Election Forum
Questions & Answers

These questions were submitted in writing by members of the audience at the AAAS Annual Meeting's presidential campaign forum. The questions were edited only as necessary for the purpose of clarity and are reflective of the views of those who submitted them, not of AAAS. Should answers be received from the campaigns, they will be listed with their respective questions.

Competitiveness and Innovation

1. What policies will you develop to ensure wide usage of the Internet (bandwidth)?
2. Your website talks of doubling federal funding for science but does not address a timeframe.
3. What are Sen. Obama's visions/plans after doubling [federal funding for science]?
4. What role does your candidate see for the states on science and technology issues in light of their primary responsibility for K-12 education, significant role in telecommunications, and the role of state universities in research and innovation?
5. What is your position on the impact of the World Trade Organization on US jobs, environment and worker rights?
6. What will you do to re-build competitive manufacturing jobs in the United States?
7. Explain what Obama has in mind when he says he'll eliminate tax breaks for companies who move jobs offshore. Does this include companies who have labs or manufacturing near their markets like GM, GE, etc? Should we expect the same treatment from Japan or France, etc.?
8. What will your candidate do, as President, to address the "Quiet Crisis," the looming retirements of many of today's cohort of scientists and engineers, possibly fewer international students coming to the US due to opportunities at home and abroad, and the decline in federal support for basic research?
9. How will we bring more of the "under-represented majority" into science: women and under-represented minorities?
10. What will be your legislative strategies to move our budgetary emphasis from funding the industrial-military complex toward funding the broad needs of the country for S&T development?
11. It seems that everyone wants to double funding for basic research yet, somehow science always suffers from politics. How will the candidates prevent their laudable goals from seeing the same fate?
12. How does the candidate approach high-risk, high payoff research?
13. What about the trend where Congress dictates how money given to funding agencies must be spent, i.e. certain sectors instead of allowing study sections to decide?
14. The Clinton campaign website says that she will increase National Science Foundation and Department of Energy office of science by 50% over 10 years. Why is she backing away from Bush's commitment under the American Competitiveness Initiative? And why no mention of the National Institute of Standards and Technology?
15. Would your candidate work to reverse the privatization of Los Alamos National Lab and Lawrence Livermore National Lab away from control by Bechtel?
16. What is each campaign's definition of innovation?
17. Would your candidate support the ILC (International Linear Collider) for the long run?
18. Would you continue the national space exploration policy that calls for retiring the shuttle in 2010, fielding a replacement vehicle by 2014, and returning humans to the moon by 2020?
19. NASA was not listed as one of the institutions slated for doubling, yet it is both a small institution and even so a very high visibility program. Care to comment?
20. Neither candidate's program mentioned the space program. What would you do there?
21. I heard Obama plans to reduce NASA's budget to pay for other programs. Is this true? Why?
22. What are your views on returning to space?
23. What are your candidate's priorities for space science?
24. Science, like the rest of society, is increasingly digital. What actions would you take to ensure the long-term preservation of the digital products of our culture for future generations?
25. What is your position on competition and collaboration in S&T in a globalized world?
26. We heard from David Baltimore, President of AAAS, and the President of Rwanda on the globalization of S&T. What is the role of the US in a new competitive world with the rise of India, China, and many others soon to come?

STEM Education and Workforce

1. How would your candidate address the current inadequacies in No Child Left Behind and K-12 science and technology education so that we can again strive for excellence and begin training our workforce of the future while they are children and before they lose interest in science and technology?
2. What is the candidate's plan for K-12 science and math education in the era of No Child Left Behind?
3. Given that we may have already lost a "scientific generation" to decreased funding - What is your plan to support young investigators?
4. What types of programs will you create or fund to increase the number of women and minorities in PhD programs in science and engineering?
5. How will your candidate make entering a science/tech field attractive to today's high school and college students?
6. Given the fact that K-12 education, including in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), is largely a state and local function, what will your candidate do to exert national impact on the challenges of education in these fields?

