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26–253 PDF 2006

S. HRG. 109–290

INNOVATION IN ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON 

ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES 

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

TO

CONSIDER OUR NATIONAL CAPACITY FOR PRODUCING TECHNOLOGICAL 

INNOVATION AND THE IMPORTANCE OF THIS INNOVATION TO OUR 

GLOBAL ECONOMIC COMPETITIVENESS; AND TO RECEIVE TESTIMONY 

DESCRIBING THE RESULTS OF A RECENTLY RELEASED NATIONAL 

ACADEMY OF SCIENCES REPORT

OCTOBER 18, 2005

(

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Energy and Natural Resources 

(II)

COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES 

PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico, Chairman 

LARRY E. CRAIG, Idaho 

CRAIG THOMAS, Wyoming 

LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee 

LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska 

RICHARD M. BURR, North Carolina, 

MEL MARTINEZ, Florida 

JAMES M. TALENT, Missouri 

CONRAD BURNS, Montana 

GEORGE ALLEN, Virginia 

GORDON SMITH, Oregon 

JIM BUNNING, Kentucky 

JEFF BINGAMAN, New Mexico 

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii 

BYRON L. DORGAN, North Dakota 

RON WYDEN, Oregon 

TIM JOHNSON, South Dakota 

MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana 

DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California 

MARIA CANTWELL, Washington 

JON S. CORZINE, New Jersey 

KEN SALAZAR, Colorado

ALEX FLINT, Staff Director 

JUDITH K. PENSABENE, Chief Counsel 

BOB SIMON, Democratic Staff Director 

SAM FOWLER, Democratic Chief Counsel 

KATHRYN CLAY, Professional Staff Member 

JONATHAN EPSTEIN, Legislative Fellow 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

STATEMENTS 

Page

Alexander, Hon. Lamar, U.S. Senator from Tennessee ........................................ 4

Augustine, Norman R., Retired Chairman and CEO, Lockheed Martin Corporation ................................................................................................................. 9

Bingaman, Hon. Jeff, U.S. Senator from New Mexico .......................................... 3

Cicerone, Ralph J., President, National Academy of Sciences, and Chair, 

National Research Council .................................................................................. 7

Corzine, Hon. Jon S., U.S. Senator from New Jersey ........................................... 2

Domenici, Hon. Pete V., U.S. Senator from New Mexico ..................................... 1

(1)

INNOVATION IN ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES 

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2005

U.S. SENATE, COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES, Washington, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 3:35 p.m., in room 

SD–366, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Pete V. Domenici, 

chairman, presiding. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. PETE V. DOMENICI,

U.S. SENATOR FROM NEW MEXICO 

The CHAIRMAN. Why don’t our two witnesses come up, please? 

This will not be our last hearing, but it will be the kick-off hearing. So we are starting today with Dr. Ralph Cicerone. I think I 

have met you before. Nice to see you again. And Norm Augustine. 

Each of us are going to make a statement, because the two Senators, the one on my left and the one on my right, have been asked 

to do this. They have both been working on it. I will let both of 

them comment. Normally that does not happen, but we are going 

to do that today. 

I am concerned, as you are and everyone here on this committee, 

about the United States’ competitiveness in relation to some of the 

other economies around the world. This committee gets involved in 

those issues as we follow the enormous energy and resource requirements of China and India, but many of the signals that we 

have put forth pose a problem. Clearly some of them go back, in 

my case, to the budget days and the Budget Committee. 

I worry about the impact of competitiveness on our ability to afford many of the social programs that are very significant, like 

Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. I worry about the lack of 

competitiveness and its effect on the balance of trade and the value 

of the dollar against foreign countries and currencies. 

There are areas in which the United States seems to be the 

world leader in research and development, certainly in health care 

and medicine. Those come to my mind right off the bat. However, 

it does seem that our preeminence in the physical sciences is simply no longer there. 

It seems that the very complex science issue is difficult for our 

government to manage and to put our arms around. The pursuit 

of scientific knowledge is frequently a wandering path. I know of 

technology developed in the nuclear weapons program being used 

to fight diabetes, for example. 

Government has a hard time managing these sorts of things that 

shift from application to application across programs and across 

2

agencies, but it does not mean that they should be avoided. We do 

need a major increase and new direction in the physical science 

programs of our country. 

There is a lot in this report that I am especially intrigued by. It 

is a notion of goal-setting to orient our efforts, as you have proposed and discussed, by declaring an intent to address the Nation’s 

need for affordable, reliable energy, which you have not yet recommended. Clearly it seems to me that in the past, goals have 

been terrific promoters and pushers of science advancement. You 

know better than I what those are, both of you. 

It is a significant goal and it might well require what you have 

proposed. That is a new investment of about $10 billion each year 

for scholarships and other investments. You have indicated a 10 

percent increase in basic research funding each year for at least 7 

years. Some people think that is way out of line, but just look at 

what we have done for far less important things, objectives, and 

goals. 

So I am going to stay on this thought of energy independence for 

the moment. I have never thought that that was possible, but I do 

believe that, if pressed, we could find some way to generate all the 

energy we need. This challenge is ‘‘at what cost’’ and how the experts will tell us we will get there. It is not in the interest of our 

economy to generate domestic energy that imposes higher energy 

costs which are too hard and too high for our economy to be able 

to compete in the world. So the challenges for this goal are real. 

But let us say we can produce all the energy domestically and 

cheaper than we can buy it now. I do not think we are ever going 

to get there unless we do something like you are talking about. So, 

as chairman of this committee, I am very enthusiastic. 

I want to close by saying, to you and those who have helped you, 

one of our government’s problems is when we got to funding medical research, that was an entity, the National Institutes of Health. 

One just started a resolution and said, let us double the funding 

of the National Institutes of Health. Then that is passed to each 

of the institutes. Basic research is not funded that way. You both 

know that. It is anywhere, everywhere, not in the right places. Too 

much in some places. But if you try to say, let us double it, we 

would not know what to double. So, it is not going to be easy, and 

your recommendations cross committee lines. But nonetheless, we 

know about it and we ought to move ahead. 

Senator Bingaman, thanks for your work and for your suggestions. Would you give us your opening statement? Then Senator Alexander, and then we will proceed. Thank you again to both of you. 

[The prepared statement of Senator Corzine follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. JON S. CORZINE, U.S. SENATOR FROM NEW JERSEY

Mr. Chairman, I first would like to thank you for holding this hearing. I also 

would like to commend Senator Bingaman and Senator Alexander, who asked the 

National Academy of Sciences to compile the report are reviewing. They deserve admiration and respect for their vision and dedication on this important issue. I also 

would like to thank the members of the Committee on Prospering in the Global 

Economy of the 21st Century. Few other committees have benefited from the 

breadth of expertise exhibited by its members. They have produced a report of special significance, and we should all pay careful attention to their recommendations. 

The committee identified two challenges that are linked to scientific and engineering capability: The creation of high quality jobs for Americans and the response to 

3

the nation’s need for clean, affordable, and reliable energy. I will address the latter 

first. The need for America to reduce its dependence on foreign sources of energy 

is inexorably linked with the need for domestic innovation regarding our use and 

consumption of natural resources. I have long been an advocate for alternate sources 

of energy, and I believe that the development of such sources can be achieved 

through domestic innovation. We cannot simply drill ourselves out of our dependence on foreign oil. A diversification of our energy portfolio, founded in scientific innovation, can wean us from our oil addiction. A prime example of this innovation 

can be found in increasing fuel efficiency standards. The Energy Bill that recently 

passed, which I voted against, did not include any provisions that would improve 

automobile fuel economy, which could reduce the share of foreign oil that we consume by more than ten percent. These programs, which encourage forward looking 

innovation instead of maintaining the status quo, should be pursued more vigorously. 

The task of creating high quality jobs for Americans should also be considered seriously. Though we currently lead the world in economic strength, this lead is not 

sustainable if we merely stay on the course. America’s domestic innovation, the bedrock of our economic strength, needs to be fortified. The question will require a cohesive and deliberate policy, aimed to help the United States achieve prosperity in the 

21st Century. Such a policy must be multifaceted and farsighted. I am heartened 

that the committee has suggested we strengthen our science and engineering education system at all levels. We must educate the next generation of scientists and 

engineers by providing them with opportunities and incentives to excel. Cutting the 

budgets for these vital education programs not only hurts the individual student, 

but also hinders the prospects for American technological ingenuity in the future. 

Furthermore, we must continue to support our budding scientists at the college and 

post graduate levels. In 2004, China graduated over 600,000 engineers, India 

350,000, and America about 70,000. In addition, 12th graders in the United States 

recently performed below the international average for 21 countries on a test of general knowledge of science and math. All of us should pay close attention to the disturbing statistics included in this report. Not only do these finding highlight the 

poor overall education of our students, they also point to cracks in the long-term 

sustainability of America’s leadership in these important fields. Establishing incentives for high school and college students to study science and engineering will increase the pool of talented scientists for both the private and public sector. Increasing the amount and size of scholarships will certainly help this effort. One particular program, the Math and Science Partnership Initiative, would increase funding for long term professional development for the country’s teachers and for developing more rigorous math and science curricula. I have been a proud supporter of 

this program since the beginning of my tenure in the Senate, and believe that such 

programs will help alleviate the deficiencies we now see in the math and science 

education of America’s students. 

I also heartily agree with another tangential conclusion of this report; the federal 

government can actively work with state and local governments for educating and 

stimulating our globally competitive workforce. I have been extremely active in ensuring that my state remains competitive in the global economy by encouraging high 

tech industries to do business in New Jersey. The foundations of these chemical, 

pharmaceutical, and defense companies are its scientists and engineers. We should 

ensure that we continue to support the homegrown innovation of these workers. 

Historians have often called the 20th century ‘‘America’s Century.’’ Indeed, during 

the last century the U.S. shaped the global landscape, leading innovation and ensuring its domestic economic prosperity. It will not be easy, but the vision that our 

elected leaders show at the beginning of the 21st century will have momentous consequences in the coming years. The report by the National Academies should be 

studied closely and its advice taken seriously in any future legislation. I again 

thank the Chairman and Ranking Member for allowing this Committee the chance 

to hear from these witnesses before us about this crucial topic and I look forward 

to their testimonies.

