desirable form of H.R. 35, and to arrange for Federal support of graduate research education along the lines proposed in the first annual report of the National Science Board. Finally, should no reorganization of Federal science supporting and conducting agencies occur, no problem is more acute than bringing the appropriation to the NSF to the level of about a billion dollars per year as soon as possible. Under those circumstances, many of the difficulties and problems to which proposals for reorganization are addresssed could then be solved by the activities and programs of NSF itself. As I noted, I recognize that many of my colleagues are apprehensive with respect to an amalgamated science support structure simply on the grounds that the consolidated enterprise would receive less financial support than would its fragmented components. However, this is a classic instance of the aphorism which states. that, in human affairs, the urgent always seems to have priority over the important. In the long term, it is essential and inevitable that an amalgamated research and education agency of the Federal Government be brought into being, a circumstance which will not be without awkwardness and difficulty as regards the committee structure of the Congress. If temporarily, reorganization also engenders a small degree of fiscal trauma-the operational word is small-the fact remains that over historic time such an agency would be in a better position to assure that science and the technology it makes possible are appropriately supported and managed so as to make maximal contribution to the welfare of the American people. Thank you for the privilege and opportunity to be with you this morning. Mr. DADDARIO. Thank you, Dr. Handler. Mr. WINN. No questions. Mr. DADDARIO. Mr. Cabell? Mr. CABELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Handler, in view of the recognition of the necessity of multidisciplined research activities-and I think all agencies doing research today do have that concept of the multidiscipline-do you not feel that unless some vertical organization is forthcoming and in the reasonably near future, that all we will have will be an escalation and an enlargement of the horizontal growth to where every agency that today is involved will have a complete multidisciplinary establishment of its own? Dr. HANDLER. Mr. Cabell, the alternative is a single Federal agency to do everything, which is I think not acceptable. Mr. CABELL. Well, I won't go quite that far. You are taking a more logical approach, I think, a softer approach, rather than just one supra-agency. Dr.HANDLER. Yes. Mr. CABELL. My thrust is that unless we do work toward a little more vertical development, the horizontal development will just get completely out of hand. Dr. HANDLER. Well, I think that that is the task of the Congress, to balance out these structures. What I have asked is that we have an adequate horizontal arrangement and that what we call "mission agen cies," the current vertical structures which understand their social purposes and have to arrange to attain their missions, be adequately manned. The other problem is where the bottom of that vertical structure should be I think, and how to arrange a Federal horizontal structure. Mr. CABELL. Well, in reading some of the testimony and hearing some of it, I find that those who are agency related recognize that this vertical organization is highly necessary for all the agencies but their own. Dr. HANDLER. Yes. Well, I tried to steer a middle course, I think, sir. Mr. CABELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. DADDARIO. Dr. Handler, you and others have set a goal for funding so far as the National Science Foundation is concerned of billion dollars a year. How are we going to accomplish this, taking into consideration the competition that exists under the present organization of mission oriented agencies, in particular with the National Science Foundation in the area of fundamental research and in many instances fundamental research not associated with missions? Dr. HANDLER. My assumption, sir, was that as our expenditures for Vietnam subside, there will be some money available for domestic social purposes. But as we do this, as the opportunities to increase total Federal support of science and applied science reappear and the Congress feels so minded, then the growth of the NSF budget in this regard would be disproportionate as compared to that of other agencies. I am not suggesting in any sense that we take funds away from other agencies as we do this. As funds become more available, we should grow the NSF disproportionately for some years. Mr. DADDARIO. Shouldn't we learn from the time in which we find ourselves, where all agencies being under the financial gun there is a more harmonious relationship between these agencies and many of them do look to the National Science Foundation to do its basic research. The Department of Defense and the AEC have, because they find themselves in this position, transferred something in the area of $19 million to the National Science Foundation. Dr. HANDLER. Not money. They have only transferred activities. Dr. HANDLER. Yes, sir. Mr. DADDARIO. Without the moneys I would expect that when the time came when moneys were more available, that unless we were to come to some understanding about how our science matters were to be organized you would recede back to the point where the competition for funds not being so great, these agencies would fight harder for additional fundamental research activity. Dr. HANDLER. I think they should do just that. But the actions at least of the Defense Department aren't entirely based on budgetary restrictions. In considerable measure that was a policy decision. The Office of Naval Research, as I understand it, as a matter of policy decided that the field of high energy physics as it now exists really is so remote from ONR's proper missions that it cannot justify the support of that scientific field. That is a policy statement. Mr. DADDARIO. Yes, but it came to that policy statement at a time when it was under the financial gun. Dr. HANDLER. That sharpened its decision undoubtedly. Mr. DADDARIO. The policy statement prior to that time was it would do this work. Dr. HANDLER. My point is that we have seen the same thing in many agencies in these last few years. When they confronted the budgetary stringencies which were restrictive they had to assign their own internal priorities in science; the field of science most remote from the mission is the one that got the short shrift. And I suppose that, had I been director of a mission agency, that is precisely what I would do. You in the Congress would look to that director to see that he accomplished his goals for society, and those programs which relate to the agency's mission at the turn of the century or in 1985 are the ones which could subside for a year or two-is certainly the decision he must take. Again, the urgent drives out the important. But it seems to me there ought to be one agency to which the Congress can look and understand that its goals are always about tomorrow, and it is always building a platform with which all other agencies and American society in an unforeseeable future will be strengthened. That is the role of the NSF and should be the role of the new agency in very large measure. Just as it is of the Office of Education which produces tomorrow's citizens. Mr. DADDARIO. Obviously this committee should look at this activity even if no organization were to occur as a result of these hearings. The way in which fundamental research is being conducted and the transfer of this from one agency to another is by itself a very important problem. Dr. HANDLER. Yes. Mr. DADDARIO. Dr. Handler, the