80 



Scoring of NSF Budget 



The NSF budget out-year figures FY 1996 to FY 2002 are from the President's 

 FY 1997 budget and are consistent with CBO scoring. 

 The figures for major NSF accounts are presented in the table below. 



PRESIDENTIAL POLICY BUDGET AUTHORITY 



Mr. Schiff. With that, I am going to ask Congressman Ehlers — 

 I am going to recognize Mr. Olver for five minutes, and then ask 

 Congressman Ehlers to chair. 



Mr. Olver. Thank you, Mr. Lane. 



I am sorry that my colleague from Texas has left. I was just 

 going to say that I don't think that you should be particularly re- 

 sponsible for the inferiority complex from which engineers suffer 

 while basking in the scientific-reflected light. 



In any case, I wanted to ask you, because we had a panel a few 

 days ago — I seem to return to this on a number of occasions — but 

 we had a panel a few days ago of key advisory panel, a Presidential 

 Advisory Panel, that suggested that we should attempt to be pre- 

 eminent in many scientific areas, but certainly world-class in all 

 scientific areas. 



We had a little bit of a discussion about what being "world-class" 

 meant and, while I do not think that we necessarily all agreed in 

 the four-member panel at that time, I think there would be general 

 agreement that being world-class meant that in a major scientific 

 area we were one of the handful, five, plus or minus one or two, 

 something like that, of the best programs in the world in that sci- 

 entific area. 



I am wondering, in the areas that you cover, the scientific and 

 research areas, are there any in which you would say we are not 

 world class? 



You can take this in a very narrow sense, I suppose, or you can 

 take it in a rather broad sense. Broadly, you can talk about geol- 

 ogy, or neuroscience, or you could take it down to fairly narrow is- 

 sues like high-speed computational capacities which we got to in a 

 hearing a day or so ago, and where the panelists at that time said 

 we are absolutely preeminent, and there is only one other place, it 

 seemed, that was world-class and in danger of making us — that 

 might be in danger — from which our preeminence might be in dan- 

 ger. 



So I guess I could ask you to answer the question with sort of 

 a broad brush. 



Dr. Lane. Mr. Olver, I have some difficulty with this distinction 

 that is being talked about. I entirely agree that, given the advance- 

 ment of science across the world, that all the major discoveries are 

 not made in this country. In fact, it was never the case that they 

 were, and that will not be the case in the future, and we should 

 feel good about that. 