STATEMENT OF HON. JEFF BINGAMAN, U.S. SENATOR

FROM NEW MEXICO 

Senator BINGAMAN. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me thank 

Senator Alexander for his leadership in getting us focused on this 

issue and thank both of our witnesses and the panel members that 

4

worked with them. We had a stellar group of experts really who 

came together to reach these conclusions and recommendations. 

Obviously, the specific recommendations are extremely important 

and we need to take them to heart and we need to implement, but 

I also think that this report is serving a very useful purpose in getting us focused on the important challenge we face long-term. I do 

think that we have a great tendency here in official Washington to 

wake up every morning and read the paper to see what we ought 

to be working on that day, and that is sort of the way we set the 

agenda around this place. We see who is saying what and who is 

attacking whom and then what investigations are revealing, and 

then decide what we ought to work on. 

This is a set of issues that are extremely important, probably as 

important as any that we could identify for the country. But since 

they do not fall under the category of being on the front page of 

the paper every day, we do not ever get around to them. We always 

put them off and put them off and give them lower priority attention than they deserve. 

So you deserve great credit for getting us focused on these issues 

again and I look forward to your testimony and then to additional 

opportunities, as we go through the next few months, to highlight 

what your recommendations are and hopefully get the administration and the Congress to embrace these recommendations and actually move out on them. 

Thank you again, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Bingaman. 

Senator Alexander. 

STATEMENT OF HON. LAMAR ALEXANDER U.S. SENATOR

FROM TENNESSEE 

Senator ALEXANDER. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. 

I am really enormously pleased with what is happening here. I 

am the new kid on the block, and I enjoy being that at my age on 

any block. Senators Domenici and Bingaman have been working on 

this subject a long time. So has Senator Craig. So have many other 

Senators. But I have been working on it outside the Senate, and 

so I am delighted that Senator Domenici has chosen to encourage 

making this a priority of the U.S. Senate, not just of our committee, but of our Senate, as we work on it. 

And it is already receiving, Mr. Chairman, more good comments 

among our colleagues than almost anything I have been involved 

in. Senator Mikulski and Senator Bond, for example, who have 

been interested in this subject, came up to me today and said, 

count me in. So I believe there is a consensus among the Senators 

that this is a subject matter that we should make a top priority. 

As I have often said, most ideas in Washington fail for lack of 

the idea. What you gentlemen and your colleagues have done is 

given us the idea of what we ought to be doing for the next 10 

years. If you stop and think of it, Senator Bingaman and I last May 

simply did a very simple thing. We walked over to the people who 

are supposed to know the answer and asked a question. The question was: What are the top actions in priority order that Federal 

policymakers could take over the next decade to help the United 

States keep our advantage in science and technology? 

5

Now, we could have sat around the room and Senator Domenici 

would have said, well, let us do this, and I would have said that, 

and Craig would have said that. They might have been good ideas, 

but we are not the ones who ought to know the answer to the question. 

And your response has really been remarkable. The fact that the 

National Academies of Engineering, of Sciences, and the Institute 

of Medicine would ask someone of Mr. Augustine’s stature then to 

assemble, Mr. Chairman, in a short time, a matter of a few weeks, 

such a distinguished panel of university presidents and other academics, Nobel laureates, business leaders, government officials, and 

answer our questions. These are 10 things the United States ought 

to do to keep its secret weapon, which is brain power. 

And you reminded us that 85 percent of the increase in our incomes in this country of ours has come from science and technology. I would like to remind us of how fortunate we are. I mean, 

we are 5 percent of the people in the world, and we produce about 

a third of all the money, compared to the gross domestic product. 

What we are focused on today is the secret weapon for our high 

standard of living and good jobs, and that is brain power, and what 

should we do over the next 10 years about brain power. 

Mr. Chairman, I want to put my statement in the record, if I 

may, but I would like to say one or two more things from it, just 

as a matter of example. 

You took our question seriously. And speaking as one Senator—

and I believe there are many who feel the same way—I am going 

to take your recommendations seriously and work through the various committees and with Chairman Domenici and others to do our 

best on them. 

Next, I think it is important to remember that this great advantage we have did not happen by accident. We have the best universities. We have this array of 36 Federal research laboratories. We 

have had, at least until recently, the best K-12 system. We poured 

Federal Government money into all this, $22.5 billion for university-based research in science and engineering. 60 percent of our 

college students attend college with Federal grants or loans, $52 

billion of Federal student loans. 

While we have been outsourcing jobs, we have been insourcing 

brains. 572,000 foreign students attend our colleges and universities here. Your report addresses that. 

So we have asked the right people, the people who ought to know 

the answer. You have given us the answer and now it is down to 

us. 

I suppose the other thing I would want to say is this. Someone 

says to me, well, where is the money going to come from for this? 

Well, we have a budget of over $2 trillion every year. I have made 

budgets before. They have been a lot smaller. I was Governor and 

I always started by putting the most important thing in first, and 

then everything else, Mr. Chairman. You have been a budget chairman for a long time. Everything else comes in after that. 

Well, I think if we can have a consensus about what the most 

important things we need to do are to keep this astounding standard of living we have, that we ought to say to the President, put 

6

it in first. And then we will have a restrained spending budget over 

the next few years. 

Now, my hope is not just that Chairman Domenici and Senator 

Bingaman and others of the senior members of the Senate get interested in this. I want the President to get interested. It is hard 

for us to organize ourselves around an agenda. We are legislators. 

This really cries out for executive action. I would hope that your 

report would be the subject of the President’s State of the Union 

address and the thrust of his next 3 years. If he were to do that, 

I think he would find in the U.S. Senate a strong bipartisan core 

of people who agree with that thrust. 

So I thank you very much for your hard work. I look forward to 

working with you on your recommendations, and I thank Chairman 

Domenici for giving this such a good start. 

[The prepared statement of Senator Alexander follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. LAMAR ALEXANDER, U.S. SENATOR FROM TENNESSEE

In May, Senator Jeff Bingaman and I, with the encouragement of this Committee’s Chairman Pete Domenici, asked the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering and the Institute of Medicine this question: ‘‘What are the ten top actions, 

in priority order, that federal policy makers could take over the next decade to help 

the United States keep our advantage in science and technology?’’

To answer the question, the academies assembled a distinguished panel of business, government and university leaders headed by Norm Augustine, former chair 

of Lockheed-Martin, that included three Nobel Prize winners. They took our question seriously, and I intend to do everything within my power to take their recommendations seriously. 

Today, the Energy Committee takes the first step in that response by holding this 

hearing to hear from Mr. Augustine and the academies. It will be the first opportunity Congress will have to hear their answer to our question. 

This hearing is primarily about brainpower and the relationship of brainpower to 

good American jobs. 

The United States produces almost one third of all the wealth in the world (in 

terms of GDP)—but has only five percent of the world’s population. We are a fortunate country indeed. The academies explain this phenomenon in this way: ‘‘. . . as 

much as 85 percent of measured growth in U.S. income per capita is due to technological change.’’

This technological change is the result, in the report’s words, of an outpouring ‘‘of 

well trained people and the steady stream of scientific and technological innovations 

they produce.’’

The United States has taken extraordinary steps to help create this outpouring 

of trained people and new discoveries that have given us such a disproportionate 

share of the world’s wealth. 

We have in our country almost all of the world’s greatest research universities. 

We have a unique array of 36 federal research laboratories. More Americans attend 

college than in any other country, and the colleges they attend are the best in the 

world. We have had, at least until recently, a system of K-12 education unsurpassed 

in the world. 

Government support for all these enterprises has been massive. In 2001, the federal government spent $22.5 billion for university-based research in science and engineering. This year the government will provide 60 percent of American students 

with grants or loans to help them attend the college or university of their choice. 

The federal government will spend nearly $17 billion on grants and work-study programs and will provide an additional $52 billion in student loans. In my last year 

as governor of Tennessee, half of state dollars and a larger proportion of local tax 

dollars went to support education. 

And our free market environment encouraged innovation and enterprise as well 

as billions of dollars invested in corporate research. Finally, to top it off, while we 

have been outsourcing jobs, we have been insourcing brainpower. 572,000 foreign 

students attend our colleges and universities. One half of the students in our graduate programs of engineering, science and computing are foreign. 

There are three reasons I put this question to the National Academies: 

7

First, Congress is facing huge budget challenges over the next decade as we grapple with restraining the growth of entitlement spending. I did not want tight budgets to squeeze out the necessary investments in science and technology that create 

good jobs. 

Second, as the Augustine report details, there are worrisome reports from all 

sides that in the new competitive world marketplace, the United States will have 

to make an even grater effort to keep our high standard of living. To put it bluntly, 

people in India, China, Singapore, Finland, and Ireland know very well that since 

their brains work just like ours, that ifbrainpower is the secret weapon to produce 

good jobs, then there is no reason that they can’t have a standard of living more 

like ours. They are working to develop better trained citizens and create their own 

stream of discoveries. 

Third, I wanted to ask the question to those who should know the answer. Members of Congress are not the best ones to guess what the first ten things we should 

do to keep our scientific and technological edge. 

Congress is not efficiently organized to deal with broad recommendations such as 

these. I intend to work with my colleagues to see that all of the recommendations 

in the report are introduced and given a fair hearing in the various committees that 

have jurisdiction. 

But what really should happen is that President Bush should make this report 

the subject of his State of the Union address and the focus of his remaining three 

years in office. 

This challenge cries out for executive leadership. This challenge is the real answer 

to most of our hopes and the solution to most of our big problems, from high gasoline prices to the outsourcing of chemical industry jobs, from the shortage of engineers to the growing number of lower wage jobs, from energy independence to controlling health care costs. 

This is the challenge that most Americans wish their government would put up 

front. We have begun the discussion with a bipartisan question to the wisest Americans who ought to know the answer. We have a remarkable opportunity now to act 

on the recommendations in the same spirit.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Now we are going to proceed. I just want to say, Senator, you 

never are without—I will put it another way. You always shoot for 

the moon, and that is good. Your ideas about where we ought to 

go are terrific. Maybe we can. 