National Academy of Sciences has conducted several studies in various disciplines, chemistry, physics, astronomy, and others and their need for support. As we look at priorities and we try to come to some judgment about how we should choose amongst these priorities in the various disciplines, what should be our approach? We presently have a committee on discipline comprised of practitioners in that discipline who recommend the funds for that particular discipline. I wonder if somewhere in the overall planning we should not determine some way through which we have an opportunity to have an overview of this activity in all of the disciplines to see if we can come to some judgment beyond that of what ought to be in each discipline, but how can we establish priorities amongst all of them. Dr. HANDLER. Well, as you know quite well, this is the one question with which the scientific community has had the greatest trouble in coming to grips. We can set goals for internal priorities within a discipline. We find it very difficult to make the apple and orange comparison between disciplines. But in point of fact, that kind of thinking does go on all the time. It happens in the Office of Science and Technology. It certainly happens in the annual exercise of preparing the budget request for the National Science Foundation. NSF is the one agency which deals with all aspects of science, and it has to decide, within what it hopes for its appropriation in a given year, where to put its resources. Now, to some extent that consists of "listening for the squeaky wheels" and providing funds to wherever the clamor has been greatest most recently. But not entirely. For example, the buildup of funds for the support of chemistry has come as a result of recognition that there is no single Federal "mission agency" which bears a 1-to-1 relationship to chemistry itself. It isn't the basis of the activities for some other Federal agency. On the other hand, fundamental research in chemistry, largely in the universities, is the basis for what is now the $40 billion per year chemical industry. And so NSF takes it upon itself, with that as a consideration, to strengthen chemistry. Allocations for the support of physics were made in the light of knowledge of what was going on at the Atomic Energy Commission and other physics supporting agencies, and so forth. The programs within the life sciences which NSF is supporting are managed in full understanding of what the Department of Agriculture and HEW are doing. So to some extent, inside NSF there has been this kind of balancing decision with respect to priorities, decisions which are never black and white. Nothing in this system is wrong; it is just that some things are more right than others at a given time. To explain the basis for those decisions would be extremely difficult even after they have been made. You would be hard put to explain precisely what you did, why it is that you arranged to distribute funds as you have. In some areas it is a very simple thing to do. In areas of big science, priority setting can be relatively easy. You decide to buy a big telescope or you do not. That is a single, overt decision arrived at by considering the needs of astronomy and of all of science, and much simpler than deciding how much more money to put into systematic biology, where there never is a big step function in the funding, Yet we have done fairly well, I think. When considering whether to fund another 150-inch optical telescope, we know that the funds are going to come out of the totality of the rest of the program and can predict the consequences. So NSF really does, in-house, engage in the kind of exercise which you are discussing. Yet again, I must confess that a restrospective justification of the precise allocation of its resources in any one year would be very hard indeed. There is no discipline which we would choose to shut off, nor is there any discipline to which we would allocate all our resources. There has to be some place in between which is rational. And that derives from the educational requirements of the Nation, the requirements of the Nation for new knowledge, the requirements of the Nation for new trained people. Some decisions are much more difficult. Let's say there are 25 universities, each of which would like a new 40-inch telescope. But we already have numbers of 40-inch telescopes. Given the current number of 40-inch telescopes, we can learn as much astronomy as we can with any larger number of 40-inch telescopes. It would just take longer. On the other hand, a new 200-inch, fully instrumented telescope might cost as much as all those 40-inchers, but it has one other prop erty, and that is that we can learn something we cannot conceivably learn with any number of 40-inchers. And that is a perplexing, hard internal decision. The National Science Board, at one point, went on record as saying that, when the opportunity is there, we should in every instance go for the acquisition of a new capability which would permit us to do something that simply isn't doable with current capabilities. That is an internal ground rule which we have occasionally used for ourselves. Mr. DADDARIO. You get to the point where you have to make another decision under that set of facts, too, don't you? If you were to build a 200-inch rather than the 40-inch telescope because it would do much more for you, then you get into the area of making determinations about national laboratories and the way in which the universities then give up doing what they have been doing in this area and sort of feed off of the national laboratory. Dr.HANDLER. That is correct. Mr. DADDARIO. As we have done at Brookhaven and other places. Dr. HANDLER. That is correct. Mr. DADDARIO. That is part of the organizational process. Dr. HANDLER. Right. Mr. DADDARIO. Dr. Handler, you talk about the failure of science. support to increase in a series of places where you believe organization can be improved. I wonder if the way in which we get additional science support is through a better organization and as a result of a better organization, a better way to prepare requests or to present requests so they would be better understood by the public, by the Congress. So that we could get the kind of support which they are presently not getting. This is one of the points that Dr. Wenk raised. Dr. HANDLER. With respect to the American public, the proposed new organization might well provide opportunity for a wider appreciation of the nature and great importance of Federal support of science. And we should spare no effort in so doing. With respect to the Congress, that is a political judgment which I am not particularly competent to answer. An additional $100 million in support of research in physics is relatively easily lost in the budget of the Department of Defense, and would loom like a mountain if put on top of the NSF appropriations, for example. Mr. DADDARIO. You can always put the $19 million in that category, couldn't you? Dr. HANDLER. You can. It was trivial in the life of the Department of Defense. It was, as you know, just an enormous source of confusion and difficulty for NSF. But I really think that is a political decision and would prefer to put the question back with you, sir. Mr. DADDARIO. Well, in the final analysis, yes, it is. But the political decisions are allowed to be brought about in the most positive way as a result of the ability to get advice so that this political decision. can be made. The ability to organize; to have this organization better understood; to see where the various disciplines are going; to understand which ones ought to be supported and to what extent, and which are subject to interdisciplinary relationships aimed at not only under |