Washington. -- With little public attention or debate, one of the most important innovations of the Clinton administration -- a strikingly bigger, more aggressive federal role in promoting industrial technology -- is earmarked for oblivion in the Republican crusade to shrink government.
Is this good or bad? There's no sure answer, since the technology programs are relatively new and industrial research often takes years to produce a payoff. John Gibbons, the president's science and technology adviser, says the federal role bridges "the valley of death" between America's renowned skills in basic research and the often-neglected applied research needed for creating salable products.
Recalling the old lament about other countries first exploiting knowledge that originated in university laboratories in America, Dr. Gibbons points out that numerous high-tech industrial firms are enthusiastic about the expanded federal technology programs. He notes, too, that compared with its major industrial competitors, the U.S. is a laggard in government help for commercial research.
No matter. The economic designers of the Republican revolution contend that Washington lacks the skill for dealing with the complexities of commercial research and should back off and not squander the taxpayers' money.
The political record is foggy in this region. The Reagan administration seethingly denounced government involvement in commercial research as "industrial policy." Nonetheless, it pioneered in industrial policy by establishing and subsidizing Sematech, a research consortium of semi-conductor manufacturers. The Bush administration echoed the Reagan rhetoric while gingerly expanding research relations with industry and pledging even more if re-elected.
Bill Clinton, as candidate and president, was an emphatic technology booster, promising and delivering unprecedented sums of money for consortiums of industrial firms focused on particular research problems, as well as for expanded collaboration between government laboratories and private companies.
The legislative authority for these efforts was actually laid down over the preceding 15 years by Democratic Congresses. But, unlike his predecessors, Mr. Clinton used the authority with gusto, working up to over $1 billion a year, whereas Presidents Reagan and Bush moved cautiously and inexpensively in industrial affairs. But now the big Clinton programs are on the way to being cut down drastically, if not altogether dismantled.
In recent days, Congress has taken the first steps toward blocking the planned expenditure of over $500 million in defense money for "dual-use research," i.e., research aimed at products that can serve military and civilian needs, such as electronic components and automotive innovations.
The dual approach is needed, defense planners say, because our shrinking military establishment lacks the marketplace clout to inspire inventiveness among suppliers. Civilian markets are big and booming. Increasingly, that's where the Pentagon must look for its high-tech requirements.
The Republican budget cutters have also targeted President Clinton's other big federal venture in industrial research, the Advanced Technology Program at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. This one serves as kind of a marriage broker and partial financier for industrial research, bringing together firms to collaborate on difficult, common research problems. To assure their commitment, the firms are required to split the costs with the federal government.
The institute says the federal contribution and the sharing of costs by the firms is necessary because many of the companies are small, underfinanced and unattractive for private venture capital. Against the charge that Washington bureaucrats don't know the marketplace, the institute points out that the awards it makes -- at most a few million dollars per group of firms spread over two or three years -- are based on advice from industrial managers and researchers.
Without drawing much public attention, the program has actually been the fastest-growing budget item in the Clinton administration, rising from $68 million in 1993 to nearly $500 million proposed for the coming fiscal year. Republican-sponsored legislation is now pending to take back the program's unspent money for this year, apparently as a step toward termination.
"Too early to tell" is not the best defense for a government program. But for the industrial technology programs, it is appropriate. Though industry's enthusiasm is obviously suspect when giveaways of federal money are at stake, the "valley of death" problem cited by the president's science and technology adviser is indeed a nettlesome problem in the high-tech economy.
Good sense would seem to call for more time to judge the ultimate payoff of these efforts at innovation.
Daniel S. Greenberg is a syndicated columnist specializing in the politics of science and health.