It is time for Congress to take a look at the Department of Energy’s 17 national laboratories, and their contribution to the agency’s mission, according to Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas).
During a House Energy and Commerce energy subcommittee hearing on DOE modernization last week, Barton said he plans to draft a bipartisan reauthorization bill for the Energy Department. Barton said he was asked by Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), who chairs the full committee, to help manage legislation that would modernize and update the priorities for DOE, which was established in the 1970s by President Jimmy Carter.
“I think it’s fair to say if we were starting from scratch, we wouldn’t have 17 national laboratories – but we do,” Barton said.
“Some of those are pretty obvious [regarding their mission],” the lawmaker added. The Texas Republican cited Los Alamos, Sandia, and other labs that are deeply involved in stewardship of the U.S. nuclear arsenal as being among the facilities with “obvious” roles. The need for certain other labs is less obvious, Barton said, because they seem to duplicate research conducted elsewhere.
Barton acknowledged the politics of laboratory closures “is not good.” While he did not suggest anyone is looking seriously at retiring labs, he said the role of individual sites needs to be better defined: “I understand the political reality.” DOE has facilities spread across the nation and they are important to the local communities, Barton acknowledged.
Congress owes it to the taxpayer to take a serious look, at the role of the national labs, Barton said. Barton also praised the quality of the scientists who work at the federal labs.
“The issue is not whether we need 17 labs,” said Richard Powell, executive director of the ClearPath Foundation, a conservative think tank, but whether the nation needs “17 labs that say they can do almost anything,” Labs seem to keep their research projects diverse enough to serve any incoming administration, Powell said during the hearing.
