students.
When young students and teachers are able to directly engage with our national labs, it inspires an interest and a passion for science beyond what any textbook or online resource could ever provide.
Both Representative Holt and I worked at a national lab for many years before coming to Congress, and we have witnessed firsthand how a young student's time spent among researchers and experiments can inspire a lifelong interest in science.
We fear that, in limiting educational activities only to the Education Department, that we will further isolate the public from important scientific research that is being conducted in our national labs and that we will diminish science education in America overall.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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