Our nation's capitol on a brisk February evening
Last fall, through a poster session aimed at outreach, I won an all expenses paid trip to DC as a part of the USLHC Users Organization (USLUO, an organization representing the interests of US institutions involved with the LHC) annual advocacy visit to the capitol. Once a year USLUO teams up with the user's organizations of SLAC and Fermilab to remind congress people why high energy physics is worth funding. While our budget is dwarfed by spending on, say, defense, our annual appropriations of hundreds of millions of dollars requires justification.
I think I was subconsciously aiming for 5th grade girls.
Here is a full resolution pdf of the poster.
Justification was necessary more than ever this year because the President's budget had come out quite favorably for HEP. Normally you would think that a strong HEP budget request from the President would make convincing appropriators easier, and in a normal budget year it probably does. But this year is not a normal budget year. The President, bowing to deficit hawks, also included a cap on total discressionary domestic spending. The physical sciences (HEP included) was one of the few areas which received funding increases and consequently became a big fat target because an increase for us meant a decrease for others.
The mood on the Hill, as they say, was very positive towards science. In fact, it is one of the few surviving bipartisan sentiments. Everyone understands that we need investment in science and technology to keep our economy strong, and a 2007 report warning of our decline in technological capabilities, Rising Above the Gathering Storm, was on people's minds. The America COMPETES Act, a response to the report which sets a path to doubling the physical science budget by 2017, was up for reauthorization as well so we were urging congresspeople to support it. Simply stated, our mission was to get across the message: "Thanks for supporting us last year, please support us at the President's request level this year and please vote for the reauthorization of COMPETES!"
The visit spanned three days and mostly consisted of meetings with legislative staff in Congresspeople's offices. A couple of months before the trip we were asked to list, in a very specific format, our connections to different legislative districts. Personal connections, such as knowing someone in the Congressperson's office, were valued most highly, followed by being a constituent, being a former constituent, having family members as constituents, etc. The lists were sent to a Fermilab organizer-physicist, who ran a perl script to divide up the congress people among the representatives of our three organizations (hence the specific format--imagine if it was written in python). We were responsible for getting an appointment with our assigned offices and for being knowledgeable about the districts. Being a newbie to the trip and having connections to the Chicago area and the Bay Area, the two areas where most of the trip participants live, I had only 3 primary assignments: Bruce Braley of Iowa, Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona and our kick-*** Speaker, Nancy Pelosi. My connections to the first two came through a cousin in the Braley office and a friend and former Berkeley grad student in the Giffords office. The Pelosi connection derived from a member of my group at LBL who had met her before to talk about science (tenuous but no one else going on the trip had a better connection).
Preparations for the trip included weekly meetings with the SLAC group to go over relevant legislation and other details about the trip, a half day long meeting at FermiLab with perspectives from the SLAC and Fermilab directors and science lobbyists on the mood in Washington, and finally, business cards. Yes, business cards. Everyone in DC uses them. At the beginning of every meeting we'd trade cards, my kinko's pseduo-cards for their official Senate or House ones. I got a template from one of the other trip participants, printed them on cardstock at Kinko's, and cajoled Kyle into cutting them for me.
The mood on the Hill, as they say, was very positive towards science. In fact, it is one of the few surviving bipartisan sentiments. Everyone understands that we need investment in science and technology to keep our economy strong, and a 2007 report warning of our decline in technological capabilities, Rising Above the Gathering Storm, was on people's minds. The America COMPETES Act, a response to the report which sets a path to doubling the physical science budget by 2017, was up for reauthorization as well so we were urging congresspeople to support it. Simply stated, our mission was to get across the message: "Thanks for supporting us last year, please support us at the President's request level this year and please vote for the reauthorization of COMPETES!"
The visit spanned three days and mostly consisted of meetings with legislative staff in Congresspeople's offices. A couple of months before the trip we were asked to list, in a very specific format, our connections to different legislative districts. Personal connections, such as knowing someone in the Congressperson's office, were valued most highly, followed by being a constituent, being a former constituent, having family members as constituents, etc. The lists were sent to a Fermilab organizer-physicist, who ran a perl script to divide up the congress people among the representatives of our three organizations (hence the specific format--imagine if it was written in python). We were responsible for getting an appointment with our assigned offices and for being knowledgeable about the districts. Being a newbie to the trip and having connections to the Chicago area and the Bay Area, the two areas where most of the trip participants live, I had only 3 primary assignments: Bruce Braley of Iowa, Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona and our kick-*** Speaker, Nancy Pelosi. My connections to the first two came through a cousin in the Braley office and a friend and former Berkeley grad student in the Giffords office. The Pelosi connection derived from a member of my group at LBL who had met her before to talk about science (tenuous but no one else going on the trip had a better connection).
Preparations for the trip included weekly meetings with the SLAC group to go over relevant legislation and other details about the trip, a half day long meeting at FermiLab with perspectives from the SLAC and Fermilab directors and science lobbyists on the mood in Washington, and finally, business cards. Yes, business cards. Everyone in DC uses them. At the beginning of every meeting we'd trade cards, my kinko's pseduo-cards for their official Senate or House ones. I got a template from one of the other trip participants, printed them on cardstock at Kinko's, and cajoled Kyle into cutting them for me.
They didn't look too bad....but USLUO needs a new logo.
Cards in hand I was ready to fly out to DC.... Stay tuned for part 2, in which I describe my three days on the Hill playing dress-up/grown-up.
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