Senator ALEXANDER. My grandfather used to say, Mr. Chairman—he was a railroad engineer. He said, aim for the top. There 

is more room there. 

[Laughter.] 

The CHAIRMAN. All right. Which of you wants to go first? Go 

ahead. 

STATEMENT OF RALPH J. CICERONE, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL 

ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, AND CHAIR, NATIONAL RESEARCH 

COUNCIL 

Mr. CICERONE. Thank you. I am Ralph Cicerone, president of the 

National Academy of Sciences. The National Academy of Sciences 

was chartered by Congress in 1863 and President Lincoln signed 

that charter. I also serve as chairperson of the National Research 

Council. Together with the National Academy of Engineering and 

the Institute of Medicine, we comprise the National Academies. We 

are private, nonprofit, and independent organizations and we respond to requests for independent and objective studies on challenging subjects involving science, technology, and medicine. Most 

of our work is by request of the Federal Government. 

We are honored to undertake the task that is going to be reported to you today. It was directed to us, as Senator Alexander 

just recounted, by himself and Senator Bingaman, with strong enVerDate 0ct 09 2002 11:51 Mar 02, 2006 Jkt 109290 PO 26253 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 P:\DOCS\26253.TXT SENERGY2 PsN: PAULM
8

dorsements by Representatives Sherwood Boehlert and Bart Gordon of the House Science Committee. 

Usually we work through committees of experts in our studies of 

the National Academies and the National Research Council, experts who serve without pay. That is the case again with the report 

that you are about to hear summarized today from our Committee 

on Prospering in the Global Economy of the 21st Century. This 

committee is unusually distinguished. It is comprised of very, very 

busy men and women who are, individually and as a group, very 

extraordinary Americans. The group consists of several corporate 

CEO’s, university presidents, three Nobel Prize winners, several 

past Presidential appointees, and distinguished teachers. The 

chairman of the committee is here with us today, Mr. Norman Augustine. 

By way of background, Mr. Augustine was chairman of the board 

and CEO of Lockheed Martin earlier in his career. He was an 

Under Secretary of the Army and an Assistant Director of Defense 

for Research and Engineering of the United States. He is former 

chairman of the American Red Cross, former chairman of the Defense Science Board. He now serves on the Council of the President 

of the United States’ Advisors on Science and Technology, and he 

is a winner of the National Medal of Technology. He is also an 

elected member of the National Academy of Engineering. And he 

had a good cast to help him. In just a moment, he will provide an 

overview of the report. 

The committee worked over a very short period of time during 

which they analyzed data from a wide variety of sources, made 

their own observations, and read the views of and interacted with 

many other experts from all walks of life during the summer just 

past, and it was a short part of the summer. And then they responded to criticisms and suggestions from anonymous reviewers 

whom we at the Academy selected. 

In looking over the data in this report, I think that each one of 

us would be taken by the variety of indicators that they have 

drawn from. There may be no one indicator that convinces you 

completely, but when you add them all together, I think the committee has come up with a rather compelling argument and case. 

I would like to add just one more observation to all of the indicators that they summarized in this thick report. Namely, we at the 

National Academies asked 21 people to serve on this committee, to 

drop what they were doing in August, and work hard on this task 

because of the deadline and the time scale on which Senator Alexander and Senator Bingaman asked for recommendations on actions that the Federal Government might usefully take when the 

two Senators walked over and talked with us. You will notice that 

we ended up with 20 members on this committee. In other words, 

20 out of 21 accepted under those conditions. That level of acceptance of our invitations by highly accomplished people, dropping all 

other commitments, personal, corporate, and otherwise, was truly 

amazing. It is a measure of the dedication to the task and their 

willingness to work, once again, on behalf of the country. 

So if I may, Mr. Chairman, I could turn it over to Mr. Augustine 

now who will discuss the report. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Doctor. 

9

Mr. Augustine. 

STATEMENT OF NORMAN R. AUGUSTINE, RETIRED CHAIRMAN 

AND CEO, LOCKHEED MARTIN CORPORATION 

Mr. AUGUSTINE. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, 

thank you very much for the invitation to describe for you our report. Mr. Chairman, with the committee’s permission, I would like 

to submit a formal statement for the record and then briefly summarize it now. 

The CHAIRMAN. Your statement will be made a part of the 

record. 

Mr. AUGUSTINE. As you have heard, our committee had 20 members. I think I can safely say that we all feel deep concern and that 

we also are all extremely excited about the opportunity that we 

have to deal with the problems we believe we face. Our work, of 

course, was conducted in response to Senators Alexander and 

Bingaman’s suggestions. 

The thrust of our findings is really quite straightforward. It is 

that individual prosperity of Americans in the future will depend 

very heavily on their having access to quality jobs, and our collective prosperity will depend upon having the tax revenues that are 

underpinned by Americans having quality jobs. And those collective 

concerns would include providing national defense, providing 

health care, and so forth. 

But there has been a change that has taken place in terms of 

providing quality jobs. That change is attributable largely to new 

technologies. I refer specifically to the fact that in the information 

arena, the cost of providing telecommunications, of processing, and 

of storage has become almost free. The implication of this that jobs 

that used to require people to be in close physical proximity to one 

another no longer require that. That means that jobs are now open 

to candidates from around the world, and these are not just jobs 

at the so-called lower end of the employment spectrum, but they 

are jobs throughout the spectrum. 

The change is that job seekers in America no longer have to compete only with their neighbors, but they have to compete with highly qualified people from around the world. They compete in a labor 

market where we are at a distinct disadvantage. I recently traveled 

to Vietnam where you can hire 20 assembly workers for the cost 

of the U.S. minimum wage. I was recently in India, where you can 

hire 11 engineers for the cost of one engineer in this country. They 

are fine engineers. And so if we are to compete, we have to compete 

on some other grounds, and that ground, as you have suggested, 

Mr. Chairman, and your colleagues, has to be our ability to compete, our ability to have knowledge that is fresh and new. 

Very few jobs are what one might call ‘‘safe.’’ I would cite just 

a few interesting examples. In many hospitals in this country, if 

one has a CT-scan, there is a very good chance it will be read by 

a physician in India. 

Similarly, very near to where we are now sitting, there is an office building that the receptionist, who greets you at the door and 

controls access to that building, appears on a flat screen display on 

the wall. She is actually located in Pakistan. 

10

If you call to find out where your lost suitcase is, as I had to do 

last week, the call center you talk to in this case was in India. 

They are now teaching people in India at call centers to speak with 

a midwestern accent. 

Those are just a few of many examples I could cite. 

Tom Friedman in ‘‘The World is Flat’’, an extremely perceptive 

book, has pointed out that globalization has accidentally made people from Bangalore, Beijing, and Bethesda next door neighbors. 

When it comes to competing for jobs, that is certainly true since 

jobs are now just a mouse click away. 

But is this not good that other nations are prospering? And the 

view of our committee is absolutely yes, it is very good. It probably 

portends a safer world. It suggests that American consumers will 

be able to buy products at less cost and American suppliers will be 

able to have a larger market to sell their goods and services. 

But the problem is that, as with most change, there are likely 

to be winners and likely to be losers, and our goal is to be sure that 

America is among the winners when it comes to seeking jobs. 

There is an enigma that, as you have pointed out, America is 

prospering today, but the reason we are prospering is largely because of investments made in the past. Many of those investments 

were in the area of science and technology, which underpins much 

of the opportunities and innovation. There will be no sudden warning in this case, no 9/11, no Sputnik, no Pearl Harbor. We will see 

a gradual erosion, and if we are to compete for jobs, we need to 

excel in innovation to offset the labor cost disadvantage we endure. 

The indicators are not good frankly. We have been living, to a 

very large degree and to our very good fortune, off of foreign-born 

talent. 38 percent of the Ph.D.’s in science and engineering in 

America’s work force today were foreign-born. 59 percent of the 

Ph.D.’s granted by American universities today go to foreign students, and increasingly, those students are going back home because of the great opportunities that are offered in other countries. 

In a recent international test of mathematics, conducted with 

U.S. high school freshmen, the U.S. students, ranked among other 

countries in the world, finished in 29th place. 

As another example, chemical companies closed 70 plants in the 

United States in 2004. They have announced their intention to 

close 40 more. In the world, there are 120 new chemical plants 

being built, with a value of each of more than $1 billion. Of those, 

50 are in China; one is in the United States. 

U.S. companies spend more now on litigation expenses than they 

spend on research and development. Once one has lost the lead in 

R&D, it is very difficult to recover. 

Our committee has produced four recommendations that are very 

broad, but we also have produced 20 very specific implementing actions. We refer to them as ‘‘go do’s.’’ They focus heavily on the creation of jobs and on energy, and I can elaborate on that during the 

question period, if you wish. 

Basically our recommendations are to fix the K-12 science and 

technology education process; to provide more money for research 

and the physical sciences, mathematics, engineering, and computer 

science; to provide more students studying those fields in undergraduate and graduate school; and to create an environment in 

11

America that is world-class in terms of friendliness for innovators 

and for innovation. 

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I thank you on behalf of my 19 colleagues, and on behalf of the National Academies, 

and the two of us would be very happy to answer any questions 

you might have. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Augustine follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF NORMAN R. AUGUSTINE, RETIRED CHAIRMAN AND CHIEF

EXECUTIVE OFFICER, LOCKHEED MARTIN CORPORATION; AND CHAIR, COMMITTEE

ON PROSPERING IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY OF THE 21ST CENTURY, COMMITTEE ON

SCIENCE, ENGINEERING, AND PUBLIC POLICY, DIVISION ON POLICY AND GLOBAL AFFAIRS, THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES OF SCIENCE

Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee: Thank you for this opportunity to 

appear before you on behalf of the National Academies’ Committee on Prospering 

in the Global Economy of the 21st Century. As you know, our effort was sponsored 

by the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering and Institute of Medicine (collectively known as the National Academies). The National Academies were chartered by Congress in 1863 to advise the government on matters of 

science and technology. 

The study had as its origin a conversation which took place at the National Academies with Senator Lamar Alexander several months ago. As a result of that discussion, the Academies were requested by Senator Alexander and Senator Jeff Bingaman, members of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, to conduct an assessment of America’s ability to compete and prosper in the 21st century—and to propose appropriate actions to enhance the likelihood of success in that 

endeavor. This request was endorsed by the House Committee on Science. 

