Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton vowed to end President Bush’s “war on science” and delved into wonky policy details in a plan for research that she released today.
Senator Clinton, who is seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination in the 2008 presidential election, said she would rescind President Bush’s restrictions on embryonic-stem-cell research. She would also ban political appointees from altering the scientific conclusions in government reports on global warming and other topics. Some scholars argue that many presidents have manipulated scientific findings for political ends. But considerable evidence exists that the scale of interference under Mr. Bush’s tenure, on climate change and other topics, has been unprecedented.
Ms. Clinton would re-establish the president’s science adviser to a rank of “assistant to the president.” Outsiders interpreted the Bush administration’s decision to downgrade the position from that status as a sign that the president didn’t value scientific advice. Senator Clinton would also urge Congress to re-establish its Office of Technology Assessment, which a Republican-led Congress terminated in 1995 as unnecessary.
She called for a $50-billion “Strategic Energy Fund” to develop technologies to promote conservation, combat global warming, and reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil. She didn’t propose how to pay for it.
In another departure from President Bush, she proposed to replace aging satellites that monitor climate change and are about to stop operating. She also called for “a balanced strategy of robust human spaceflight, expanded robotic spaceflight, and enhanced space-science activities.” Doing all of that would require a major increase in NASA’s $15-billion budget, but she didn’t say how much.
To expand research and science education to enhance America’s global economic competitiveness, she proposed a 50-percent increase for the National Institutes of Health. In June, she called for a more-modest increase for the National Science Foundation.
To date, Senator Clinton has made more-detailed proposals for science than have the other Democratic contenders. All share her position on stem-cell research.
She was scheduled to give a speech about her proposal today at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, a nonprofit organization that supports scientific research.
