Washington, D.C.--At the Annual Meeting and Policy Forum of the URA Council of Presidents on Wednesday, the mood was upbeat--if cautious. "The good news is the competitiveness agenda is the President's agenda, but it needs to work through the House and Senate," said Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who chairs the Senate Subcommittee on Energy. Sen. Alexander is a principle co-sponsor of an important legislative package introduced in the Senate on Jan. 25, entitled "Protecting America's Competitive Edge" (PACE) Acts, consistent with the American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI) mentioned in President Bush's State of the Union speech last week. The PACE Acts respond to 20 recommendations from the National Academy of Sciences' October report, Rising Above the Gathering Storm. "So much of our wealth comes from the post WWII explosion in science and technology," said Alexander, who has also served as US Education Secretary, and as president of the University of Tennessee. "It's a pro-growth policy."

John Marburger, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, provided a summary of the impact of the ACI on the budget requests for FY07. "I came because I wanted to personally show you the numbers going up for the Office of Science," said Marburger, a former director of Brookhaven Lab. "The curves are rising because a lot of you came together to produce a series of reports." Marburger acknowledged the leadership of Norman Augustine, retired chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin and chair of the NAS panel that issued the gathering storm report, which influenced the ACI. "Science in general is protected in this proposal, and selected areas are increased substantially." The President's budget request includes a two-fold increase in funding over the next ten years for the DOE Office of Science, the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Standards and Technology. The DOE budget request, announced on Monday by Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman, includes a total of $23.6 billion for the Department of Energy in FY07, an increase of $124 million over the request for FY06. The request for DOE's Office of Science is $4.1 billion, a 14 percent increase over this year. The request for DOE High Energy Physics funding is up 8.1 percent, or $58.4 million, from $716.7 million in FY06 to $775.1 million in FY07.

Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman stressed the importance of the ACI in his comments. "I'm sure you all listened with great interest when the President unveiled his American Competitiveness Initiative last week," he said. "I believe it's a real watershed for American science and engineering." Bodman hailed the initiative for recognizing two basic truths: The need to maintain an edge in an increasingly competitive world through investment in scientific research, and the fact that such research requires substantial, sustained support. "Not only will we support research that might help cure diseases, protect our country and support productivity, but this also supports education for those who will take part in this process in the future," he said. Bodman also said that he was "very happy to say" that DOE will play a central role in the AIC initiative. "The president has committed to doubling funding [for the DOE Office Office of Science] over the next 10 years," he said. "If all goes according to what [the President] proposed, Ray will have an extra half-billion dollars to work with." Bodman was referring to Raymond Orbach, Director of the DOE Office of Science, who has been nominated for a newly created position as the first Undersecretary of Science. If approved by congress, the HEP request would double funding for the ILC R&D program, from $30 million to $60 million in FY07, and provide $10.3 million for project engineering and design for Fermilab's NOVA experiment during that year.

Bodman also discussed programs to develop sources of energy, such as the Global Nuclear Energy Program, which recycles spent nuclear fuel, to encourage affordable solar energy, and to develop cost-efficient hydrogen fuel cells. He also emphasized the importance of science for science's sake: "From our nation's scientists and engineers...we need now what we have always needed--an unwavering commitment to push us forward into the unknown, to a better, more prosperous, safer world ahead...I am very pleased to stand before you and pledge to you that this government is committed to holding up our end of the bargain, and I rest assured that you and your colleagues will do the same."

—-Siri Steiner

For more highlights of the FY07 budget request, click here. (See pages 73-74 for Program Highlights and pages 74-76 for Significant Funding Changes).