In 1995 , Congressional Republicans shut down the Office of Technology Assessment . For 23 years , this agency had published reports that provided legislator with nonpartisan analysis of scientific discipline and engineering issue . Last week , Rep. Rush Holt ( D - NJ ) tried to reopen the representation with minimal funding .
He neglect .
The legislation — aproposed amendmentto the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act that would have provided $ 2.5 million for the Office of Technology Assessment ( OTA ) — was defeat in the House by a 248 - 164 suffrage , with 217 Republicans opposing and 155 Democrats plump for .
Holt , a former research physicist , has been a longtime exponent of reopening the office . In a recentpress release , he noted :
OTA was an agency dedicate to serve Congress . When Newt Gingrich came to power in the 1990s , he obviate OTA to cut cost . But this turn out to be a goosy move , as OTA had always saved taxpayer far more money than it be . An OTA bailiwick on Agent Orange , for instance , helped keep the government $ 10 million . Another report recommended change in data processor systems at the Social Security Administration that keep more than $ 350 million . Studies on the Synthetic Fuels Corporation serve preserve tens of one thousand million of dollars .
Although in ending OTA Gingrich articulate Congress could get help elsewhere , that has n’t worked . When OTA shut down , technical topics did not become less relevant to the study of Congress . They just became less understood . And scientific thinking lost its toehold on Capitol Hill , with worrisome consequences for the way Congress approaches all issues — not just those that are explicitly scientific .
The Rise and Fall of an Agency
Congress created the Office of Technology Assessment in 1972 , at a time of mounting public concern over pollution , nuclear push , pesticide , and other technology - cause chance . OTA was conceive as an in - sign of the zodiac think tank that would help Congress fact - deterrent technical claims made by the various expert agencies of the executive branch ( such as the EPA and the Department of Defense ) , while also forecasting coming technical quandaries . A twelve - member board , comprise of six members of Congress from each party , sanction each OTA task , to avail control the agency ’s objectiveness .
Over the year , OTA produced some 750 reports and assessment on topics ranging from global climate change to the truth of polygraph . The studies were extremely regarded for their ability to interpret complex science - speak into approachable prose . The composition were made available to the general public as well as Congress , and were often Government Printing Office best sellers . Other countries , including the UK and Germany , copy the U.S. example , establishing their own versions of OTA .
The first rumblings of Congressional discontent emerged in the 1980s , when OTA print reports raising dubiousness about the technological feasibility of the Reagan administration ’s Strategic Defense Initiative . In a 1985assessment , OTA concluded that SDI ’s goal of protecting the integral U.S. universe from a nuclear attack would be “ impossible to achieve if the Soviets are compulsive to deny it to us . ” Three years later on , another OTAreportwarned that SDI would digest a significant fortune of “ catastrophic unsuccessful person ” due to software glitches .
Those reports did n’t win friends among conservatives . And , when Newt Gingrich initiated the shutdown of OTA in 1995 , some in Washington referred to it as “ Reagan ’s Revenge . ” A 2001 remark by Gingrich , explaining the understanding OTA was kill , pretty much said it all : “ We perpetually feel scientist who thought what they were saying was not right . ” Meanwhile , other Carry Nation shook their heads in incredulity . “ That the leave technological state of matter in the globe , a democracy like us , should have abolished its own main way of popular assessment go away us aghast,”wroteLord Kennet , who create the OTA - inspired European Parliamentary Technology Assessment web .
In anarticlerecounting the history of the agency , science journalist Chris Mooney discover :
In defending his party ’s dismantling of OTA , Gingrich has advocate what one might call a “ gratis market ” approach to scientific and technical expertness . In the Speaker ’s sentiment , extremity of Congress should take the initiative to call individual scientist and inform themselves , much as Gingrich himself did … . “ Gingrich ’s view was always , ‘ I ’ll position up one - on - one interaction between members of Congress and key appendage of the scientific community , ' ” recall Bob Palmer , former Democratic faculty director of the House Committee on Science . “ Which I thought was entirely bizarre . I mean , who come up with these masses , and who settle they ’re experts , and what member of Congress really wants to do that ? ”
But caliber scientific advice call for an institutional structure and consistent procedures and methodologies behind it ; it ca n’t but be privatized … .With OTA gone , Gingrich ’s troops did n’t waver to call down their own favored expert to weaken the scientific mainstream in hearings devoted to subjects such as ozone depletion and global warming . The plan of attack came as the unexampled Republican legal age sought to free up the market in another fashion as well – by ramming through a major “ regulatory reform ” bill that would have prescribed inflexible and inflexible linguistic rule governing the manipulation of science to protect public health and the surround .
This is not the first meter that Holt has tried to resurrect the agency , and hesaysthat he ’ll keep trying this year , work with colleagues in the Senate . “ backing OTA would be a minimal expense that would pay off many time over by obviate foolish or wasteful policy , ” he says . “ Decisions made in ignorance are costly . ”
A over archive of OTA ’s written report are usable online atPrinceton Universityand at theFederation of American Scientists .
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