To respond to that request the Academies assembled twenty individuals with diverse backgrounds, including university presidents, CEOs, Nobel Laureates and 

former presidential appointees. The result of our committee’s work was examined 

by over forty highly qualified reviewers who were also designated by the Academies. 

In undertaking our assignment we considered the results of a number of prior studies which were conducted on various aspects of America’s future prosperity. We also 

gathered sixty subject-matter experts with whom we consulted for a weekend here 

in Washington and who provided recommendations related to their fields of specialty. 

It is the unanimous view of our committee that America today faces a serious and 

intensifying challenge with regard to its future competitiveness and standard of living. Further, we appear to be on a losing path. We are here today hoping both to 

elevate the nation’s awareness of this developing situation and to propose constructive solutions. 

The thrust of our findings is straightforward. The standard of living of Americans 

in the years ahead will depend to a very large degree on the quality of the jobs that 

they are able to hold. Without quality jobs our citizens will not have the purchasing 

power to support the standard of living which they seek, and to which many have 

become accustomed; tax revenues will not be generated to provide for strong national security and healthcare; and the lack of a vibrant domestic consumer market 

will provide a disincentive for either U.S. or foreign companies to invest in jobs in 

America. 

What has brought about the current situation? The answer is that the prosperity 

equation has a new ingredient, an ingredient that some have referred to as ‘‘The 

Death of Distance’’. In the last century, breakthroughs in aviation created the opportunity to move people and goods rapidly and efficiently over very great distances. 

Bill Gates has referred to aviation as the ‘‘World Wide Web of the twentieth century’’. In the early part of the present century, we are approaching the point where 

the communication, storage and processing of information are nearly free. That is, 

we can now move not only physical items efficiently over great distances, we can 

also transport information in large volumes and at little cost. 

The consequences of these developments are profound. Soon, only those jobs that 

require near-physical contact among the parties to a transaction will not be opened 

for competition from job seekers around the world. Further, with the end of the Cold 

War and the evaporation of many of the political barriers that previously existed 

throughout the world, nearly three billion new, highly motivated, often well educated, new capitalists entered the job market. 

12

Suddenly, Americans find themselves in competition for their jobs not just with 

their neighbors but with individuals around the world. The impact of this was initially felt in manufacturing, but soon extended to the development of software and 

the conduct of design activities. Next to be affected were administrative and support 

services. Today, ‘‘high end’’ jobs, such as professional services, research and management, are impacted. In short, few jobs seem ‘‘safe’’:

• U.S. companies each morning receive software that was written in India overnight in time to be tested in the U.S. and returned to India for further production that same evening—making the 24-hour workday a practicality. • Back-offices of U.S. firms operate in such places as Costa Rica, Ireland and 

Switzerland. • Drawings for American architectural firms are produced in Brazil. • U.S. firm’s call centers are based in India—where employees are now being 

taught to speak with a mid-western accent. • U.S. hospitals have x-rays and CAT scans read by radiologists in Australia and 

India. • At some McDonald’s drive-in windows orders are transmitted to a processing 

center a thousand miles away (currently in the U.S.), where they are processed 

and returned to the worker who actually prepares the order. • Accounting firms in the U.S. have clients tax returns prepared by experts in 

India. 

• Visitors to an office not far from the White House are greeted by a receptionist 

on a flat screen display who controls access to the building and arranges contacts—she is in Pakistan. 

• Surgeons sit on the opposite side of the operating room and control robots which 

perform the procedures. It is not a huge leap of imagination to have highly-specialized, world-class surgeons located not just across the operating room but 

across the ocean.

As Tom Friedman concluded it in The World is Flat, globalization has ‘‘accidentally made Beijing, Bangalore and Bethesda next door neighbors’’. And the neighborhood is one wherein candidates for many jobs which currently reside in the U.S. are 

now just a ‘‘mouse-click’’ away. 

How will America compete in this rough and tumble global environment that is 

approaching faster than many had expected? The answer appears to be, ‘‘not very 

well’’—unless we do a number of things differently from the way we have been doing 

them in the past. 

Why do we reach this conclusion? One need only examine the principal ingredients of competitiveness to discern that not only is the world flat, but in fact it may 

be tipping against us. 

One major element of competitiveness is, of course, the cost of labor. I recently 

traveled to Vietnam, where the wrap rate for low-skilled workers is about twentyfive cents per hour, about one-twentieth of the U.S. minimum wage. And the problem is not confined to the so-called ‘‘lower-end’’ of the employment spectrum. For 

example, five qualified chemists can be hired in India for the cost of just one in 

America. Given such enormous disadvantages in labor cost, we cannot be satisfied 

merely to match other economies in those other areas where we do enjoy strength; 

rather we must excel... markedly. 

The existence of a vibrant domestic market for products and services is another 

important factor in determining our nation’s competitiveness, since such a market 

helps attract business to our shores. But here, too, there are warning signs: Goldman Sachs analysts project that within about a decade, fully 80% of the world’s 

middle-income consumers will live in nations outside the currently industrialized 

world. 

The availability of financial capital has in the past represented a significant competitive advantage for America. But the mobility of financial capital is legion, as evidenced by the willingness of U.S. firms to move factories to Mexico, Vietnam and 

China if a competitive advantage can be derived by doing so. Capital, as we have 

observed, crosses geopolitical borders at the speed of light. 

Human capital—the quality of our work force—is a particularly important factor 

in our competitiveness. Our public school system comprises the foundation of this 

asset. But as it exists today, that system compares, in the aggregate, abysmally 

with those of other developed—and even developing nations... particularly in the 

fields which underpin most innovation: science, mathematics and technology. 

Of the utmost importance to competitiveness is the availability of knowledge capital—‘‘ideas’’. And once again, scientific research and engineering applications are 

crucial. But knowledge capital, like financial capital, is highly mobile. There is one 

major difference: being first-to-market, by virtue of access to new knowledge, can 

13

be immensely valuable, even if by only a few months. Craig Barrett, a member of 

our committee and Chairman of Intel, points out that ninety percent of the products 

his company delivers on December 31st did not even exist on January 1st of that 

same year. Such is the dependence of hi-tech firms on being at the leading edge of 

scientific and technological progress. 

There are of course many other factors influencing our nation’s competitiveness. 

These include patent processes, tax policy and overhead costs—such as healthcare, 

regulation and litigation—all of which tend to work against us today. On the other 

hand, America’s version of the Free Enterprise System has proven to be a powerful 

asset, with its inherent aggressiveness and discipline in introducing new ideas and 

flushing out the obsolescent. But others have now recognized these virtues and are 

seeking to emulate our system. 

But is it not a good thing that others are prospering? Our committee’s answer to 

that question is a resounding ‘‘yes’’. Broadly based prosperity can make the world 

more stable and safer for all; it can make less costly products available for American 

consumers; it can provide new customers for the products we produce here. Yet it 

is inevitable that there will be relative winners and relative losers—and as the 

world prospers, we should seek to assure that America does not fall behind in the 

race. 

The enigma is that in spite of all these factors, America seems to be doing quite 

well just now. Our nation has the highest R&D investment intensity in the world. 

We have indisputably the finest research universities in the world. California alone 

has more venture capital than any nation in the world other than the United States. 

Two million jobs were created in America in the past year alone, and citizens of 

other nations continue to invest their savings in America at a remarkable rate. 

Total household net worth is now approaching $50 trillion.

The reason for this prosperity is that we are reaping the benefits of past investments—many of them in the fields of science and technology. But the early indicators of future prosperity are generally heading in the wrong direction. Consider the 

following:

• For the cost of one engineer in the United States, a company can hire eleven 

in India. 

• America has been depending heavily on foreign-born talent. Thirty-eight percent 

of the scientists and engineers in America holding doctorates were born abroad. 

Yet, when asked in the spring of 2005, what are the most attractive places in 

the world in which to live, respondents in only one of the countries polled indicated the U.S.A. 

• Chemical companies closed seventy facilities in the U.S. in 2004, and have 

tagged forty more for shutdown. Of 120 new chemical plants being built around 

the world with price tags of $1 billion or more, one is in the U.S. Fifty are in 

China. 

• In 1997 China had fewer than fifty research centers managed by multinational 

corporations. By 2004 there were over six-hundred. 

• Two years from now, for the first time, the most capable high-energy particle 

accelerator on earth will reside outside the United States. 

• The United States today is a net importer of high technology products. The U.S. 

share of global high tech exports has fallen in the last two decades from 30% 

to 17%, while America’s trade balance in high tech manufactured goods shifted 

from a positive $33B in 1990 to a negative $24B in 2004. 

• In a recent international test involving mathematical understanding, U.S. students finished in 27th place among the nations participating. 

• About two-thirds of the students studying chemistry and physics in U.S. high 

schools are taught by teachers with no major or certificate in the subject. In 

the case of math taught in grades five through twelve, the fraction is one-half. 

Many such students are being taught math by graduates in physical education. 

• In one recent period, low-wage employers like Wal-Mart (now the nation’s largest employer) and McDonald’s created 44% of all new jobs. High-wage employers created only 29%. 

• In 2003 foreign students earned 59% of the engineering doctorates awarded in 

U.S. universities. 

• In 2003 only three American companies ranked among the top ten recipients 

of patents granted by the U.S. Patent Office. 

• In Germany, 36% of undergraduates receive their degrees in science and engineering. In China, the corresponding figure is 59%, and in Japan it is 66%. In 

the U.S., the share is 32%. In the case of engineering, the U.S. share is 5%, 

as compared with 50% in China. 

14

• The United States is said to have over ten million illegal immigrants, but the 

number of legal visas set-aside annually for ‘‘highly qualified foreign workers’’ 

was recently dropped from 195,000 per year down to 65,000. • In 2001 (the most recent year for which data are available), U.S. industry spent 

more on tort litigation and related costs than on research and development.

As important as jobs are, the impact of these circumstances on our nation’s security could be even more profound. In the view of the bipartisan Hart-Rudman Commission on National Security, ‘‘... the inadequacies of our system of research and 

education pose a greater threat to U.S. national security over the next quarter century than any potential conventional war that we might imagine.’’

