ple, we have no long-range national science policy. Our policy changes every four years with the administration, whether the political party changes or not. Their system is such that it is decoupled from the political system to a very large extent. It has stability. The industry itself is more focused towards long-term profits rather than short-term, and Japanese industry protects itself. We normally fight with both hands tied behind our backs. And in this case, I think it would be a terrible situation if we continue to do that.

Mr. RITTER. Yes. Are you familiar with the "Wall Street Journal" front page lead story on April 29-I guess you mentioned it, "The 90 Companies," reads likes a "Who's Who" of Japan's industry. It was the lead story in the "Wall Street Journal" front page$825,000 each, $125,000 annual contribution after the initiation fee. The OTA report I think is selling us a very potent message. The OTA report says "[t]hat unless the United States really puts its act together," and they are talking about a program, probably the government is involved from a $100 to $500 million, where the industry is involved heavily, that given the Japanese penchant for developing technology and products over the next 10 years which-we are just going to lose it. I think this is one of the most-talk about that Olympic race, that is economic Olympics. High-temperature superconductivity is a symbol of that race, because we are kind of both starting at the same time. But also beyond the symbol, we have had such tremendous implications for the way we live and work. It involves the very essence of our modern technology which is electricity, and how you transmit electricity. But I am not saying-I am thinking that we do not have the message across the length of the country. In other words, we had it for a few months and all the magazine articles appeared, and as soon as the magazine articles stopped appearing, as soon as the crucial critical breakthroughs, we went back to business as usual. We are not doing the job, in my own opinion. My own administration came forth with a wonderful program that has not been on the front burner. I am really concerned that we could lose it at the cutting edge of the Japanese.

Dr. RHYNE. I would like to make a couple comments too to add to that.

Mr. RITTER. Dr. Rhyne.

Dr. RHYNE. Thank you. I think that we have a lot to offer, too. I am very concerned as well for the reasons you mentioned. First of all, we are behind in the ceramic processing much further than the Japanese.

Mr. RITTER. I think 10 years they have been focusing on that.

Dr. RHYNE. That is right. So we are coming back actually from behind rather than breaking even. We do not have the mechanism, the models that are tried and true of how government can get things done in an efficient, effective manner and very quickly. These are all lacking, but I think this also offers us the opportunity to try and implement these things. I think there is a greater awareness of technology as well as basic research has to be done in a somewhat parallel situation. So I think we are-I think that there is great opportunities as well as great dangers that lie here.

Mr. RITTER. The symbol in Chinese is similar for opportunity and danger. And I think that is where we are with superconductivity. Mr. ROE. Let me respond. This goes back-that is the advantage of being a little less under pressure as we are today. That goes back to the first panel. And one of the discussions that we had with the members of the first panel, both industry and academia, was based upon the point of view of other government policies, other than the gung-ho point of being productive, is shaping the direction we are going in, is really working enormous counter-force to what we are talking about, improved competitiveness. For example, we spent $1 billion of the Clinch breeder reactor, had the materials all fabricated in warehouses, and we simply just canceled the program. A billion dollars was spent on that program. We are no longer interested in it anymore, okay.

You talk about, Dr. Notis, that every 4 years, you could not be more correct in that point. Every 4 years, the policy changes. There is not any policy. The factor that we have been fighting over the last 2 years, particularly on the Superconducting Supercollider, really triggered the issue of "small science" versus "big science." You know the mega-bucks related to large issues. And that came up by the way in an earlier session we had today. And the question was asked, "well, how do you feel?" You know we hear from the professors from the different universities, you will pardon the reference, and they come back and scream bloody murder on the point of-we should not be doing this, we should not be doing that, we should be looking for the basic research because the basic research is the thing that is going to lead to where we are supposed to go.

