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universities and are then turned over to the universities. As Dr. 

 Savage has indicated, universities are now hiring high-priced lob- 

 bying firms to win congressional appropriations. So the pressure 

 for earmarking for facilities is coming not only from Congress, but 

 from the universities as well. 



In the absence of a strategic national facilities plan, there really 

 is very little reason to resist this trend to earmarking. It's the only 

 game in town. 



Now, in addition to these specific problems, there's a more gen- 

 eral systematic problem: Cash invested in a facility is not available 

 to invest in a research or teaching program. So every time we make 

 a decision to make a capital investment in bricks and mortar, we're 

 making a tradeoff between doing that and an operational invest- 

 ment in research and teaching. Additionally, once this capital in- 

 vestment is made, you then need an operating budget to operate 

 this new facility. It's got to be maintained, it's got to be heated, 

 you've got to put people in it. And in a time when USDA operating 

 funds are not increasing and, in fact, may well be decreasing, those 

 new operating funds for these facilities have to come fi*om some- 

 where, and where they're coming from is programs. 



This erosion of base and competitive programs that is going on 

 is a very serious problem and one that the UAB has commented 

 on several times in the past few years. We see no mechanism in 

 place to allow these tradeoff choices to be made on the basis of any 

 strategic plan or policy. 



So what are we recommending? We're recommending two things: 

 First, that a national strategic plan for science and education be 

 prepared. This would lay out what the high priority goals of the 

 science and education system are and how facilities closings, main- 

 tenance, and construction will support those goals. What we need, 

 we think, is what we call in industry a participation strategy. We 

 need to take a look at ever5^hing the USDA is doing. It's the 

 board's opinion that the USDA is trying to do too many things. 

 They simply don't have the resources to adequately support all the 

 things they're trying to do. Priority-setting decisions must be based 

 on those critical things that absolutely must be done, and then 

 fund those programs to full capacity to ensure that we succeed at 

 them. We then need to look at the programs that are at the bottom 

 of that priority list and cut them completely. 



With that plan in hand, we are then reiterating our call for a na- 

 tional external peer review panel. This panel would serve the Sec- 

 retary of Agriculture and the Congress and provide evaluations of 

 current and proposed facilities and how well they would fit with 

 the strategic plan. Its members would be appointed by the Sec- 

 retary of Agriculture, with recommendations fi"om the chairmen 

 and ranking members of the Senate and House Agriculture Com- 

 mittees, the National Academy of Sciences, and other user, aca- 

 demic, and agriculture industry organizations. It would be com- 

 posed of individuals fi*om both the public and private sector with 

 expertise in science, engineering, management, research and devel- 

 opment, and technology transfer. 



Details of this panel and the procedures and processes it would 

 use are in my written testimony. The end result would be an inde- 

 pendent review process which evaluated how well proposed invest- 