The good news is that there are things we can do to assure that America does 

in fact share in the prosperity that science and technology are bringing the world. 

In this regard, our committee has made four broad recommendations as the basis 

of a prosperity initiative—and offers 20 specific actions to make these recommendations a reality. They include:

• ‘‘Ten Thousand Teachers, Ten Million Minds’’—which addresses America’s K-12 

education system. We recommend that America’s talent pool in science, math 

and technology be increased by vastly improving K-12 education. Among the 

specific steps we propose are:

• Recruitment of 10,000 new science and math teachers each year through the 

award of competitive scholarships in math, science and engineering that lead 

to a bachelor’s degree accompanied by a teaching certificate—and a 5-year 

commitment to teach in a public school. • Strengthening the skills of 250,000 current teachers through funded training 

and education in part-time master’s programs, summer institutes and Advanced Placement training programs. • Increasing the number of students who take Advanced Placement science and 

mathematics courses.

• ‘‘Sowing the Seeds’’—which addresses America’s research base. We recommend 

strengthening the nation’s traditional commitment to long-term basic research 

through:

• Increasing federal investment in research by 10% per year over the next 

seven years, with primary attention devoted to the physical sciences, engineering, mathematics, and information sciences—without disinvesting in the 

health and biological sciences. • Providing research grants to early career researchers • Instituting a National Coordination Office for Research Infrastructure to oversee the investment of an additional $500M per year for five years for advanced research facilities and equipment. • Allocating at least 8% of the existing budgets of federal research agencies to 

discretionary funding under the control of local laboratory directors. 

• Creation of an Advanced Research Projects Agency—Energy (ARPA-E), modeled after DARPA in the Department of Defense, reporting to the Department 

of Energy Undersecretary for Science. The purpose is to support the conduct 

of out-of-the-box, transformational, generic, energy research by universities, 

industry and government laboratories. 

• Establish a Presidential Innovation Award to recognize and stimulate scientific and engineering advances in the national interest.

• ‘‘Best and Brightest’’—which addresses higher education. In this area we recommend:

• Establishing 25,000 competitive science, mathematics, engineering, and technology undergraduate scholarships and 5,000 graduate fellowships in areas of 

national need for U.S. citizens pursuing study at U.S. universities. 

• Providing a federal tax credit to employers to encourage their support of continuing education. 

• Providing a one-year automatic visa extension to international students who 

receive a science or engineering doctorate at a U.S. university, and providing 

automatic work permits and expedited residence status if these students are 

offered employment in the U.S. 

• Instituting a skill-based, preferential immigration option. 

• Reforming the current system of ‘‘deemed exports’’ so that international students and researchers have access to necessary non-classified information and 

research equipment while studying and working in the U.S.

• ‘‘Incentives for Innovation’’—in which we address the innovation environment 

itself. We recommend:

15

• Enhancements to intellectual property protection, such as the adoption of a 

first-to-file system. 

• Increasing the R&D tax credit from the current 20% to 40%, and making the 

credit permanent. 

• Providing permanent tax incentives for US-based innovation so that the 

United States is one of the most attractive places in the world for long-term 

innovation-related investments. 

• Ensuring ubiquitous broadband Internet access to enable U.S. firms and researchers to operate at the state of the art in this important technology.

It should be noted that we are not confronting a so-called ‘‘typical’’ crisis, in the 

sense that there is no 9/11, Sputnik or Pearl Harbor to alert us as a nation. Our 

situation is more akin to that of the proverbial frog being slowly boiled. Nonetheless, 

while our committee believes the problem we confront is both real and serious, the 

good news is that we may well have time to do something about it—if we start now. 

Americans, with only 5% of the world’s population but with nearly 30% of the 

world’s wealth, tend to believe that scientific and technological leadership and the 

high standard of living it underpins is somehow the natural state of affairs. But 

such good fortune is not a birthright. If we wish our children and grandchildren to 

enjoy the standard of living most Americans have come to expect, there is only one 

answer: We must get out and compete.

I would like to close my remarks with a perceptive and very relevant poem. It 

was written by Richard Hodgetts, and eloquently summarizes the essence of innovation in the highly competitive, global environment. The poem goes as follows:

Every morning in Africa a gazelle wakes up.

It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it

will be killed.

Every morning in Africa a lion wakes up.

It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle

or it will starve.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a lion or a

gazelle—when the sun comes up, you’d

better be running.

And indeed we should. 

Thank you for providing me with this opportunity to testify before the committee. 

I would be pleased to answer any questions you have about the report.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, let me first say I have been here now in 

the Senate at the end of this year 34 years. Compared to what each 

of you have done in your fields, that is not anything more than you 

have done. 

But I think we have made a terrible mistake. We have taken this 

American machine that produces goods and services and breakthroughs. We just assumed it would always happen, that we were 

just there. And frankly, myself as one Senator and one American, 

I have been terribly concerned that we are on the track to a second-rate economy, a second-rate country. And I blame it on all 

kinds of things in my mind. But many of them I do not know what 

to do about, but as a result of the request you have presented to 

us, I believe, a real opportunity exists to address that issue. 

I think it is true that when we decided that we would go global—

either of you might remember and correct me. This will sort of be 

my first question. I think we thought that we were going to be all 

right because we were going to keep the high-scale jobs, high-end 

jobs, and the low-end jobs were going elsewhere. So, America, do 

not worry about it. 

What happened was at first that was our worry, but that worry 

changed because what happened in these other countries changed. 

16

We assumed they would not catch on. We were the only one who 

would do accelerator technology. Right? It turns out we are second. 

They are first. And we can go through them all. 

I think we are to the point where I would say it is no longer 20 

out of 21 of you agreeing to meet and work because you see it better than I do, and I think the work is a labor of love, of concern 

that something is happening. Now, maybe that is overstating it 

and maybe I am saying more than we can do, but it is worth trying. 

So might I ask, is my assessment of the situation, Mr. Augustine, 

correct, that when we went into globalization, when we thought 

that was a good thing, we were indeed ahead and we had highscale jobs, and the others were the Vietnam kind of workers of 

today? But has that not changed in a very short period of time? 

And if it has, why did it change so fast? 

Mr. AUGUSTINE. I think your assessment is extremely accurate. 

Initially we did believe that we could put low-end assembly work 

in plants in Mexico. Now Mexico is having trouble competing with 

Vietnam and China even. We then began to move office work into 

other countries. Today there is quite a market of doing our income 

tax by accounting firms in other countries. Your tax form may well 

have been prepared abroad. I could cite many such examples. I am 

sure you could as well. 

The trend is one that really makes almost no jobs immune to foreign competition or to moving abroad. I have a friend who recently 

had surgery and the surgeon sat across the operating room from 

him on the other side of the room and operated on him using a 

robot. It is not a huge leap of at least this engineer’s imagination 

that that surgeon, instead of sitting across the room, could sit 

across the ocean, could be an absolute world-class surgeon who specializes in this particular procedure. I could imagine that. I do not 

believe that has happened yet, but it could. 

McDonald’s is running an experiment now that if you go to a 

drive-in and order your hamburger at McDonald’s drive-in, at some 

of the drive-ins they send your order from your voice up through 

a satellite 23,000 miles away back to the earth 1,000 miles away 

from where you were. They get the order right and they send it 

back to the person preparing the hamburger. That is happening 

today. So there are no jobs that are not going to be vulnerable to 

the kind of thing you have described. 

You are quite correct. Our committee, I think it is safe to say, 

feels passionately in terms of our concern, in terms of the importance we assign to this. We recognize that you and your colleagues 

in the Senate and the House and in the administration face enormous challenges. We are aware of hurricanes, and we realize there 

are two wars going on. But this is a war too, but it is one that is 

on a longer time scale. It is a war that if we lose, we likely will 

lose the fundamental strength of our economy which underpins 

most everything else we do. So I would say your assessment was 

very accurate. 

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Bingaman. 

Senator BINGAMAN. Thank you very much. And thank you again 

for the wonderful testimony and the report. 

17

Let me ask about a few of these specific recommendations you 

have here. One is that we establish an ARPA-like entity within the 

Department of Energy or focused on energy-related issues. I just 

would ask, Mr. Augustine, if you would elaborate on that as to how 

that would work, who it would be reporting to? It is clear under 

DARPA that they are doing the work of the Department of Defense, and there is no question as to whom they are reporting and 

working for. How would you see this other entity operating? 

Mr. AUGUSTINE. Senator Bingaman, I guess I should first indicate why we felt it was important to have this capability. One of 

the concerns we have had is that as we produce new scientific 

ideas, particularly in the energy area, the idea of transferring those 

ideas into practice—there is a large gap in terms of funding and 

capability and responsibility to do that. 

We are looking in this idea of ARPA-energy, as we call it, ARPAE, for breakthrough technologies, transformational technologies, 

things that really change the whole paradigm. The DARPA of the 

Department of Defense has been extremely effective, as I think you 

might agree. You do just that. 

I should say also that our focus on energy really has its origin 

in the fact that we view energy to be one of the principal factors 

in America’s competitiveness in the years ahead. Our ability to provide energy at a reasonable cost, provide it reliably, cleanly, and 

also to remove the threats to national security that are so closely 

associated to energy all argue that it is a key part of competitiveness and of prosperity. 

Beyond that, as you would know so well, energy research is so 

closely affiliated with the very areas of science and technology 

about which we are concerned, mainly the physical sciences, mathematics, computer science, and engineering. I separate those from 

the biological sciences which have been reasonably well cared for 

by the National Institutes of Health. 

With regard to the specific proposal, it would be our belief that 

an ARPA-E would report to the Under Secretary of Energy for 

Science, that it would have a staff that rotated. The people would 

stay maybe 4 years, much like at DARPA. It would do no research 

of its own. It would fund the innovative breakthrough high-risk, 

high-payoff research and applied development. That work would be 

performed actually at universities, at companies, at startups, established companies, and at the national labs. It would be awarded 

competitively. We believe by so doing, we can take a major step forward in improving the health of our physical science, math and engineering fields and address an important problem at the same 

time. 

So I hope that answers your question. 

Senator BINGAMAN. It does and I thank you for that answer. 

