Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
now afraid to back away from what, in fact, is a not very
useful but very expensive program.
I have dealt with members of Congress and the admin-
istration for many years and there are very smart people of
both parties in both places. How we got where we are on
these issues, as well as in others involving complex tech-
nical questions, can in part (I think a very big part) be
traced back to a fateful step taken by Congress itself in
, one that I have mentioned before. When the
Republicans took control of Congress in
, one of
the
first actions in what is called the Gingrich revolution
was to abolish the congressional Of
ce of Technology
Assessment (OTA). It was created in
to provide
advice to congressional committees on complex technical
issues. While OTA had become pretty slow in response
by the early
s, Congress would have been much
better off
fixing it rather than killing it. Congress now
has no source of independent technical advice to add to
what it gets from lobbyists and from reports it requests
from the National Academy of Sciences. Lobbyists have
their point of view and it is important to listen. The NAS
tends to be slow because of the rules on vetting the
appointment of members of study groups, but it will
produce a good report in
years. Timely technical
advice on important problems is needed. The techies
should not have the last word; political issues are an
essential part of decision making in a democracy, but
technical input is needed so that the politicians under-
stand the consequences of what they do. OTA is technic-
ally not dead; it just has no money for people, phones,
computers, stationery, etc. I hope it, or something like it,
is brought back to life.
.
to
