Holdren’s China talks may result in big budget cut for OSTP

John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), said he had no choice but to host scheduled discussions with Chinese science officials in May despite an explicit prohibition on his doing so signed into law by President Obama just weeks earlier. Holdren told a House hearing on 2 November that he was advised by the Department of Justice to defy the provision authored by Representative Frank Wolf (R-VA), who chairs the appropriations subcommittee responsible for funding OSTP.

But Thomas H. Armstrong, managing associate general counsel at the Government Accountability Office (GAO), told the foreign affairs subcommittee on oversight and investigations that Holdren violated Wolf’s rider to the fiscal year 2011 continuing resolution that took effect in April. Armstrong said that the May meetings with science and technology minister Wan Gang and other Chinese officials also violated the 1982 Antideficiency Act, which bars the executive branch from spending any monies that have not been appropriated by Congress. OSTP said it had spent $3500 for the meetings.

The dispute threatens to cause a major reduction in OSTP’s budget this fiscal year.

A bill approved by the House Appropriations Committee in July would provide less than half of OSTP’s FY 2011 spending level of $6.6 million. In approving just $3 million for OSTP, Wolf’s subcommittee said that OSTP’s “disregard” for the China prohibition “demonstrates a lack of respect for the policy and oversight roles of the Congress.” A counterpart appropriations measure passed by the full Senate on 1 November, however, would provide $6 million for OSTP, and it includes no language on China. A House–Senate conference committee has begun the process of reconciling the two versions of the legislation, and the usual procedure followed by conferees is to split the differences. Wolf is among the conferees.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science urged the conferees to reject the House language on OSTP. “We believe such a drastic reduction to OSTP’s budget will dramatically inhibit the ability of the federal government to coordinate, prioritize and manage the federal research and development (R&D) effort,’ AAAS executive officer Alan Leshner wrote the chairs and ranking minority members of the appropriations committees on 8 November. ‘This kind of reduction would also seriously limit the ability to take appropriate account of science and technology considerations in the formulation of diverse policies.’

Holdren testified that he was compelled to follow the Justice Department’s opinion, which concluded that Wolf’s provision was an unconstitutional infringement on the executive branch’s exclusive power to conduct foreign affairs and diplomacy. The GAO opinion, on the other hand, said that a statute passed by Congress and signed by the president “is entitled to a heavy presumption in favor of constitutionality.”

Wolf has been a persistent and vocal critic of China’s records on human rights, political dissidence, and religious freedoms. His condemnations of the nation’s cyberwarfare and economic espionage practices have been backed by the release of a report on 3 November by the US Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive that identified China as the world’s top practitioner of economic spying. The counterspy office forecast that the governments of China and Russia, which it described as the second worst offender, “will remain aggressive and capable collectors of sensitive US economic information and technologies, particularly in cyberspace.”

Holdren repeatedly told the panel that he wasn’t qualified to argue the legal points of the dispute. But as to the merits of Wolf’s ban, Holdren stated, “We in this Administration are not of the view that the solution to these challenges is to cut off our S&T cooperation with China. Quite the opposite, we believe US–China S&T cooperation in forms that benefit both countries strengthens our hand in the effort to get China to change the aspects of its conduct that we oppose.” Through bilateral discussions on S&T and innovation policy, for instance, China has agreed to implement strong intellectual property protections and roll back barriers that have kept US companies from competing fairly in Chinese government procurements.

NASA, too, is barred by the Wolf measure from bilateral contacts and activities with China. But in his testimony, NASA administrator Charles Bolden stressed how NASA had complied with the letter of Wolf’s provision, saying the agency has suspended all ongoing activities with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and even cut off reception of Global Navigation Satellite System, satellite laser ranging, and Very Long Baseline Interferometry data that originate from stations in China.

NASA also has suspended activities of NASA–China working groups in Earth and space sciences, which were established in 2007 to discuss areas of mutual interest in Earth observation, lunar and planetary sciences, and space geodesy. Bolden said that, despite his delegation’s visit to China in October 2010, he has cancelled all plans for a reciprocal visit to NASA facilities by senior Chinese officials. NASA has denied all requests for potential bilateral activities between NASA employees and Chinese entities—even those that are to be funded by other agencies. And all proposed travel to China by NASA employees or NASA-sponsored contractors that “could be interpreted as initiating, pursuing, or implementing bilateral cooperation or other bilateral activities with Chinese entities” has been cancelled, Bolden said. Finally, he added, NASA has established “a presumption of denial for all proposed visits by any persons employed by or otherwise representing the [Chinese] government at facilities belonging to or utilized by NASA.”

The Wolf provision does not apply to contacts or activities with the Chinese government made through multilateral agreements to which the two nations are parties, such as the United Nations organizations.