Condition of Federal Laboratories: Hearing Before the Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, One Hundred Third Congress, First Session, September 23, 1993 (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Condition of Federal Laboratories: Hearing Before the Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, One Hundred Third Congress, First Session, September 23, 1993

The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m., in room SD-628, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Honorable PaulS. Sarbanes (Chairman of the Committee) presiding.

Present: Senator Sarbanes.

Also present: William Buechner, Richard Clinch, Lawrence Hunter, Ed Hutchings, professional staff members.

Opening Statement Of Senator Sarbanes, Chairman

Senator Sarbanes. The Committee will come to order.

I would inform the witnesses that the Senate is in session and we may be interrupted with votes from time to time, in which case we will simply have to recess the Committee for purposes of voting and then resume as promptly as we can.

This morning, the Joint Economic Committee is meeting to examine the deteriorating physical condition of federal scientific laboratories across the country. The hearing will focus and, in a sense, take its impetus from a new General Accounting Office report being released today, entitled, "Federal Research: Aging Federal Laboratories Need Repairs and Upgrades."

The federal labs conduct much of the research and development that helps keep the United States at the cutting edge of science and technology. They account for one quarter of the Federal Governments budget for research and development and one tenth of all research and development done in this country. And a higher percentage has, in a sense, been basic research and development.

In Maryland, to take an example dear and close to my heart, we have some of the nations finest and most important research labs; for example, the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. But all of them require significant upgrading.

According to this mornings GAO report, a number of the federal labs are in a distressing state of disrepair.

For example, at Wright Laboratories at the Wright-Paterson Air Force Base in Ohio, where the Defense Department conducts important defense research, the only way scientists could protect equipment from a 10-year leaking roof was to build a second building inside the first with its own roof and sides to enclose the equipment and protect it from the rain. That is illustrated in the pictures from the Wright Lab in Dayton, Ohio.

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