129 



Mr. Mahoney. There was a great deal of discussion on the panel 

 on that topic. The attractiveness of sharing costs and the experi- 

 ence and expertise. But recognizing that in some areas, we want 

 to preserve the added value of the United States for competitive 

 reasons. 



There are any number of places where you wouldn't do that. And 

 the parallels to industry are obvious. There's a lot of sharing that 

 goes on. But, in some cases, where it is to your absolute advantage, 

 then you want to kind of keep that to yourself, if possible. 



Ms. McCarthy. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chair- 

 man. 



Chairman Walker. Thank you very much. 



Ms. Johnson? She's not here. Mr. Roemer? 



Mr. Roemer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 



I'd just like to start by coming back to the overall definition of 

 what we're trying to accomplish today. 



In your report, which I have right here, you say that you're rec- 

 ommending a federal science and technology budget be sufficient to 

 allow the US to achieve pre-eminence in a select number of sci- 

 entific and technical fields and to perform at world-class level. 



So you're sajdng pre-eminence in a select number of scientific 

 and technical fields and a world-class level in other major fields. 



To what degree was there disagreement and to what degree was 

 there consensus on a level of funding that would allow us to 

 achieve these two very, very high goals? 



And what is that level of funding? 



Dr. Press. This goes back to Mr. Brown's question as well. It 

 goes back to my own service in the government when the director 

 of 0MB would say to me all the time, how do you scientists know 

 when you have enough money? 



There's no good way, there's no easy way of doing that. But this 

 criteria of operating at the world's level in all fields and being as 

 good, and being the best in a few very important fields, it's an im- 

 perfect way, but it's the only way we've thought of to this point, 

 of how you might arrive at that kind of figure, of how much is 

 enough, because that opens up the possibility of comparing what 

 you're doing with other countries. 



You can get people together and say, how is the United States 

 performing in material sciences compared to Japan and Western 

 Europe. 



That's a very important field. 



Mr. Roemer. But let me come back to that. 



Dr. Press. And these people would know. They would know the 

 answer to that. And if they say, we're losing our advantage or we're 

 mfssing out in key areas, we would know that that budget needs 

 touching up. 



You see, it's that sort of way. 



Mr. Roemer. Now would you argue, Dr. Press, that that is being 

 eroded right now? According to page 64 of your report, you have 

 a graph looking at the GDP of the funding levels from the United 

 States, Japan and Germany. And the United States is starting to 

 dip — it starts to dip before 1995, obviously. But the downward 

 trend looks to be something that is very disconcerting to the rec- 

 ommendations that you make in this report. 



