a large way. So I think there are new kinds of approaches that we can take, but I think that we've got to do it quickly.

Mr. ROE. You make a very good point. For us on the Science, Space, and Technology Committee or any other Committee, Public Works or whatever, to move in that direction we have to by law and by constitutional structure, by congressional structure we have to work with the Ways and Means Committee. And then it gets back to the and then it gets back to the tax issue. In other words, there would have been room in that tax bill to start to formulate methodologies to achieve what you are talking about, OK. The change of doing that is like rattling bones in a cage at the moment. However, when we-there are two questions I would like to ask you-when we run into our public works program, which is truly the infrastructure of the nation, mundane bridges, water supply, blah, blah, blah, blah, and so forth and so on. That truly is the definite formation as to where this country goes, because without that we cannot move at all, universities whether or notwithstanding. One comes back and says, we have matching programs there and reviews that same methodology in the Superfund bill, for example. Now, two questions-one, would that be a reason or is that considered to be gratuitous-is that a reasonable approach to take? Suppose, for example, Congress was to come down and say we ought to be doing a lot more on science, space and technology as it relates to superconductivity. We consider that a priority issue, and there is not enough resources. We want a special resource made available. Private industry wants to participate. Do it on a 50/50 basis. We will allocate so much to do that. That is one point.

The second point we were talking about is the idea that when we get into what you call "big science" issues such as the debate and the competition taking place on the Superconducting Supercollider. In other words, what state was going to get the grand prize, so to speak? What about the idea of putting language in the authorization bill that would require the agency to regionalize its procurement, so it would not be a question of a particular "big science" project going to Illinois or to Texas or to California or New Jersey or Pennsylvania, like putting all the eggs in one basket, would we be coming back and saying that they would have to look at a national policy and select regions of the country where part of the production would be done in different regions of the country, if you are hearing me. In others words, when we had the 39 States that competed for the Superconductor Supercollider and that was whittled down to the seven now that are in-the last seven to decide, the question was asked, did a lot of congressional support evaporate? The answer is, "yes it did." Then the question is, "when you get down to the one state, will all the congressional support evaporate and only one state?" The answer is, "no, that will not happen, we hope." That is our plan anyway. What about those two elements?

Dr. Notis. OK, first of all I think your first point relates to SEMATECH-I see SEMATECH as the first example

Mr. RITTER. Would you explain, maybe some do not know?

Dr. NOTIS. SEMATECH for those who do not know, is a fairly large program to try to put the United States ahead in the advanced

automation high-speed electronic race, to the tune of $250 million. Mr. ROE. $250 million, right.

Dr. NOTIS. It is a matching kind of thing. I think that we are going to have to spend a wait-and-see period that we have to find out whether that kind of program works. The problem is, can we afford the wait-and-see

Mr. ROE. But you also have industrial, private industrial money going into that.

Dr. NOTIS. Right. That is what I am saying. It is matching between industry and government in order to come up with the money. The problem is: do we have the time to play a wait-and-see game to see if SEMATECH works before we try and do it on something? I do not think so. The other thing is in terms of the regionalization. I do not think that any-there is any one group, or any few groups in the United States that have all the good ideas locked in. I think that to a certain extent, regionalization is a good idea. That means that you can have a lot less political infighting, maybe. And hopefully, people will get to work faster. I think it is the same problem with nuclear waste disposal. Everybody wants it in somebody else's state. The thing that concerns me about the Supercollider is as you say, it is "big science" versus "small science." Mr. ROE. I do not say that. You said that.

Dr. NOTIS. Well, I misunderstood you, then.

Mr. ROE. I do not consider it to be-but other people say that. Dr. NOTIS. Well, if you have a total amount of funds that is adequate for everybody, then it is not "big science" versus "small science." When push comes to shove and there are only limited dollars around, it is going to be the case between "big science" and "small science."

Mr. ROE. If the gentleman would yield. How would you have voted as a Member of Congress on Thursday when we were fighting a multi-billion issue and the whole Congress concentrated on a point of view of an amendment that was ordered but came back and said the following-remember, every Member of the House is up for election this year-and then we came back and said that we would take $430 or $450 million roughly out of the space station program and they will reassign that. Now, wherever we reassign those funds-reassign it for more housing, what we need in the country, or do we reassign it for housing for the elderly?

