2009 US Budget Holds Mixed News For Science

sciencehabit writes "ScienceNOW has the details on the impacts of President Bush's appropriation request — bad news for biomedicine, better news for the physical sciences. Some agencies really get slammed and many projects are jeopardized. The Bush administration's theory is that a 5-year run-up in National Institutes of Health funding, which ended in 2003, left the federal funding picture seriously unbalanced. Each year since then the administration's budget request for science has moved to shift the balance. Biomedical researchers are expected to lobby hard in Congress for relief. The NYTimes notes that prognosticators expect Congress not to act on a budget until the next President arrives, betting on it being a Democrat. "

Comments

Good News Everyone!

[jameskojiro]

You get to actually go to the moon and spend a few months there. Except you will catch cancer from the cosmic rays and you will die a horrible painful death.

What's Mixed?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

What's "mixed" about earmarks for the Creation Science Institute?

Re: What's Mixed?

[Black Parrot]

What's "mixed" about earmarks for the Creation Science Institute? Great news, but unfortunately they have to split the take with the Discovery Institute and Ken Ham's dinosaurs-in-the-garden-of-eden museum.

It's too bad a respectable organization like the Creation Science Institute has to split the funding with such poseurs.

Is this a surprise?

[GodfatherofSoul]

Science has been bad news for Bush's agenda.

Yeah...

[Otter]

The Bush administration's theory is that a 5-year run-up in National Institutes of Health funding, which ended in 2003, left the federal funding picture seriously unbalanced.

Meanwhile, it didn't do it any long-term favors to biomedical research, as the NIH and university leaderships handled their huge influx of money about as well as Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan did with theirs. There are dozens of universities with new buildings they were planning to pay off with NIH overhead, that are now completely screwed.

Re:Yeah...

[Penguinisto]

That's the problem with federal funding...

At first, it's cool that you can get hold of some, then it becomes a godsend, then it's a desperately needed commodity that you must have more and more of, at any cost and damn the consequences...

Sorta like Cocaine in a way.

/P

Re:Yeah...

[flyingsquid]

That's the problem with federal funding... At first, it's cool that you can get hold of some, then it becomes a godsend, then it's a desperately needed commodity that you must have more and more of, at any cost and damn the consequences... Sorta like Cocaine in a way.

I'm always baffled to see people on Slashdot arguing we shouldn't fund basic research. Would we even be having this discussion without federally funded research? It was a federally funded research organization, DARPA, which invented the internet after all, not private industry. The World Wide Web was invented at CERN, and government-funded projects like Colossus and ENIAC were vital to the development of the modern computer.

Even if we spend billions of dollars a year on basic research, the occasional runaway success like the internet does so much to benefit the economy that it more than pays for itself. You have to spend money to make money, and we've done pretty well by investing in technology and medicine over the past 50 years.

Re:Yeah...

[Penguinisto]

I have no kick against funding basic research at all...

My problem is that this funding goes from being a benevolent grant to a research institution, to becoming a perceived right and entitlement.

Note that this doesn't apply to just research grants, either - everything from corporate welfare programs to Medicare becomes an annual contest to see who can squeeze the most milk out of the governmental teat. What were once programs designed as social safety nets and promotional programs, have become horrific and competing demands for more, more more...

• don't boost Medicare as much as the AARP demands? Why, you beast you! How DARE you leave the elderly to die!
• don't boost educational funding as much as demanded by the teacher unions and school districts? "You're hurting our kids!" (in spite of the fact that education was once a completely state and locally-funded thing...)
• don't boost (insert corporate welfare program here) by as much as (insert lobbyist org here) demanded? You're killing off (insert industry here)!

Meanwhile? You, me, and most other rational human beings know full well that for the most part, we're spending (m/b)illions more this year than we did last year. Nobody is going to die, no business collapses, no school fails - but each year the hyperbole comes marching along.

You know? 100 years ago, congress-critters would compete for re-election by bragging about how they kept the government out of everyones' lives. Now they do it by bragging on how much pork they managed to drag home to their respective constituencies.

