Newt Gingrich has been called a "futurist," a "policy wonk," an advocate
of adapting technology to human efficiencies, among other less
flattering descriptions. So what did he do the year he took over the
House of Representatives from the Democrats in 1995 - the so-called
Gingrich Revolution? He terminated the technical-scientific brains of
the Congress which was the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA).
The OTA from 1972 to 1995 provided Congress and the public with critical
analyses and reports of the difficult issues interfacing science,
technology, and society before Congress. When Gingrich abolished the OTA,
its total annual budget was $22 million a year - a drop in the bucket
compared to the immense Congressional budget of salaries, perks,
benefits, and pensions.
At the beginning, OTA was supported by both Democrats and Republicans.
Year after year its skilled, non-partisan staff generated many reports
as an advisory arm of Congress. With a staff of about 140 specialists,
OTA delivered over 750 public reports to its Congressional overseers,
not to mention responding to thousands of inquiries and testifying
before House and Senate Committees.
OTA had to tackle subjects that were very controversial, especially in
corporate lobbying circles. They did studies on defensive medicine that
the hospital-medical lobby did not like, on access to public buses by
people with disabilities that Greyhound did not welcome, on the auto
industry that displeased General Motors, and on climate change that the
fossil-fuel industry (oil, coal and gas) did not approve. Get the idea?
When the Gingrich-Republican darker ages took over Capitol Hill, the
princes of darkness determined that they did not want to know what OTA
knew. They did not want their corporate masters to be impeached by an
arm of their Congress. Too much credibility there.
It didn't even matter that many of OTA reports were exceedingly
important but not directly addressed to some industrial or commercial
derelictions. For example, given the Katrina debacle, wouldn't OTA have
been more than a little relevant alerting Congress from time to time to
its January 1980 report titled U.S. Disaster Assistance to Developing
Countries: Lessons Applicable to U.S. Domestic Disaster Programs?
OTA, under the leadership of physicist Jack Gibbons, became such a
trusted and professional organization that representatives from some 25
countries visited the agency to learn from its example in 1983 alone.
The parliaments of the United Kingdom and Germany established similar
science/technology advisory bodies.
After Gingrich disbanded the OTA, M. Granger Morgan, professor and head
of the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon
University wrote: "Congress had 'chosen' ignorance, and ended the
23-year history of its best and smallest agency."
It is time to reinstate the Enlightenment for a Congress besieged as
never before with decisions regarding genetic engineering, missile
defense, privacy, citizen surveillance, nanotechnology, stagnant
automotive technology, global warming and many other perils and promises.
Congressman Rush Holt (D-New Jersey), a scientist from Princeton,
introduced legislation to start up a similar Center for Science and
Technology Assessment in the form of an amendment to H.R. 4755 in July
2004. It did not make it, receiving 115 yes votes to 252 no votes. In my
judgment, roughly one third of Congress right now, without any added
persuasion or outside mobilization, would vote for such a capability.
So imagine if the leaders of the scientific and engineering worlds
organized themselves to mount a greatly needed effort in Congress.
Imagine the heads of our leading universities like MIT and CalTech,
along with scores of Nobel Prize winners and heads of prominent
foundations bestirring themselves, along with people who were prominent
in OTA years ago. Some of these people are close to influential
political figures. It would happen. And not a day too soon.
To sample the OTA Reports, go to http://www.wws.princeton.edu/ota.
To join this effort to reinstate OTA, write to OTA Reborn at PO Box
19312, Washington, DC 20036.
###