In addition, we would provide some of the funding for the homeless that are sleeping on grates, and after we battle the serious matter on that thing of the-what was important in America, the last person, the last member from Massachusetts spoke. He talked about the little 3-year old girl, who is out there with her leg swollen and could not-and this is the United States-and raised such a challenge that the tears would run down your cheek, because it was not the issue of the 3-year old involved, it was a political issue as to whether or not that $450 million-people would go home in this election and say to the citizen, look what we have done for the homeless and whatever, not saying that you destroyed the space program in this country and the economic generators and dynamics of the country. That is what we have to deal with as far as Members of Congress.

I got to tell you something, when that vote was taken we beat that type of situation by 100 votes which was-the coalitions were extraordinary that time, because people thought beyond the 2-year issue. When we come back and we say that the things that we should be doing or can be doing-another point we know in our space program, we cannot operate the space program in this country on $11 billion a year. We cannot do that, and conversely to what they said on the floor, the space program in the country has been reduced by 40 to 50 percent in the last 10 years.

Now we come back with now what can we do to provide new resources if we ever work that out? That gets to the point that you were talking about SEMATECH. I talk now about the CDSF Program which is a space shop. The private industry came and they are going to do-put up a research lab up, they are going to put up all the money-provided, however, provided the U.S. Government puts up-what was it, $750 million?-over a period of 4 yearseven if they put it in escrow, in that case, they would be-it could be used as collateral security for them to float their particular financial instrument, and then they would have the money to go with in private, if you are hearing. We came back and said, “Well, should we now be thinking in this country about private enterprise participating more?" Where we would talking about some function of that nature? We would be talking about: "should we be selling space bonds where the funds would be used specifically for our space program?" The average American citizen could participate as they did with savings bonds. Should we be looking for other financial methodologies and other ways to raise funding for our science, space, and technology programs, other than direct appropriations coming each year? There is nothing that comes down the horizon that we can see now that is going to change or further exacerbate this whole budget issue. So that when you are competing and looking into the future of this country, on new jobs, new opportunity in science, space, and technology, we have got to fight the emotional point of view-and legitimately so-of housing, people sleeping on grates, catastrophic illness and all the other things that go with it. We have got to get more votes to be able to get people to agree that science, space and technology is really the future of the country. I did not want to make such a long speech, but nevertheless it was necessary to give you the point of view.

Mr. RITTER. We are going to have to move on.

Mr. ROE. That is what happens when you come to Pennsylvania, you get in such interesting discussions, you want to stay-they are telling me we do not have too much time. That is OK.

Dr. Noris. If you put me in a position of saying, do I want scientific research, while I am taking the food out of some child's mouth, then my answer is going to be, no. I want to keep the food in the child's mouth.

Mr. ROE. That is my point.

Dr. NOTIS. On the other hand, I think we live in a time where we have got to sit back and take a look at all of-I ask a bigger question that, and we all have vested interests when we always want to keep those vested interests. So the point is: do I want to take food out of the child's mouth and/or do I want to take a space station that is going to operate or not? I mean I think we got to ask both