Another big thrust of your report, as you describe it, is to urge 

some specific actions we can take to get our training of people in 

science and mathematics up to where it ought to be or at least closer to where it ought to be in the near future. You have one recommendation in here that I heartily endorse. I just think it sounds 

pretty ambitious, and again, I would like your comments on it. It 

says, by 2010, increase the number of students in advanced placement and international baccalaureate mathematics and science 

18

courses from 1.2 million to 4.5 million and set a goal of tripling the 

number who pass those tests to 700,000 by 2010. 

It is easy to talk about these things. It is easy to set goals. It 

is harder when you get down to saying, okay, now how many of 

those increased AP or IB students are we going to have in this high 

school or that high school and how are we going to get them there. 

Any comments you would have about the achievability of that kind 

of a very ambitious goal? 

Mr. AUGUSTINE. We believe it is achievable, but we would share 

your characterization of a very ambitious goal. That was my intent. 

It is nearly a factor of four increase in students in that area. 

We made the recommendation because experiments at various 

State and local levels have indicated that having more students exposed to the AP programs has a major impact in terms of their 

overall level of education, how they score on examinations, college 

boards and the like, and on the international tests. 

To accomplish this goal, though, I think we have to start—and 

our committee proposes this—with teachers. We first have to train 

the teachers to teach AP programs. We have made a recommendation as to how to go about doing that. We believe if we can train 

those teachers, they can, in turn, train the students and we will 

get much better graduates in the process. 

With regard to the ambitiousness of our proposal, to some degree 

we have scaled the experience of other programs along this line, 

one particularly in Texas that has been very successful. We scaled 

the school population in Texas with what it has done in the way 

of growth that it has actually accomplished with what we are proposing. Given that, we feel that with a significant effort, we can do 

at least as well. 

Senator BINGAMAN. Thank you very much. I think my time is up 

although nobody seems to be keeping time around here. Let me go 

ahead and defer to Senator Alexander. 

Senator ALEXANDER. Thank you, Senator Bingaman. A couple of comments and then a couple of questions. $10 billion 

a year. I spent a lot of time as Governor trying to restrain the 

growth of Medicaid so we could create centers of excellence at the 

universities. We had these choices to make. Over the next 5 years, 

Medicaid spending will grow 41 percent in the Federal budget. Restraining that by 1 percent, 40 instead of 41, would produce $10 

billion new Federal dollars a year, in other words, enough to fund 

everything you have said here. So I think we have to think about 

whether even in the end putting the $10 billion into roughly the 

recommendations you have made might not do more to help transform the health care system in America and reduce medical costs 

and improve health care than spending another $10 billion just on 

the system we have got. So the amount of money is well within the 

reach of this country. 

No. 2, maybe Senator Bingaman and I and the staff of the committee and the chairman can talk with you more about this. I think 

it would be helpful to have a follow-up group from the Academies 

to provide technical advice to us as we work through trying to develop the legislation to implement these recommendations because 

just as you have been able to sort out among all these various ideas 

that people throw at us 10 or 4 broad categories, once we get down 

19

to how do we deal with teachers, there are 100 ideas out there 

about how to do things, programs going on. It would help us to 

have evaluations. So that is one thing I would ask you to consider. 

What would be the appropriate way, working between the Academies and here to have the follow-up? 

Now, let me just go to the questions. Should we not be thinking 

about using the national labs in a big way here? I have had some 

experience with dealing with programs for outstanding teachers 

and students, and summer academies are great ways to deal with 

that. If they were affiliated with the labs, it would give a luster 

and a prestige and a place to go and a new way to deal with issues 

about career paths and satisfactory performance and how to pass 

out stipends and make sure we were not wasting money in a way 

that would really encourage the students and honor the teachers. 

We have these labs and they could conduct it. I think of the Governor’s schools for teachers of math and science that we had at 

Knoxville at the University of Tennessee. They were inexpensive, 

easy to do, enormously well attended, and competitively sought. So 

should we not use the labs? 

And my second question is: Should we not be more ambitious 

about insourcing brains? I mean, you have suggested we would attach a green card, in effect, to somebody who gets a graduate degree so they can stay another year. Well, why do we not give scholarships to the 2,500 most outstanding engineers in the world in 

hopes they come here and stay? While we do it for liquified natural 

gas, we might as well do it for scientists, at least in the interim 

until we grow our own. Should we insist that every foreign student 

who comes here swears that he does not plan to stay here when, 

in fact, we hope that the smartest of them would stay here and 

help improve our standard of living instead of going home and improving India’s standard of living? 

So should we not use national labs, and should we be more ambitious in terms of insourcing brain power? 

Mr. AUGUSTINE. I would turn to my colleague who has experience, particularly on the latter topic. 

Mr. CICERONE. Why do we not deal with the national labs first? 

Because the report does speak quite a bit about the roles of the national labs in hosting teachers in the summertime, in student research projects, and in the research and development. Do you want 

to handle that first? 

Mr. AUGUSTINE. All right. We did address the national labs and 

view those labs as a national asset. Of course, there are programs 

such as the one at the University of Tennessee, when you were 

president of the University of Tennessee, that was a cooperative arrangement of this type. 

The national labs have a huge collection of extremely talented 

people. They have the stability that industrial laboratories tend not 

to have. The national labs tend to be working at the very leading 

edge of the state-of-the-art, so they do provide a great resource not 

only to provide research itself, but as a training ground. 

With regard to bringing foreign students in and trying to get 

them to stay, I must confess that when I first learned a little bit 

about this question—I am told that when a foreign student applies 

at our embassy for a student visa, the person in our embassy has 

20

to certify that that student intends to go back home when they get 

their degree. 

Senator ALEXANDER. That is the law. 

Mr. AUGUSTINE. My reaction was that if I had been a foreign student that wanted to come to America and I had been asked that 

question, my reaction would have been to say, oh, yes, I promise 

to stay and get a job in America and help start a company and 

make America great. If I answered that way, I would not have been 

permitted to come into the country. There is something backward 

with this that really does need to be changed. 

Ralph, do you want to comment? 

Mr. CICERONE. I do not think I have ever heard the idea before 

of having a scholarship program to try to attract the top, let us say, 

engineering students from around the world. So that is a new idea 

as far as I know. 

I think it, obviously, could be implemented. Now, what would go 

through the minds of young students—I just left a campus after 20 

years to come here, so I have been in touch with a lot of students. 

The things that we all know well. They are interested in what they 

think the future of careers are, where would their best chance at 

a career be, what kind of financial aid is available so that when 

they emerge as a student, they will not be in debt too much. Are 

they going to encounter a welcoming atmosphere in this new place, 

and then what would be the opportunity for a really stimulating 

experience, for example, doing research as a student? And then in 

each one of those cases, they make a comparison to what they 

think the opportunity would be either in their home country or increasingly in other countries that are having English-speaking instruction, that is, instruction at the undergraduate or graduate 

level offered in English. 

In the last few years, one unfortunate side effect of our making 

it more difficult for foreign students to come here is that programs 

have grown up in England, Australia, Canada, and Japan, for example, where students are offered instruction in English and they 

are being actively recruited away from American universities. This 

was an unintended consequence of making it harder for foreign students to come here. 

It is a great idea and I think that is what would go through the 

minds of the young students whether or not they should come here 

or go somewhere else. 

Senator ALEXANDER. Mr. Chairman, while you were out of the 

room—and I want to make you aware of this—I suggested to Dr. 

Cicerone and Mr. Augustine that they might want to consider setting up a follow-up group to their report that could provide technical advice to our committee and other Senators, when asked, as 

we work through developing legislation, whenever that is appropriate. So I wanted you to know that I asked that question. 

The CHAIRMAN. Very good. Did they say no? 

[Laughter.] 

Senator ALEXANDER. They did not say. 

Mr. AUGUSTINE. We said yes. 

The CHAIRMAN. They are captive. They have no chance. 

[Laughter.] 

21

The CHAIRMAN. One of the items that you recommend is to allocate a minimum of 8 percent of Federal research funding to highrisk, high-payoff research. If the Federal research agencies are 

under-investing in high-risk research now, first, why is that underinvestment occurring? And second, do you know whether the Office 

of Management and Budget’s PART process—they have a process—

as used now, discourages high-risk research? The first one you 

probably can answer. If you do not know what PART is, you cannot. 

Mr. AUGUSTINE. Let me begin and I will ask my colleague to continue. 

With regard to the deterrents to high-risk research, there are 

many deterrents. One of the deterrents, of course, is that our society has become very failure intolerant. The media is a part of that. 

We put far more attention on our failures than on our successes, 

in many cases. And if you are a researcher trying to build a career, 

it is probably easier to take the safe route than to try something 

that might be a total failure. 

We also have a peer review system that, by and large, is very 

effective, but the peer review system and the people who lead our 

laboratories too are pressured to not have failures. So they tend to 

bet on the safer thing so that at the end of the year, they will have 

something to show that worked. 

These things tend to combine to make our researchers reluctant 

to take chances. 

Also, it has another effect, and that is, it tends to make it difficult for younger researchers to compete for grants because they 

do not have a track record, and that is in spite of the fact that it 

has been shown by many studies that some of the greatest innovations have occurred by people who are quite young. So these things 

have combined to be, I think, a real problem. 

Do you want to add to that, Ralph? 

Mr. CICERONE. Very briefly on your last point, Mr. Augustine. 

Younger researchers are feeling this discouragement, and it is a 

disincentive to stay in the field not just from a financial point of 

view that they have difficulty obtaining financial grants, but in 

terms of getting their own independence to be able to try out their 

own ideas and to run their own laboratories at universities. When 

they cannot get their own grants until age 42, which is, I think, 

now the median at which an NIH investigator gets his or her own 

grant, it is a real disincentive to this field as a career opportunity. 

I think Mr. Augustine is right. Some of this is self-imposed 

where with our peer review system everybody is trying so hard to 

avoid making mistakes, that we are discouraging people from taking risks. 

And then finally, there probably are some things that have been 

imposed by different administrations and different Congresses, like 

the GPRA, the Government Performance and Results Act. The Federal agencies, including the ones that support basic research, have 

tried very hard to avoid making any mistakes. So in an effort to 

prevent anything bad from happening, they have prevented a lot 

of other things from happening too. 