Again, I have no kick against funding things such as research, industry promotional programs, and social safety net programs. However, I think that each and every one of them should --with damned few exceptions-- have to either get a set non-renewable amount for a set period of time (and not a dime more), or they must re-compete each year for the same level of funding they got the year before. Then we have a non-political panel at the OMB go over each program with a scalpel, and start hacking/slashing those programs that have no provable value at all (e.g. corporate welfare). The savings get rolled into next year's budget.

/P

How to get money for science!

[iknownuttin]

The new budget includes no funding for the National Children's Study, ... the overall discretionary budget for the Department of Health and Human Services would decline by 2% in the president's request.

Bush is anti-children! Would someone please think of the children and fund science!!

That'll shame him and Congress into getting more money!

Independent Science

[pudge]

The bad news for science is where there IS funding. Science should be independent of government as much as possible.

Re:Independent Science

[Rampantbaboon]

Damn those Public Universities and their research. Tuition should be sky high to fund these projects!

Re: Independent Science

[Black Parrot]

The bad news for science is where there IS funding. Science should be independent of government as much as possible. AFAICT, federally funded science has historically been pretty independent of political meddling.

Of course, you might be experiencing difficulties if you are researching climate change or the effectiveness of abstinence-only programs under the current administration, but hopefully that's a short-term blip on an otherwise effective system.

Re:Independent Science

[pudge]

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States The spending power is easy to miss. It's up there at the beginning of the enumerated powers in Article I, section 8. No, this is a common misconception. There is no broad "spending power." The spending power was limited "to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States." But obviously, that doesn't mean the spending can be on anything related to those things. That is a description of what follows in the rest of Section 8: a preamble, not a broad enumeration of power. The person who wrote the Bill of Rights, including the Tenth Amendment, dismissed this faulty interpretation many years ago:

If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions.

And:

If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their Own hands; they may a point teachers in every state, county, and parish, and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision for the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress; for every object I have mentioned would admit of the application of money, and might be called, if Congress pleased, provisions for the general welfare. ... I venture to declare it as my opinion, that, were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited government established by the people of America ...

Granted, many of those things, our federal government does today: they pay for teachers, take into their own hands the education of children, assume provision for the poor, undertake regulation of all roads, regulate police.

But as James Madison said, this is all unconstitutional.

No Child Left Behind is just as much, if not more, a violation of my rights under the Constitution as anything else Bush is accused of doing, whether it is "warrantless wiretapping" or "free speech zones." The Constitution and its authors are quite clear.

But funding is up?

[tjstork]

Science has been bad news for Bush's agenda.

Bush has spent more on science than any other President in the history of the United States, so to say that he is anti-science is sharply distortionary.

Re: But funding is up?

[Black Parrot]

Science has been bad news for Bush's agenda. Bush has spent more on science than any other President in the history of the United States, so to say that he is anti-science is sharply distortionary. Did he actually say that? Or did he merely call attention to the fact that the Bush administration has a long track record of trying to hush up the results of scientific enquiry that belie the myths of his corporate/neocon agenda?

Re: But funding is up?

[Noksagt]

The OP titled his post "Is it a surprise?"

This implies that the proposed budget is very low in science. It isn't. It is very good for the physical sciences (with double-digit percentage increases to many agencies).

You might have a point if the post were titled "Yeah, but...." & the text were "even with funding, Bush isn't pro-science."

Re:But funding is up?

[tjstork]

Hmm, well I don't believe that for a second, especially if one adjusts for inflation, total budget size, etc. But I'm willing to entertain that claim if you can provide some concrete references

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2006/07/b1984135.html

Is one you might believe. That's a fairly progressive web site and the figures do not include research for military purposes. Scroll down and you'll see that the biggest spender is Bush. Really, just look at the deficits, and ask yourself, what -hasn't- Bush spent money on!

Re:Should be cut entirely

[MozeeToby]

Example: Biotech company developes two new treatments for diabetes. One is administered daily in pill form and costs $10 a pill to make but can be sold at $100 a pill comercially. The other is a one time treatment that would cost $200, most of which would go to the doctors performing the procedure.

Quiz: Which do you think will be released to the public?

For the record, biotech companies are not all evil, all the time. They have done great things and not always just for the bottom line. But to have no public funding for public medical research seams extremely dangerous to me.

Delay is good!

[RobertB-DC]

The NYTimes notes that prognosticators expect Congress not to act on a budget until the next President arrives, betting on it being a Democrat.

