A Member of the US House of Representatives Calls on Scientists to Fight Budget Cuts. (May 6, 2005)

    The U.S. Representative for Tennessee's Sixth Congressional District and ranking member on the House Committee on Science is Democrat Barton Jennings Gordon. The following letter is published in the May 6, 2005 issue of Science.

The funding levels requested by the Bush Administration for 2006 ("Caught in the squeeze," J. Mervis, News Focus, 11 Feb., p. 832) represent a decrease in science and technology funding across the board. This budget and its priorities do not bode well for American science and technology or for America's scientists and science students. Underfunding science and technology research and education today is short-sighted. It puts our nation's strong global standing in science and technology at risk now and in the future.

As ranking member of the U.S. House of Representative's Committee on Science (which has jurisdiction over all nondefense science research and development including the National Science Foundation), I am familiar with the realities of our country's current fiscal crisis and attempts to "remedy" that situation by cutting "lesser priorities." I assure you that some Members of Congress, including myself, are fighting to push science and technology as a priority in this and future budgets.

However, Congress cannot achieve this alone; we must have your help. Adding your voices to ours is essential in presenting a unified front in support of additional science and technology funding. In a time of necessary fiscal restraint, advocates of science must be vocal in communicating science's centrality to our nation's future. It must be clear that science is not just an academic exercise.

The current downward trend in funding can be reversed. The federal budget is not irrevocably set and can be redrawn. Researchers, students, faculty, this affects you. Write, call, e-mail, and speak on the importance of what you do for this nation's economy. Help us help you by being your own unrelenting advocates.

Bart Gordon
U.S. House of Representatives
Ford House Office Building H2-394
Washington, DC 20515, USA