The CHAIRMAN. You note in the report that as of 2007 the United 

States, for instance, will not have the world’s most advanced high 

22

energy particle accelerator. Will the U.S. researchers not have access to the new world-class accelerator, even though it would be in 

Europe? Should we be concerned about losing our status as the 

world’s leader in high energy physics? And how does that affect or 

relate to what we are talking about here today? 

Mr. AUGUSTINE. Indeed, the most capable high energy accelerator in the world will go on line probably in 2007. It will be in 

Bern in Switzerland and will be operated by the European countries. The United States has been permitted to put its researchers 

there, as you pointed out, and one of the concerns is that for high 

energy physicists in this country, if they want to have any chance 

of a Nobel Prize for the 5 or 10 years after 2007, the place to be 

is in Europe, not in the United States. And our researchers are voting with their feet. They are going to where these facilities are. So 

I think we will, if we do not take drastic steps, likely lose the lead 

for the first time in high energy physics research as these people 

go to Europe to use this facility. 

The CHAIRMAN. I was out a short time and this might be repetitious on DARPA. But I know, Mr. Augustine, you have been a 

staunch supporter if not even an admirer of DARPA as a modus 

operandi. It might not be the most direct, but considering how the 

Government has to do business with all of the entanglements, it 

has been rather successful in your opinion. 

Mr. AUGUSTINE. Indeed. 

The CHAIRMAN. Now, who would be the customer of these technologies that are developed at this new ARPA-E? If the customer 

is the private sector and not the Government, then is this the right 

approach? Maybe you have already answered that. Did Senator 

Bingaman ask that? 

Mr. AUGUSTINE. We did not address that specific aspect. 

The CHAIRMAN. Would you tell me that? 

Mr. AUGUSTINE. The customer would, indeed, be those organizations generally in the private sector that will provide the energy we 

need to run our country in the years ahead. That is somewhat different, of course, from the Department of Defense model where the 

DOD, by and large, is the customer for the work of DARPA. Nonetheless, we have a lot of experience with organizations such as the 

NIH that does basic research that supports products that are built, 

say, by the drug companies and pharmaceutical companies in that 

case. So that aspect was not of great concern to us, although we 

discussed it at some length. 

The question implicit in some of your comments is also a very 

good one. Why should the private sector, if it is to be the beneficiary, not pay for this research? If I might, Mr. Chairman, in answering your question, I would like to share with the committee a 

story. I may have shared it with you in the past, in fact. It occurred 

when I was working for Martin Marietta, the aerospace firm that 

is the predecessor of Lockheed Martin. 

Our company had some opportunities for some very exciting research, research that we thought held such enormous promise. We 

called a meeting in New York of stock analysts, and we sent our 

company’s president there to tell them about this exciting research 

we were going to do. He made a wonderful presentation. At the end 

of the presentation, the analysts got up and literally they ran out 

23

of the room and they sold our stock. Our stock dropped 11 percent 

in 3 days and continued to decline for another year before we got 

it turned back around. 

When I asked one particular analyst—I remember almost verbatim what he said—I said, what did we say that was wrong? And 

his answer was, do you not understand that it takes 10 or 15 years 

for research to pay off? And your average shareholder holds his 

stock about 18 months. So by the time your research pays off, they 

could care less about what you have gained. They will probably 

own your competitor’s stock by that time. They certainly do not 

want to pay for the research now. And he concluded by saying to 

me that our firm does not invest in managements with such shortsighted viewpoints. That was his characterization. 

So the fact is, with the pressure of the stock market on quarterly 

earnings, it is just very hard for a corporation and its board to 

spend much money on basic research. Development is a different 

story. Basic research has an additional disadvantage that you 

never really know who it is going to pay off for. It is general. It 

is generic. And it may pay off for your competitor and not for you, 

and that is why organizations such as Bell Labs and such as GE 

Labs, many of which exist in some form, but I think no one argue 

that they are what they once were. 

The CHAIRMAN. I may have missed this somewhere in this big report. I am not seeing it just today. I have looked at it briefly. It 

seems to me that one of the areas where we have a built-in duplication, if not triplication, and whatever the next word is, is in the 

university system. We take a great deal of pride in having many, 

many universities, and it is obvious that on basic things that each 

one has—that you spend many times over to have the same kind 

of facilities. I guess, in general, I would look out there and say 

where the Government is involved in some institutional process 

that has long tales that has been there a long time, even the National Institutes of Health, there may be an opportunity, if not a 

necessity, in our country to reassess the allocation of resources so 

as to move in the direction you are speaking of in two ways, with 

new assets and converting older assets to the right thing. I do not 

know enough about that, but it is just patent to me that the one 

thing we have plenty of is our universities. 

Could you kind of talk to my notion? Did you comment on reallocation of resources in the whole, broad field so we could do 

more of what you are talking about? 

Mr. AUGUSTINE. Well, we did discuss allocation in general. We 

talked about the fact that some of the funding that we have proposed that—I should mention some of our proposals do not require 

additional funding. They would require other kinds of actions. But 

before we put new funds in, some of which will be certainly required, we should examine places where we do have duplication or 

triplication or what have you. Some of that does exist. 

We also have in our proposal to establish a new fund for facilities 

for research, many of which would be at universities. Also, that the 

Government create a new office, probably in the Office of Science 

and Technology Policy, to oversee the planning for this additional 

fund so that you do not wind up with the situation you described 

where you have similar facilities, particularly expensive facilities. 

24

There is no reason why they cannot be shared among universities, 

as far as I know. Dr. Cicerone knows more about universities than 

I do, so I will defer to you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Doctor, would you comment please? 

Mr. CICERONE. I think there is good potential for sharing the expense of facilities and a good deal of it is already being done. I 

think that that goal could be worked into these plans. 

Having just been in charge of a campus with a total budget of 

a little over $1 billion a year, I was sitting here, since you asked, 

Mr. Chairman, trying to think of any examples I could come up 

with quickly of facilities that I think where we were duplicative, 

and I honestly cannot think of any. I can think, instead, of having 

people fighting for access to every computer, every mass spectrometer. But there is potential and I think people would take that 

challenge seriously. 

The CHAIRMAN. The last one. Do either of you or both of you or 

any of you know about this program within the laboratories called 

LDRD? That is the one where the——

Mr. CICERONE. Laboratory Directed Research Directives or something. 

The CHAIRMAN. In disclosing my vintage, I remember when that 

was a very prominent part of the DOE’s nuclear laboratories. 12 or 

15 percent when Agnew was at Los Alamos was left up to the discretion of the director to put into science that was promising, 

maybe even directed at the goal, but not provided for explicitly. 

Somehow or another that has turned around up here, and the U.S. 

House thinks of it as—what do they call it? 

Mr. AUGUSTINE. A slush fund. 

The CHAIRMAN. Yes, a slush fund for the director. Frankly, I saw 

it as something spectacular, but I have more confidence in the 

projects. 

Could you kind of assess that and just talk about it a minute? 

Mr. CICERONE. Mr. Chairman, about 10 or 15 years ago, I served 

as a reviewer for a request coming into those LDRD project funds 

at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab and a little bit at Los Alamos. The results were stunning. Those little bit of funds that the 

laboratory directors had at their discretion were dangled in front 

of people and all the best ideas came out of the woodwork. Teamwork came out of the woodwork. Some new technologies, some of 

the best work that I ever saw. I had nothing to do with the laboratories except being called in as an outside reviewer. The results 

were stunning for the reasons that you said. I agree with you completely. 

The CHAIRMAN. They are down now. They have chipped it away. 

What is it? 

Mr. AUGUSTINE. 1 to 3 percent now. Our committee addressed 

that. It is about 1 to 3 percent in most places today. We recommended increasing it to 8 percent. Some argue it should be still 

greater. 

But it is true that has been a source of some of the greatest payoff of all. The reason for that is that nobody knows what the good 

ideas are better than the people who are creating the good ideas. 

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Bingaman. 

25

Senator BINGAMAN. Let me ask about two of the issues that you 

discussed a little bit there. This national coordination office for research infrastructure that you recommend. You have been around 

this city quite a while and watched the Congress in action. How 

can we conceivably legislate something that we would give $500 

million to and keep it all from being earmarked for the particular 

institutions that various members of the appropriations committees 

here want it earmarked for? Is there any way to actually do what 

you are recommending here? It seems to me to be a great concept 

but very hard to accomplish, given the reality of how this place 

functions. 

Mr. CICERONE. From a university perspective, right now there is 

no such capability for pay for major facilities. So the only alternative is earmarking. So I think instead, the lack of such of a fund 

is what is causing earmarking to increase. By setting up this kind 

of an operation and potentially having it go through high-level peer 

review, I think we could prevent some of the least productive earmarking. 

Senator BINGAMAN. Well, I like the concept. I hope that that 

would be the result. I do not know that setting up an additional 

fund would prevent earmarking or be an invitation to earmarking, 

but I wanted to raise it as an issue. 

Mr. AUGUSTINE. If I might, Senator Bingaman, I believe that if 

the legislation could specify the money is to be allocated based on 

peer review, you could do a lot to insulate against earmarking. 

Senator BINGAMAN. Well, I would hope that would work. 

The CHAIRMAN. What was it he said was an answer? 

Senator BINGAMAN. He said that we could specify in the legislation that the funds within this pool of $500 million per year would 

be allocated on the basis of peer review and that would help to 

guard against earmarking, which as I say, I would love to see happen. 

On the tax incentive recommendation here, provide tax incentives for U.S.-based innovation, you talk about provision of incentives for the purchase of high-technology research and manufacturing equipment. I was fortunate to travel to India in January 

and to visit a couple of the large research facilities, centers in Bangalore, that our own U.S. companies have established; General 

Electric’s research center; the Jack Welsh center; and Intel’s new 

center. I am sure there is a whole raft of others that I did not get 

the chance to visit. 

Are there tax reasons why those are located there? My impression was that they were there because of, No. 1, the talent and, No. 

2, the cost of the talent, but primarily the availability of the talent 

was what caused them to establish those centers in those locations. 

Is there also a tax reason, as you see it? 