While the Democratically-controlled Congress may indeed delay approving a budget, I'm sure they know that the next election could just as easily put another Republican in the White House -- and that their razor-thin majority (especially in the Senate) could be lost as well, depending on the R-side coattails.

I think the goal is to not act on the budget until the next President arrives, betting on it not being an Idiot.

Slow News Day??

[mpapet]

First pass at the budget is ALWAYS ignored.

The parties are working up their versions of a budget and waiting for the elections to play out. In the meantime, they'll temporarily fund the government.

For those hawks that believe that private industry can do research "better" I offer the following.

1. Some research is so basic that there's no near-term mass-market application.

2. If the research can't become a profit center, it's dropped. This is already happening in the now-privatized University R&D and it happened long, long ago in business.

3. Most countries have some kind of nationalized R&D AND economic planning to sell the R&D. This model appears gets about the same results as the looser American style.

4. Corporate R&D is mostly stealing ideas from someone else who cannot afford litigation.

Re:Slow News Day??

[the computer guy nex]

"1. Some research is so basic that there's no near-term mass-market application."
So you want a federal government to fund science that has no application for the masses? Sounds like something that benefits the few rather than the many, which is better done in the private sector. I don't want my tax dollars at work for something that benefits almost no one. "2. If the research can't become a profit center, it's dropped. This is already happening in the now-privatized University R&D and it happened long, long ago in business."
Right down the road from me the University of Illinois is building a new $300,000,000 supercomputer funded by private donations, including my own. If the University is good enough, it will have the funding. Free market determines this. "3. Most countries have some kind of nationalized R&D AND economic planning to sell the R&D. This model appears gets about the same results as the looser American style."
So you want to compare the number of scientific discoveries and new useful products developed by foreign governments compared to private companies within the United States? Are you crazy? "4. Corporate R&D is mostly stealing ideas from someone else who cannot afford litigation."
Corporate R&D is buying ideas, not stealing. While our patent system needs work, it does have a purpose.

Re:Should be cut entirely

[krlynch]

If you had said "Applied Technology and product research should be cut entirely", I'd agree with you. But the private sector already pays the vast majority of that. Further, private industry already pays for a 2/3 majority of all R&D research in the United States: http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/guitotal.htm As you can see from the graphs, that fraction has been increasing every year, (in real dollar terms!) since the early 1970s. Clearly, private industry DOES see many areas where funding large R&D programs brings it a competitive advantage.

But this does not in any way support the contention that government funded "scientific research" should be cut entirely. There are many areas of research whose outcomes are so uncertain that it doesn't make any sense for private enterprise to finance them, but where the net economic and social benefits are very long term and very positive. Consider research on the germ theory or disease, or the discovery of the electron. Together, those fields for the bedrock of all modern economies. Space exploration and fusion power research are two modern examples where the fundamental research could not possibly be supported directly by private enterprise without governmental assistance. There are other areas related specifically to government responsibilities (defense, law enforcement, environmental stewardship, etc.) where I would expect the government to provide funding. Finally, there are a number of research areas with a large societal benefit, but little to no profit or market advantage, where private actors shouldn't be expected to fill. The modern archetype is vaccine research.

I'm as big a fan of the free market and constitutional restrictions on government action as the next guy, but I still accept that there are areas that there are things, like government funding of fundamental research, that would not be supported but for government intervention.

It is the fault of Congress

[Noksagt]

It is true that Bush does not make policy decisions based on scientific research and it is true that some of his personal beliefs run counter to current scientific understanding. This has impacted what science gets funded (as many ex-pat stem cell researchers now in Singapore would tell you).

However, Bush has budgeted to give science in general quite a bit more funding than what Congress has been willing to sign. He proposed large increases last year, which got cut by Congress & his proposed increases in the physical science this year are actually quite good. (Good enough that surely some think that it isn't fiscally conservative.)

I'm personally writing my representatives in Congress asking them to not slash the proposed increases as they have done in the past.

This budget is a joke

[mzs]

This is a lame duck president. Congress will wait for a new president before doing anything. Before the budget will get passed there will be at least one continuing resolution where funding will be at the current very low levels across the board for science. Then Congress, realizing it needs to deal with the ballooning budget problems, will need to pass a lean budget for science in order to fund things like welfare. Only NASA will be largely spared since it is so spread-out over many Congressional districts.

