Science: Recently US academics and policy analysts met to assess the country's response to a 2005 report by the U.S. National Academies titled Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future (RAGS).

A parade of speakers gave the federal government failing grades for not heeding the recommendations in RAGS for bigger research budgets, more undergraduate scholarships and graduate fellowships, changes in immigration policy, and an improved environment for innovation.

"We have … attract[ed] substantial bipartisan support for the notion of investing in research," notes Robert Berdahl, president of the 60-member Association of American Universities in Washington, D.C., "But we've made no progress in making it a reality. It's a failure of leadership by both the White House and Congress, and it's very disappointing."

Much of that disappointment stems from the last-minute collapse in December of plans to give several science agencies double-digit increases in 2008. So meeting organizers tried to rally support for adding up to $900 million for science as part of a supplemental spending bill to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. President Bush opposes the plan--even though he asked for the entire amount more than a year ago as part of his American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI).

The higher education community seemed especially disappointed that the report's warning of a "gathering storm" hasn't stirred public interest in strengthening U.S. science. Even the popular idea of a national project to achieve clean energy independence, as Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) proposed at the meeting, hasn't resonated with the public, notes C. D. "Dan" Mote, president of the University of Maryland, College Park.

"The country responds to a crisis, preferably one involving national security," says Mote. "But the country doesn't see a crisis. Congress doesn't see a crisis. People complain about $4-a-gallon gasoline, but nobody sees the connection to not developing enough alternative energy technologies. They blame it on not drilling in ANWR [the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge] or on gasoline taxes." Mote says that the cost of the recently passed economic stimulus package--$168 billion in checks of up to $600 to taxpayers--"could pay for RAGS for a decade. As it is, the money doesn't do a damn thing about the underlying problem."