R&D cuts said to threaten U.S. security

Abstract

White House officials argued last week that the deep cuts in research and development funding proposed by Congress in its effort to balance the budget will have a devastating effect on future national security. By proposing to slash the long-term science and technology investments we need, while increasing funding for big weapons systems, appropriations bills really do threaten to pull the legs out from under our future security, said President Clinton's science adviser, John H. Gibbons, at a White House briefing last week. Gibbons and others pointed to the elimination or near elimination of the Defense Department's Technology Reinvestment Project, which seeks to harness leading-edge commercial technology for national defense, and the Commerce Department's Advanced Technology Program, which sustains industry-government partnerships, as especially egregious cuts. Other congressional cuts that are drawing Administration fire on national security grounds include cuts in climate-change resea...