First Hearing on DOE Office of Energy Research Budget Request
First Hearing on DOE Office of Energy Research Budget Request It has been a little over a month since the Clinton Administration sent Congress its FY 1998 budget request. A hearing last week of the House Energy and Environment Subcommittee provides a first indication - mostly favorable, with some notable exceptions - of likely congressional reaction to the DOE Office of Energy Research budget request.
This hearing, summarized in part in FYI #37 , was one of a series the House Science Committee is having on the budget, new subcommittee chairman Ken Calvert (R-CA) explained, “to keep one step ahead of the appropriators.” Calvert, first elected in 1992, is a fairly moderate Republican who represents California’s 43rd district, which includes Riverside.
Calvert began the hearing by commending Office of Energy Research (ER) Director Martha Krebs for her success in showing the administration “the error of their ways” about the size of ER’s budget. He went on to say that he had concerns about an advance appropriation for the Large Hadron Collider, and in a play-on-words, said that ITER had “eaten-up” a large portion of the fusion budget. Overall, Calvert felt there was support for most ER programs.
Rep. Tim Roemer (D-IN), who will most likely be the subcommittee’s ranking Democrat, stressed the importance of DOE in the conduct of basic research, and noted the department’s support of physics research. He said the subcommittee would pay “a great deal of attention” to such programs. Roemer expressed concern about problems internal and external to DOE in major systems acquisitions costing $100 million or more.
Krebs, summarizing her written testimony, characterized increases in the ER request as “modest,” and as an investment on a par with other federal science programs. She said DOE is “moving ahead with our share” for the Large Hadron Collider, and is “proceeding with the restructuring of fusion.” The “U.S. should be there” for both the LHC and ITER, she explained.
Calvert’s first question was about alleged “fatal flaws” in ITER’s design. Krebs described DOE’s review process, a response that seemed to satisfy Calvert. The chairman also asked about the department’s funding of alternative fusion projects, and appeared satisfied with Krebs’s reply. He was less happy with the prospect of advance funding of $394 million for the LHC, citing the $2 billion clean coal program that was so funded and ran into difficulties.
In response to Rep. George Brown (D-CA), Krebs predicted that LHC funding would fit into a flat budget. This is not true of the National Spallation Neutron Source, she said. When asked if DOE might consider a different location than Oak Ridge for this facility, Krebs described it as the “preferred site.”
Following Brown, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) asked his series of questions about the LHC, summarized in FYI #37 . Roemer was up next, asking what was being done to stop “what could be a free fall” of the fusion program, that has been cut about 1/3. He also asked Krebs, who outlined DOE’s restructuring of the fusion program, how money from the shutdown of a major Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory facility will be spent -- a matter not completely settled.
The second half of the hearing received testimony from Victor S. Rezendes of the General Accounting Office. He described deficiencies in DOE’s major system acquisitions process, which led Calvert to ask about what he termed the “arbitrary” decision to site the National Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge. Rezendes did not offer a firm opinion about this. He did say that the B-Factory “is looking pretty good,” but had a decidedly less favorable opinion about DOE’s strategy of keeping the same contractors for 35 years+ for the management of its facilities. He cited the University of California’s management of some DOE labs as an example.
Later this spring, the House Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee will start making decisions about the actual FY 1998 Office of Energy Research budget.
