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INSIDE THE BELTWAY A Washington Analysis Congressional Science Budget : Still Time for Last-Minute Action
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Cárdenas Corbo, Joel Christopher DeHoyas, Amado Gabriel Dyer, Ryan Elliff, Stephen Andrew Grijalva, D. Lopez, Laura Ann Lowe, D. R. Merrick, William Francis Walker Rapoport, Benjamin I. Rivero, Richard Louis Boctor Fernandez, Elizabeth Rose López-Yglesias, Xerxes Orin, A. E. Robbins, Elizabeth Ann Rojas, Ricardo Santos, Aaron T. Sosa, J. R. Martha |
| Abstract | See TASK FORCE on page 3 See BELTWAY on page 2 © 20 00 P au l D lu go ke nc ky “Alabama casts twenty-four votes for Underwood!” That’s how the roll call began at the Democratic National Convention. The year was 1924, and Senator Oscar W. Underwood was Alabama’s favorite son. For 102 ballots, the convention remained deadlocked, until John W. Davis of West Virginia emerged as the compromise candidate. Several months later, Davis went down to a resounding defeat at the hands of Calvin Coolidge. Those were the days was when conventions meant something, when the results were in doubt, and families listened raptly to the radio to find out whom the parties would select as their standard bearers. Today, the presidential candidates are chosen months before the conventions, making the quadrennial extravaganzas little more than infomercials, carefully crafted to set the stage for the upcoming elections. The same can be said for most of the activity in Washington in a presidential election year. Campaign politics and posturing swamp any wisp of policy making. Consider what’s been happening this year. High on the issues list for Harry and Louise, according to recent polls, are education, Social Security and Medicare. But the odds are nil that Congress and the White House will deal substantively with any of them. Instead, both political parties are pressing their separate versions of a “Patient’s Bill of Rights” and prescription drug reform, with little hope of agreement. And both are hyping tax cuts and defense spending, with Democrats arguing for smaller changes and Republicans pushing for bigger ones. These are some of the wedge issues, which each party is seeking to turn to its own electoral benefit. And with both houses of Congress now up for grabs, each party is pursuing even the smallest potential advantage. On such a political landscape, it’s no surprise that science has slipped below the horizon. The good news, so far on Capitol Hill, is that neither party is gunning for it. The bad news is that neither party is touting it. The budget process began last February with great expectations for science. The President submitted a request that featured major INSIDE THE BELTWAY |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200008/upload/aug00.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