There is no hope for science funding in the emergency stimulus bill and only a little hope for a April/May supplemental appropriations bill tacked onto war spending. So there will be a long time at 2008 levels of funding and then cuts and basically level funding for the rest in the eventual 2009 budget passed by Congress and signed by the then president.

Don't believe me, read what the Director of Fermilab thinks:

http://www.fnal.gov/pub/today/archive_2008/today08-02-05.html

The only real hope for science funding is through universities really. If you know any university trustees, let them know about the problems. If these wealthy and well connected people feel that their companies are at risk due to the US trailing in science, then they can make an impact with Representative and Senators. We need more people like Craig Barrett, the chairman of Intel, expressing why science funding is key.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/20/EDFDUHP1I.DTL

Not quite the whole truth...

[Roger W Moore]

It is very good for the physical sciences (with double-digit percentage increases to many agencies).

The news is not all that good. What you have to remember is that this 17% is coming on top of a cut in 2008 so the net increase is far smaller. Not only that but the effects of the cut this year were greatly magnified because they were retroactively made 3 months into the financial year! Hence some of the money which was cut had already been spent and, since it could not be retroactively reclaimed, resulted in far greater damage to the programs.

That being said I'm sure my american colleagues will be happy with this but, since it was the US parliament which butchered the budget this year I don't think they'll be celebrating until it actually gets enacted.

Re:This is a bad thing becase...?

[kmweber]

How are any of those valid reasons?

looks good for computer science

[Trepidity]

I realize this has a fairly small chance of actually being passed, what with Bush being a lame-duck president and most spending increases most likely going to an "economic stimulus package" and worthy causes like bailing out real-estate and bond speculators, but it would be pretty good for computer science research, especially the sort of basic research that DARPA doesn't fund (DARPA funds mainly short-term, deployment-focused R&D).

The "20% hikes for math and physical sciences, engineering, and computer sciences" is the main highlight, since NSF funding for computer science has been declining for the past few years. In addition, "a 25% increase in the number of graduate research fellowships" will free up money for professors to spend what grant money they do get on actual research instead of on paying grad-students' tuition and stipends. I may also help to increase the attractiveness of CS/engineering/science graduate school for U.S. students, among whom enrollments have been declining hugely (it's not a huge carrot, but an NSF fellowship pays $30k/year, versus the usual ~$18-22k grad-student stipend, so is substantially more attractive).

No, actually

[C18H21NO3]

"The Constitution does not give the authority to the U.S. to do things that are in the USA's best interest, but only those things which the Constitution specifically allows the U.S. to do (Tenth Amendment)."

Um, actually that's not right, as the Constitution does, in fact, give authority to act in the USA's best interest. And the "specifically allows" argument is wrong too. It's something people trot out when things like this get discussed, but it isn't true and really never has been.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Welfare_Clause

"The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States"

Now, SPECIFICALLY what is the "general Welfare" and how can the US go about providing for it?

Now you see why that argument doesn't work.

Re:Constituionality

[pudge]

I'm glad that you have that sense of intellectual contentment (dare I say idealism?). It must be lonely there, as it seems Hamilton and the anti-Federalists have had the last word! Would you say the same to someone who, if we had decades of erosion of all free speech rights, said that those laws abridging free speech were unconstitutional? I am simply asserting civil liberties here, of no less importance, value, or legal right than free speech rights.

I personally think that your reading is even narrower than Madison's Nah.

in Federalist 41, he wrote a great deal about the necessities of funding for defense Yes, which is specifically mentioned in Article I, Section 8. It's an enumerated power.

Had Madison been around long enough to read Szilard and Einstein's letter warning of a nuclear threat from Germany & had he guaged such a threat as realistic, I have little doubt that Madison would have approved of the Manhattan project and the modern national labs that were commissioned to that end. And I would too. I did not imply that ALL science funding is unconstitutional; if it has a specific Section 8 purpose, then it is not unconstitutional, as per the "necessary and proper" clause.

The overwhelming majority of government-funded science research, however, does not have such a legitimate purpose.