Better Health for Americans

1. Why does neither campaign offer a single-payer government-provided health insurance plan? Do you maintain that your plans to extend for-profit insurance coverage are superior to single payer, or are your plans simply more feasible from a political perspective?
2. How will your candidate balance funding for research in preventative medicine with funding for disease treatment and end-of-life health care research?
3. Please give an overview of your stem cell research policy, including possible ways of funding it.
4. What is the correct percentage [of national healthcare funding] that we should spend on research?
5. I've read that in comparison to the European Union the United States is falling behind in its regulation of toxic substances that impact environment and health. Pthalates for example are now regulated in the EU but not yet here. Can you address what might change?
6. The charge has been made before that your candidate's chosen plan to fund healthcare jeopardizes pharmaceutical research institutions. How do you respond to that?
7. Will you provide more funds for the testing of products with nanotechnology—i.e. better Food and Drug Administration (FDA) oversight regarding their potential toxicity?

Energy and Environment

1. What are the candidates' positions on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) budget?
2. How do we get to a comprehensive roadmap for addressing energy security?
3. What about ethanol? What is your candidate's stance?
4. Since oceans constitute more than 1/2 of the area under US jurisdiction, what do the candidates propose to do to protect our nation's increasingly imperiled oceans?
5. How would your candidate engage with John McCain on the issue of climate, an issue on which he has been an early leader in Congress? Each of your candidates has platforms incorporating stringent emissions limits, but only McCain has really begun laying out legislation as to how to do this.
6. Would you make addressing climate change the top priority of your administration? If so, how will you build public support for a green economy?
7. Will your candidate bring the United States into the Kyoto Protocol? How would he/she get the United States to lower carbon emissions?
8. What will the candidates do to support funding and implementation of both nuclear power plants and also fusion? (i.e. US funding for the ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) project?)
9. What will you do to make sure nuclear [power] becomes the main source of energy and [that] funding for fusion [research] improves?
10. What would Sen Clinton's or Sen Obama's policy be on the increased deployment of nuclear power reactors?
11. How can we be assured that the scale and urgency of global warming will be dealt with effectively and in earnest and not rhetorically?
12. Would your candidate support the banning of construction of all new coal-fired power plants and why/why not?
13. What are the positions of both candidates on preventing animal/plant extinction/habitat destruction?
14. What is your position on energy development in the western United States?
15. The federal agencies conducting research on the environment (U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Forest Service, Environmental Protection Agency) have been gutted of research scientists. What will you do to restore science to these agencies?
16. Is Hillary Clinton prepared to invest the needed funding (hundreds of millions of dollars) necessary to do the science needed to develop energy sources (solar, hydrogen, bio) to be independent of oil?
17. What will you do to assume US leadership in environmental policy and climate change? What is your time scale?
18. What is your candidate's position on nuclear energy as an alternative to carbon-based energy?
19. How will your candidate make sure that investment in ethanol actually results in overall reduction in carbon emissions?
20. Would either candidate mine, as an energy source, the existing methane hydrate; sequester the CO₂ in the methane synthesis loop, study the methane hydrate instability and its potentially catastrophic consequences; and study the environmental impact on the world's oceancs of mining methane hydrate or not mining methane hydrate?
21. A hallmark of the Bush administration was voluntary reporting or voluntary updates to old energy plants. Obama wrote legislation that watered down mandatory reports of contaminated [water] via radioactive leaks and re-wrote to voluntary reports by industry. Will this be a hallmark of an Obama administration?

Governance

1. What role would the presidential science advisor play in the administration? What qualities would you seek in the person to fill this role?
2. How urgently will each candidate fill, or nominate to fill, the top 50 S&T positions in the Plum Book? Starting with a science advisory in (10)(30)(60) days? Note: The Plum Book is an official publication listing all presidentially appointed officials in the Federal Government
3. What do you think about a chief scientific knowledge advisor?
4. What role does your candidate see for scientists and engineers employed by private industry in the policy and regulatory processes? How much influence should they have?
5. To what extent, do you believe, is science support a partisan issue, and how would this affect your candidate's leadership to obtain real gains [in advancing science policy]?
6. What specifically would your candidate do to protect federal scientists from political interference with their work and to stop the censorship of their research results?
7. Under your candidate's administration, would taxpayer-funded scientific information be presumed to be available to the public, subject to statuatory constraints such as national security laws? How would you implement a plan to ensure appropriate access to federal government scientific information?
8. How can the candidates influence the effort to protect privacy of our genetic information? (Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act)
9. If you were asked by your candidate what should be their top priority in fostering internationalization of science, what would you have them say? Or what would they say if asked?
10. The theme of this AAAS conference is the globalization of science. Yet the intersection of science and foreign policy is weak. What measures will your candidate take to strengthen science in global affairs?