Science could benefit as Democrats take power

doi:10.1126/science.371.6526.218

GSTDTAP > 气候变化

DOI	10.1126/science.371.6526.218
	Science could benefit as Democrats take power
	David Malakoff; Jeffrey Mervis
	2021-01-15
发表期刊	Science
出版年	2021
英文摘要	Next week, Democrats will gain control of the White House and both chambers of Congress for the first time in a decade. That political shift could have momentous implications for science and climate policy. “Voters have delivered a pretty historic mandate to Congress and an administration to move forward in ways that are transformational and not incremental,” says Rachel Cleetus, director of climate and energy programs at the Union of Concerned Scientists. But, Cleetus adds, “We shouldn't be naïve … there are big obstacles.” A narrowly divided and highly polarized Congress will likely constrain efforts to realize the most ambitious proposals put forward by policy-makers and advocacy groups. And Democrats could have as little as 2 years to exercise their expanded powers. The 20 January inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden means Democrats will gain broad powers to appoint federal officials, write regulations, and resume international commitments abandoned under President Donald Trump, including rejoining the Paris climate pact, the World Health Organization, and the Iran nuclear deal. And the arrival this month of two newly elected senators from Georgia, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, will give Democrats half of the Senate's 100 seats, with Kamala Harris providing the tie-breaking vote as vice president. Republicans have controlled the Senate since January 2015. (Democrats held onto their majority in the House of Representatives.) The narrow edge in the Senate will make it easier for Biden to win confirmation of his appointees and for Congress to revoke controversial rules finalized in the final 5 months of the Trump administration. It could also help Democrats enact promised legislation aimed at ending the COVID-19 pandemic, rebuilding the economy, curbing climate change, and boosting federal investments in research, infrastructure, and public health. The new majority leader, Senator Chuck Schumer (D–NY), will replace Senator Mitch McConnell (R–KY) as final arbiter of that body's legislative calendar. Schumer has shown keen interest in promoting clean energy and boosting federal research spending. Last year, he helped craft a bipartisan proposal, the Endless Frontiers Act, which calls for giving the National Science Foundation a sweeping makeover, including an additional $100 billion over 5 years. But Schumer will have to balance the many competing demands of his party, including a progressive agenda that includes a Green New Deal and providing free college to more students. Each of the Senate's 20 permanent committees will get new leaders. The powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, which sets annual spending levels, will be chaired by Senator Patrick Leahy (D–VT), a longtime advocate of environmental protection. Senator Maria Cantwell (D–WA), a former technology executive who has a strong interest in research, will chair the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee. Senator Patty Murray (D–WA), a backer of biomedical science, will lead the health panel, which among other things oversees the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The homeland security panel, which oversees security and regulatory issues important to the science community, will be led by Senator Gary Peters (D–MI), who has extensive experience with research agencies. Advocates for technological innovation to battle climate change will lead two key panels. Senator Tom Carper (D–DE), the author of numerous climate proposals that have not advanced in the Republican-led Senate, will lead the environment committee, while the energy panel will be chaired by Senator Joe Manchin (D–WV), who has backed the development of technologies that would capture carbon dioxide produced by the burning of fossil fuels before it enters the atmosphere. On paper, that Senate lineup—together with Democratic control of the House of Representatives—bodes well for more aggressive government action on climate change. Under Senate rules, however, most bills need 60 votes to advance, meaning Democrats backing climate action will need to find at least 10 Republican allies. Cleetus sees opportunities for bipartisan cooperation on “common sense policies that both help reduce emissions [of warming gases] and help ameliorate the current economic crisis and create jobs.” Investments in infrastructure, clean energy technology, and workforce training are all potential areas of bipartisan cooperation that do such “double duty,” says climate policy specialist Kelly Sims Gallagher of the Fletcher School at Tufts University. Such cooperation will be more likely if Democrats don't insist that their Republican colleagues publicly acknowledge that humans are a primary cause of planetary warming, says Bart Gordon, a former Democratic lawmaker who led the House science committee from 2007 to 2011. “I think it's possible to get a deal if you don't rub their nose in it,” says Gordon, a lobbyist for K&L Gates. “I think there's been a change in [Republicans'] attitude toward climate change—most of them will now admit that it's real.” Democrats would need few, if any, Republican votes, however, to advance bills under an obscure mechanism known as reconciliation. It allows each legislative body to use the annual budget-setting process to pass bills with a simple majority as long as they relate to government spending. In 2010, Democrats used reconciliation to advance then-President Barack Obama's health care law, and in 2017 Republicans used it to open Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. But there is a downside to passing legislation with such a razor-thin margin: Any bill approved by reconciliation also can be repealed with just 51 votes in the Senate. A simple majority vote of both the House and Senate is also all that is needed to revoke recent Trump administration regulations under the seldom-used Congressional Review Act (CRA), which gives Congress a brief window to reject new rules. In 2017, Republicans used the CRA, which also bars agencies from reissuing anything “substantially similar” to a revoked rule, to kill 14 rules. Now, some 1300 rules adopted since August 2020 are vulnerable before the CRA clock expires later this year, according to the George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center. But Susan Dudley, the center's director, says Senate leaders are likely to use the law selectively, because CRA votes could steal time from other priorities. Still, top targets for revocation could include rules that weakened environmental protections and limited the kinds of science the Environmental Protection Agency can use. (The Biden administration might also opt for the labor-intensive process of rewriting unwanted rules rather than killing them.) Issues like climate and regulatory policy will remain contentious in the new Congress, but observers see possibilities for bipartisan agreement on other science-related topics. Gordon thinks the unprecedentedly fast development of vaccines to fight the COVID-19 pandemic has boosted public support for science and made it easier for advocates to push for greater federal investments in research. Former Representative Daniel Lipinski (D–IL), who lost his seat to a primary challenger last spring, believes Biden and a Democratic Congress will also try to roll back Trump-era restrictions on immigration and international collaborations, while remaining vigilant against legitimate threats from China and other countries. Biden “won't want to look weak on national security,” says Lipinski, who was a senior member of the science committee. “But Trump went after China in a way that was harmful to science without improving our national security. Biden is smart enough to protect the nation in a way that isn't detrimental to our traditional principles of openness.” Still, the deep political divisions in Congress and across the nation could pose a barrier to legislative deals. That polarization was recently on display within the House science panel, which enjoys a high degree of bipartisanship on many research issues. Ten of the 13 Republicans who served on the committee in the current Congress objected on 6 January to certifying Biden's electoral college wins in Arizona or Pennsylvania—an even higher level of support than Trump received in the House as a whole, where two-thirds of Republican members voted to overturn the presidential results. Democrats in Congress, meanwhile, know their influence could be relatively fleeting. With the next elections set for November 2022, it's possible Republicans could regain control of one or both houses 2 years from now.
领域	气候变化 ; 资源环境
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文献类型	期刊论文
条目标识符	http://119.78.100.173/C666/handle/2XK7JSWQ/311439
专题	气候变化资源环境科学
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	David Malakoff,Jeffrey Mervis. Science could benefit as Democrats take power[J]. Science,2021.
APA	David Malakoff,&Jeffrey Mervis.(2021).Science could benefit as Democrats take power.Science.
MLA	David Malakoff,et al."Science could benefit as Democrats take power".Science (2021).