Now, having said all of that, one has got to come back and say, that out of that argument raises the point of what are or are there any priorities as far as the scientific community is concerned, not just government alone? It is not government that is calling all the shots. The so called "peer review" issue-and that I do not want to get into today, because that will set me off at this particular point. What I am coming back and saying is, we do not have a national science policy or program in our Congress or in your administration and not only this administration, the one before it. And where Don and I have been working on-we have had to, and I meant this admonishment publicly today-we have had to devote our energies and I am talking on our own intellectual energies to saving and rebuilding, restructuring the space program-without that we would not have anything-we would have gone down the tubes. It is a battle that we fought from-and it is still not over. It has been extraordinary to try to keep that program alive.

Therefore, we have not be able to give the energies and resources to what we would like to be doing in superconductivity, also in biotechnology, by the way. But we have drawn attention to the nation the debate on the Superconducting Supercollider. That I think we have done, and we have done that successfully. We had that vote on the floor the other day, and I think there were only 26 negative votes against that whole program.

Mr. RITTER. That was the authorization.

Mr. ROE. The authorization. The whole bill together, we got to see what happens to that eventually. Where I am coming from, and

without being too loquacious, trying not to be, is that unless we narrow down a specific direction that institutionally can survive a 2-year Congress and a 4-year Presidency and a 6-year Senate, unless we narrow it down to some direction, all of the flapping of arms are not going to make any difference. You are working on the point of the $150 million program that the President has suggested, now they come back and say too bad you got to cut that back, they are not going to do that. You just cannot do that and get anything done practically.

Dr. RHYNE. Well, in this particular case we had over 16 companies, industries working at risk because we had given them an early start pending the negotiating-the conclusion of negotiations, and everything came to a screeching halt with the tax directive.

Mr. ROE. If we had not won the battle on the floor the other day or was it last Thursday?-on the space station, our space program would have gone down the tubes. That simple and that complicated. Because they were going to cut $400 million out-if you cut the $400 million out, you might just as well not have a space program at all, as far as the space station was concerned.

But aren't we saying the same thing here, if you do not provide enough resources to be able to fight in the race-when you talk about the turtle and rabbit or the tortoise and the hare, then we are just not going to be able to finish up on-line. Is that a fair commentary?

Dr. NOTIS. There is a problem in scientific research-▬

Mr. ROE. Tell me about it.

Dr. NOTIS. And that is you have to spend time in a laboratory doing the research. I think the difficulty that I see here is that the big programs that we need in superconductivity are a follow-up on some of the other programs that we have moved to over the years, and they in turn penalized individual researchers, individual grants because the agencies possibly find it easier to manager larger programs rather than smaller ones. I think that

Mr. ROE. Would the gentleman yield at that point-I hate to break your train of thought, but it is important to say that is an assumption, the assumption is that because we were going to build a Superconducting, Supercollider, because you are going to build a space station, that we will go on and the whole world falls apart. This is the following point of view, that the assumption that the United States can stay competitive with puny amounts of funding being put into research in the first place is the fundamental error in judgment. When you talk about superconductivity, the Japanese are putting in 18 or 20 percent of the GNP. We cannot even get Congress to stick to-on the issue, let alone putting up substantial funding. I am coming back and saying that if we look into productivity, then we are looking for new capital formation. We are looking for how we are going to build the housing in this country, how we are going to do mass transit and so forth. We got to create the new wealth to be able to do that in the first place. And the way we are going to create the new wealth in science, space and technology in the innovations we are talking about. There we have to make the investment up front in the research. Is that a reasonable point to make?

Dr. NOTIS. Absolutely.

Mr. ROE. That is where we are coming from.

Dr. NOTIS. It is the total budget that we have put to R&D, or the lack of it, that is really a problem. What I was trying to say was that there are many areas where interdisciplinary research is the way to go and a way to tie into industry because you have already set up a mechanism by which you can do the technological transfer. But, at the same time, we need a portion of our scientists who are going to do research in quiet, in peace, in solitude, to think over the long haul. And if we just move money out of that area into the big visible projects, in the end we are going to stab ourselves right in the back. So it is the total amout of funding that is really the problem. We operate at a difficulty again, because the Japanese by and large do not have a large defense-oriented budget; we do. I am not saying that we should not have it, but that is one of the facts of life that we live with.

