Michael Burgess: “I urge opposition to the Johnson amendment. First off, the administration opposes this amendment. The bill that is under…”

“I urge opposition to the Johnson amendment. First off, the administration opposes this amendment. The bill that is under consideration already provides a forum for citizen involvement. By statute, the meetings and proceedings of the Advisory Committee on Nanotechnology must be open to the public. Weighing down the National Coordination Office for Nanotechnology with citizens' panels would be unnecessarily costly as well as prescriptive. The Danish model embodied in the Johnson amendment has not worked well here. A scholarly review of the Danish-type citizens' panel process convened to study telecommunications and democracy judged the process to be ineffective. I would, however, add my support to H.R. 766, the Nanotechnology Research and Development Act of 2003. I want to commend Chairman Boehlert for his firm leadership on this issue and I am pleased that I had the opportunity to work in a bipartisan fashion with my colleagues on the Committee on Science. Nanotechnology is an exciting new field of scientific study and promises to provide humankind with unimaginable advances in manufacturing, materials, medicine, construction, computing and telecommunications.”