11 



I figured the 13 years I was CEO of MONSANTO, were times of 

 fiscal constraint every year, that you've got to get your arms 

 around the whole program of R&D, to spend the money wisely, not 

 pulling it up by the roots every week to see if it's still growing, but 

 at least looking at it on a periodic basis. And that would give the 

 very best chance of spending money wisely on what is always a 

 very chancy undertaking. 



And I fully support the peer review programs. I have been as- 

 tounded, sometimes shocked, when we've asked outsiders to look at 

 what I thought were fabulously well run programs, and they made 

 wonderful recommendations, including sometimes recommending 

 killing one of the chairman's favorite projects. 



At the same time, I realize that the Executive and Legislative 

 branches are not corporations. There are obviously all kinds of in- 

 terests that you have to deal with, all kinds of funding sources at 

 the federal level and quite different oversight responsibilities than 

 I had as CEO. 



But, at the same time, we're more alike than not in R&D objec- 

 tives. 



We want great science, leadership science. We want positive re- 

 sults for our constituencies in the nation. And we want cost-effec- 

 tive processes and especially performance. 



I believe that our core recommendations do that, especially the 

 idea of setting priorities and looking at the whole program at least 

 on an annual basis. 



And however untidy the process becomes in doing that, and it's 

 far easier for a CEO to do it in a confined corporation, I support 

 the idea that it must be done in some format if you want to spend 

 the money wisely. 



We've suggested a framework to do that, but it's only a frame- 

 work. It says, start in the Executive Branch and then bring it to 

 the Congress as a whole with proposed priorities and rationale for 

 those priorities. Then Congress would make overall judgments of 

 suitability, balance, and all the other considerations that you have 

 to make and you need to be satisfied with, and then pass it out to 

 the various committees and subcommittees for their deliberations, 

 all the while having some sort of a feedback mechanism to see that 

 the end result, the science and technology budgets and programs, 

 generally meet the original concepts and the general agreements. 



So look at the whole against a set of opportunities. 



I suppose when you say that fast, it sounds awfully easy and I 

 know it isn't. But what we're suggesting is that this is as good a 

 time to start as any. And frankly, as I looked at the deliberations 

 of the panel, it struck me and it struck many others that there is 

 a hidden blessing in constraints because it makes you look at 

 things with a fresh look. 



It makes you look, once and for all, at the processes that have 

 grown up and crusted up and have been patched together over dec- 

 ades and decades — admirable results, but this is as good a time as 

 any to have a look. 



If that much got down, the pulling it together at one time for a 

 single look, and using some of the review screens that we proposed, 

 I believe all of us on the panel would feel that our time was well 

 spent. 