Mr. RITTER. I think you are making a number of points. And one of which, on the science side of things, is the United States has still won more Nobel Prizes than any other country. I think maybe not on a per capita basis, but we just have loads of Nobel Prizes. Our problem is not that we have not won Nobel Prizes or we have not done the science, but our problem is commercializing scientific advances. And this area of superconductivity is public example number 1. We are going to be on an equal plane in this field of high-temperature superconductivity. We have done it on the science side, from our great universities and our national laboratories and our industrial resource facilities. But will we have the perseverance over time, the "Team America" approach to commercialize this stuff at the spirit of which we are competitive with the Japanese? That is where I think we have every sign that we are going about this the way we have always done it, and they are going about it the way the have always done it; and they have caught up with us after 20 years. And they-we are starting more or less at the same plane. This is what really concerns me. I will say this, I do not think-you mentioned competition for funds, the science community-the science and technology community, the engineering community are simply not competitive with the housing community, with the homeless community, with the social welfare community, with the defense community, with a whole-with the business community that has got particular interests in mind. The community of scientific and technical professions is virtually unheard until after. When the program is there, then they come to compete

Mr. ROE. Would the gentleman yield.

Mr. RITTER. I yield.

Mr. ROE. If you can indulge me a minute, I know Dr. Rhyne would know this, we mentioned this earlier in another meeting this morning. In the budget make-up which is a complicated mess to begin with, as far as the federal Government is concerned, is a function called "Budget Function 250." Under Budget Function 250, falls all of the space program, all of the National Science Foundation, what else is in there? Housing——

Mr. RITTER. Energy.

Mr. ROE. Energy and research and so forth. So as we extend our efforts and more opportunities in the science and technology field,

it all has to be put through the eye of the needle, so to speak. The more that we grow in that particular thing, reduces the funding in that area. Because it is a simple bookkeeping-not simple, it is a very complicated bookkeeping approach and so forth. And we sayhow can I put this, if the people will not provide the resources, they will provide the resources in that function, Budget Function 250. If you ever tried, Dr. Notis, and forgive me today, to get the big university academia together-middle university and small university and to agree on one point, I find that it is extremely difficult to do. Believe me, I do not say that unkindly. They just do not talk to each other. The idea of getting in it-"My God, we cannot get involved, we cannot do lobbying, we cannot do something like that." Those people never get themselves involved. There are times that we got them involved, but it took a year and a half to do it to form this Function 250 budget coalition. And academia set aside for once its intramural sports, and so did industry-we explained to them, unless you get into this thing, and you make an impression upon the members of the different districts throughout this country, we are not going to be able to break through here and get those resources allocated to this Budget Function 250 no matter what we do.

I have to tell you something, they really went to work. And they did a super job, and they-in Budget Function 250, I think we won on our side about a billion and a half, almost 60 percent of the total allocation that was available for so-called new starts this year. Because we got together and did something about it. One thing I think, if you will forgive me on this, I think one thing that the universities have to do and business has to do is they've got to help to start to force the-instead of fighting amongst themselves who is going to whack up the small research grant or the big project and so forth, they got to get together and say how do we put it together to get this done. They got to use their political muscle now. I mean that is the name of the game in this country. That is what we are faced with. And I think it is there to be done. Dr. NOTIS. Two comments I might make. First of all, I think some of the state programs that have already been established have been successful in getting smaller universities, and larger universities to get together, such as the Ben Franklin Program that we have here, and also to make more ties with industry-to make the technology transfer much easier. So, I think that has been a great benefit that we have had the last 4 or 5 years now in terms of new kinds of things coming into the system. The other thing I might suggest is we have been talking mostly about government funding-maybe because my colleague here is from DARPA,

but

Mr. ROE. She is looking for funding too.

Dr. NOTIS. I think that maybe we should try to put the arm on industry itself. Industry in the United States has not been forthcoming with dollars for new research for the last 20 years now. I think that maybe some self-reliance on industry, maybe some buyback programs by which industry could get benefit for dollars that they put into research from the government in focused areas of research, might be a way for industry to make a full commitment in