Curtains for ATP?

Abstract

The administration's efforts to keep various technology‐transfer programs afloat in the budget process appear to be stalled. House Science Committee chair Robert Walker (R‐Pa.) advised in early April that the Republican agenda for the pending budget process entails zeroing out the Commerce Department's Advanced Technology Program (ATP), which was funded at $431 million in fiscal year 1995. The ATP would lose about $90 million from its FY 95 budget. Although Walker says that the Republican leadership has no intention to dictate to the subcommittees how cuts should be made, they will be held to the “fairly severe caps” established by the House Budget Committee. In other words, Walker says, if ATP stays, something else will have to go in its place. In addition, a bill to rescind about $223 million from the FY 1995 budget of the Technology Reinvestment Project and another $77 million from TRP's FY 1994 budget, which has not been spent, is heading for the president's signature. Yet Walker says while he supports the merits of technology transfer, “the question is do you have to create government programs to get the technology out?”