ends of the spectrum kind of question. I do not think that we live in the best of all possible worlds. You asked for an answer on the Supercollider-if asked the kind of vote that you asked, I probably would have voted for the Supercollider. In an abstract situation, I probably would have come up with the same kind of arguments that would come up against the supercollider. So that there is no clear cut yea or nay. That depends on the situation that you have to vote on at the given time. I do not think it is a clear-cut issue. Mr. RITTER. Could I interject one point here? You mention that the conflict between some of this longer-range investment in the science and technology base of America's future, but first is taking food out of a child's mouth. But first of all, we are spending the vast, vast proportion of the Federal budget not on science and technology, but you know two-thirds of the Federal budget is non-defense expenditure, two-thirds out of that trillion dollars, or 70 percent. And what I would say is that if we are looking at the food to feed our people with, if we are looking for medical care, if we are looking for housing, we darn well better create the kind of wealth that allows us to make these investments. And there is this idea of seed corn. You cannot eat the seed corn and still have a crop off into the future. So, somewhere at some point, some resources have to get planted into the ground so that the future crop is available. Mr. ROE. Wonder, we agree. One more point, if you dare answer. I do not think Dr. Rhyne can, but you may be able to. Not that she is incapable. I do not know that she would want to. We are concerned about the type of political debate that is going on in the nation. And I am not speaking from a partisan point of view-Mr. Bush running for the Presidency, Mr. Dukakis running for President. And we find it difficult to see where they start to stand on science, space, technology and education. What does the university community feel about that? How do we start-how does the university community and academic community try to get that point across to the candidates? Is anything being done? I am just curious. Dr. NOTIS. Well, first of all again to get back to the larger picture, it should not matter what Bush or Dukakis' point of view of that policy should be. It should be something to my thinking that both parties should have agreed on or else the system should have established a policy in the area. Because there are certain things that transcend party, political kinds of interest. I think that certainly university is concerned, as Roger started out when he talked, about concern over the question of since the university has put into being new programs to turn out people capable of dealing with our high technology world, and some concern about whether or not industry is really prepared to take these people yet. I think that the system is not well worked out, it is not well-greased in order to do that. But just some comparisons, the Japanese are putting out as many, if not more engineers each and every year than we are. The total number of science papers that are put out each and every year are now almost up to what the United States is publishing, and, unless we keep on building an educational system, again it is one more aspect of the race that Don is talking about. Dr. RHYNE. I would like to make just one quick-some comment to that. The Federation of Materials Societies in fact is putting together some, I think, data and information for both political cam

paigns to address some of these long-term technology-type issues, and I think they will be forthcoming in the next couple of weeks. I also would like to as sort of a last remark to remind you that in the particular area of superconductors, I think small businesses need to be kept in mind because although in the low-temperature superconductors or conventional materials, many large companies were involved, the actual production of these materials has come almost entirely from small companies. Now we have a lot of new start-ups and other small companies, and it seems to us, at least to me, that it is the small companies that at least initially take the brunt of the very high-risk possibilities in starting up the new markets which then can allow the larger companies later to actually jump to make a▬▬

Mr. RITTER. That is why the DARPA program, Kay, is so important and so effective and has to continue. Because it just went right out to all these start-ups, the American Superconductor and these wild and woolly people. They got investment capital and got together and you got company going-this is our ace in the hole.

Dr. RHYNE. That is right. I would also like to-also like to add that, as one venture capitalist told me, that the problem with dealing with government is that you cannot afford it in your start-up company. There are in fact some problems and contracting and so forth and the long lead time before you actually get money in your hand, and we already have problems that are arising from that. These are all issues I think that actually could be and should be addressed by the government. We need to find better ways to get these things done quicker and more expediently.

Mr. ROE. OK. Excellent, very good job. We appreciate you being with us.

Our next panel is panel number 3 which is the panel on photonics. Dr. Melvyn Dixon, department head of the lightwave data links, AT&T Bell Labs, and then Dr. Lawrence Goldberg, Director of the Quantum Electronics, Waves and Beams Program of the National Science Foundation, Washington, DC.

So, I think what we will do is to take Dr. Dixon-how about you going first, Dr. Dixon? We have your statement, but I think that you might want to preclude any reading.

STATEMENT OF DR. MELVYN DIXON, DEPARTMENT HEAD,

LIGHTWAVE DATA LINKS, AT&T BELL LABORATORIES

Dr. DIXON. OK. Good afternoon. I would like to thank the Committee for its privilege of giving testimony on an exciting subject area like photonics. My testimony will be in five parts. I will give a brief overview. I'll try to describe benefits that I think photonics has improved and AT&T is working with, and specifically what they are doing in the Lehigh Valley at the Solid State Technology Center, and in the area of competitive position in the world and in the United States and a brief overview of AT&T's position of the role of the federal government.

Photonics is a "killer technology." In less than 10 years the marriage of semiconductor lasers, glass fibers and ultra-sensitive photodectors has completely revolutionized the long distance networks of the world's telecommunications companies.