The Trump administration plans to drastically overhaul the country’s approach to scientific research, including shifting research funding away from universities toward individual researchers and private companies, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios told lawmakers Wednesday.
Speaking during a House Science, Space, and Technology Committee hearing on July 22, Kratsios shared with lawmakers a recent report the administration published, dubbed Science: A New Golden Age, which lays out the administration’s new approach to scientific research.
The White House released the report on July 21, calling it “the first comprehensive rethinking of the U.S. science and technology enterprise in over 80 years.”
The report revisits the federal science model established by Vannevar Bush’s landmark 1945 report, Science: The Endless Frontier, which laid the foundation for a system in which the federal government funds basic research, universities conduct it, and private companies commercialize the resulting technologies.
Kratsios argued the existing federal research model has “slowed the pace of scientific discovery in the United States” and said it should be fundamentally restructured.
“First, the U.S. research ecosystem should prioritize individual scientists over legacy institutions. Too much of our research enterprise has come to serve itself rather than the scientists within it,” he said. “By supporting a broader range of performers, including a new generation of mission-driven research organizations, we expand our scientific horizons.”
Kratsios also called for reforms to how federal research funding is allocated, distributed, and evaluated.
“Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, the government can deploy more flexible types of grants, including fast-track grants, long horizon grants, and new mechanisms that allow reviewers to champion radically unconventional proposals,” he said.
Republican committee members broadly endorsed the administration’s proposal.
“After years in which Washington too often measured success by dollars obligated rather than by results achieved, this administration has begun to refocus the federal research enterprise on excellence, accountability, and outcomes,” said Committee Chair Brian Babin, R-Texas.
Rep. April McClain Delaney, D-Md., argued universities remain central to the nation’s research enterprise and cautioned against shifting federal funding away from them.
These individual scientists, she explained, “couldn’t do their jobs without the infrastructure available to them on campus.” She said the report ignores the fact that “universities play a vital role in the nation’s research ecosystem” and is trying to change “too much, too quickly,” before getting input from all sectors.
Delaney also voiced concerns that this approach could result in allocating federal research dollars based on a grantee’s connections to the administration rather than on the quality of the science.
Kratsios argued the report would restore what he described as a “gold standard” for American science.
“Now, it is our time to build a scientific enterprise that will carry America forward and create a new golden age of science for the 21st century and beyond,” he said.
Specifically, Kratsios called on federal science agencies to focus on a handful of priorities set by the White House, including physical sciences, chemistry, and biological sciences. Those fields, he explained, are crucial to the Trump administration’s “national missions.” This includes advancements in artificial intelligence, nuclear fusion, robotics, quantum computing, and space exploration.
Although he did not elaborate on this point during the hearing, the report notes that federal agencies “should prioritize foundational research in the biological sciences over the life sciences.”
“The federal government should set clear scientific goals and build the industrial muscle to translate scientific discovery into technological strength,” Kratsios said. “Government must mobilize the full force of our enterprise around national challenges, clear the ground for American builders, and reunite the work of discovery and manufacturing across the country.”
Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., disagreed with Kratsios’ assessment, arguing that “this administration is systematically destroying U.S. science, while our allies and adversaries alike look on astonished.”
“Big new initiatives and promises mean nothing when agencies act capriciously,” Lofgren said, citing actions by the administration in the last 18 months including terminating grants, firing scientists, applying political criteria to grant decisions, and proposing deep cuts to agency budgets.
“All of it has helped throw American science into crisis,” she said.