Mr. AUGUSTINE. I cannot speak to those specific centers, but I 

have talked to enough people and have lived in this world long 

enough to know that you don’t put facilities someplace just to have 

a view. I think there are a lot of factors that go into that decision, 

but I think you have got it right, particularly the research facility. 

The No. 1 issue is the quality of the people, and if you can get the 

highest quality people, that sort of eclipses everything else. 

26

Now, the cost of the people is obviously a major factor because 

research facilities tend to be rich in people costs. But I think that 

beyond that—and it is included in the appendix to our report—

when companies go through and look at where do we want to be 

located, they look at, for example, for a factory, the capital gains 

tax and so on. We are not competitive with much of the world. In 

places like Ireland and Singapore and India and Japan, they figured this out. And Finland, some very surprising places, have 

turned their economy, as you know, by just offering extremely attractive packages, some total tax forgiveness for a period of years. 

And that is what we have to learn to compete with. 

Senator BINGAMAN. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. 

Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Alexander. 

Senator ALEXANDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. It is getting late, but it is too exciting to quit, 

is it not? 

Senator ALEXANDER. Senator Domenici is always worried that I 

may go on for a while. 

The CHAIRMAN. I went longer than you just a little while ago and 

said less. 

Senator ALEXANDER. We are all very excited about this. Did I 

gather you said that you would be willing to work with Senator 

Domenici and Senator Bingaman to set up a technical advice follow-up group so that as we work with the committee, we can continue to get your advice? 

Mr. CICERONE. Certainly. 

Senator ALEXANDER. Let me ask you about your very interesting 

idea about a core curriculum for math and science. I want to suggest—and this is the reason that the technical advisory group 

might be good—you work with the Governors on that. Going back 

to 1997, we had the national education goals. They included math, 

science, English, history, and geography. Then under the first 

President Bush, when I was Education Secretary, we proposed creating voluntary national standards and worked in each of those 

areas to do so. I guess, getting to the bottom line, what we found 

was that we cannot impose that on the States and the local school 

districts, but it seems to me that it can be made so attractive that 

many States and school districts would want it. 

For example, if there were—and there may be—an engineering 

and science core curriculum that were approved by the National 

Academy of Sciences, just had your stamp on it—maybe that exists 

today—then Governors I think would compete to see how many 

States could adopt those statewide standards. In Maryville, Tennessee, where we think we have a great high school, we would 

probably want to say, well, we have those standards. We have the 

National Academy core curriculum. And if there were other parts 

to it, such as AP courses, as Senator Bingaman mentioned, and if 

that were integrated into a program with the national labs—in our 

case, it would be Oak Ridge. In other cases, it would be other 

ones—or certain research universities where outstanding teachers 

and students could go, I could see how, instead of imposing such 

a core curriculum, you might just create one. And it would be such 

a powerful idea that the forces that exist within our society, when 

27

combined with the efforts we are making for teachers and students, 

could within 10 years make it something every school would be embarrassed not to have. 

So what was the discussion that you all had about this core curriculum? 

Mr. AUGUSTINE. You have given a very good description of exactly what we had in mind. Our thought was to collect from around 

the Nation world-class experts in teaching and in the fields themselves to prepare a curriculum in science, technology, mathematics 

for K-12 that would be strictly voluntary, as you suggest, such that 

we were advising the Federal Government. The Federal Government obviously cannot impose this. But if it were so good, then we 

would think that States and local communities would voluntarily 

want to adopt it. And the idea of having the Governors take some 

ownership for this would be a tremendous promotion for it. 

Senator ALEXANDER. Did you find, Mr. Augustine, that this curriculum exists today at all? 

Mr. AUGUSTINE. There are pieces of it. There are pieces, but 

there really is not an integrated curriculum of the type that we 

think is needed. It is important that we have not only the curriculum but that we have standards and that we measure the 

standards. We have means of measuring them. So that would be 

our hope. 

Senator Alexander, if I might footnote this with an answer to an 

earlier question you asked about should we not be offering scholarships and encouraging foreign students more actively to come here. 

I wanted to relate an experience. 

Recently in Singapore, where I visited Biopolis, which has to be 

one of the world’s finest biological research facilities I have ever 

seen—it would make anyone in this country envious. The leader of 

that laboratory showed me a three-hole notebook he had about 2-

3 inches thick. In it were tabs for different countries: United 

States, Israel, Germany, France. He opened it up and in it on each 

page is a student, a junior in high school in that country that they 

have spotted as one of the real outstanding science/technology students coming along. And they are going to encourage them to come 

to Singapore for the last years of high school. They will pay them 

to do that. They will pay their way through college. They will pay 

them to get a Ph.D. as long as they stay at the top competitively. 

Their belief was, he said, that if you can encourage someone to 

come before they are done with high school and stay through a 

Ph.D. and you have a good job for them when they are done, they 

will probably stay. So there is no requirement that you stay. They 

just think you will. So others have tumbled your idea. We are just 

behind on this one. 

Senator ALEXANDER. Well, the Soviets used to do that with gymnasts, and Duke University does it with 8th graders. So it is a good 

recruiting tool. 

Mr. AUGUSTINE. My son-in-law played for Duke, so I will stay out 

of that. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator ALEXANDER. But, Mr. Chairman, I would conclude with 

just as you are answering our question, by saying not a lot of gobbledygook, but here are the 10 things that you need to do, then 

28

that gives policymakers, who really do not know that, a place to 

go. We are not the only ones like that. School board members are 

being elected. Governors are being elected. They all really do not 

know what to do. So if in math and science they could turn to the 

National Academy of Sciences and you could say, here is what we 

recommend you do, I think you would be astonished at how many 

people would adopt that curriculum. 

The CHAIRMAN. And they are perplexed out there. They are hungry, confused. They are put upon. I taught a little math when I was 

just a youngster. Before I went to law school, I was a math teacher 

at a junior high school. The only reason I got the job is because I 

agreed to coach baseball free. They had a lot of applicants for my 

job. It is not like today. I tell you, even then the bucks they gave 

you to teach with are just incredible. I did not know much about 

it. I never did much in education. I was a math and science guy, 

and at the end I said, well, I do not know if I want to be in a laboratory, so why do I not get an education certificate. Then they 

said, well, we will hire you if you coach baseball. That sounded 

neat. Then somebody talked me into going to law school, and that 

is how I got to where I am. 

Anyway, I want to revert back to goals. In this Energy and Natural Resource Committee, we have some innate jurisdiction because we have a lot of science. Nobody knows us as a science group. 

It could have been called that, but that was not this committee’s 

name. 

Now, we are involved, while we have this crisis that we are 

speaking of, in competitiveness and standard of living and maintenance. In fact, I would just say when we are talking, before I get 

to my point, about bringing more young people to come and live 

here, if things do not change pretty quick, they are not going to be 

interested in coming here. They are going to be interested in going 

elsewhere. There is already competition for certain kinds of students. Where students know they can come here even with our ridiculous rules, they are choosing someplace else. So that is over on 

the side. 

But let me ask on energy. I know you did not come out and recommend that we change our course on energy and go ahead and 

say we want to build this whole physical science and competitiveness challenge around a goal as big as energy independence. Talk 

about that just a minute here, each of you. I do not know what to 

do about it. I am excited and encouraged, but I am wondering. Let 

us start with you, Norm. 

Mr. AUGUSTINE. All right, Mr. Chairman. We did address the 

question of what should we build this around. I speak particularly 

to those things that affected the Department of Energy and specifically the ARPA-E proposal. It has been most of our experience that 

innovation occurs best when you are trying to solve a specific problem and not just when you go out and say I will go in the laboratory and see what I can learn. That is quite the opposite to basic 

research. So we needed some focal point for our work. As we tried 

to address what is the most important problem we could think of—

and the remarks of Chairman Greenspan just yesterday certainly 

reinforced the importance of the energy problem, if anyone ever 

questioned its importance—we felt that provided a good centerpiece 

29

for our work. As I mentioned, it also is the place that the physical 

sciences, mathematics, computer science, engineering, all tend to 

come together. Much of that is in the Department of Energy. As 

you know so well, most of the research or much of the research in 

the country today in those fields is sponsored by the Department 

of Energy. So to us it was an important problem. It was appropriate to our goal, and so it was sort of a natural focus for us. 

So if I were to say what are the two focuses, if I were limited 

to only two things about what is our effort about, the first is to create jobs for Americans and the second is to provide affordable energy. 

The CHAIRMAN. Doctor. 

Mr. CICERONE. I will just add something briefly that I think most 

people would agree that the new sources of energy and higher efficiency have become a necessity rather than just a research luxury. 

So as a focal point, I think the committee felt that there is an increasing amount of necessity here, very interdisciplinary involving 

all kinds of research and instruction at the same time. So it was 

just an appropriate focus and it will be. We may be entering a 

high-price energy future where the matter of necessity will become 

even higher. 

The CHAIRMAN. I guess what bothers me is people have thought 

for so long that it is unachievable. We pop out of the box here. We 

think we have got something exceptional by way of the dedication 

and quality and the timing. We pop out of the box and say now we 

are going to convert to energy independence. What would happen? 

Mr. CICERONE. It is also a large goal. If this situation were easy, 

I think the problem would have been solved. I think people are anticipating that the easy sources of energy have already been found 

and exploited, and now we are in for a tougher time and that is 

why it has to be part of the research agenda. 

The CHAIRMAN. How about you, Norm? Do you think it would be 

a joke? Do you think people would take it seriously? How do you 

feel? 

Mr. AUGUSTINE. My view, Mr. Chairman, would be that people 

take this terribly seriously when people pay $50 to fill their gas 

tank and it is likely they are going to pay something like that for 

quite a while. 

The CHAIRMAN. And shortages. 

Mr. AUGUSTINE. And shortages, and when you know what it implies, the instability in the world politically, I think people will 

take this very seriously. Now, how easy the problem is to solve is 

another story, but we will not solve it if we do not try. I think there 

are things that we can do. We will run out of fossil fuel energy, as 

you know. I am not qualified to say whether it is 20 years from 

now or 40 years from now, but we will run out. So we better get 

started on solving the problem. 

The CHAIRMAN. Anything else? We stand adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 4:55 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]

Æ