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2009 US Budget Holds Mixed News For Science

Posted by kdawson on from the squishy-researchers-beware dept.

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. "

10 of 190 comments (clear)

  1. What's Mixed? by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    --
    "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
    Never been known to fail..."
    1. Re: What's Mixed? by Black+Parrot · · Score: 4, Funny

      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.
      --
      Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
  2. Yeah... by Otter · · Score: 4, Interesting
    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.

    --
    What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
    1. Re:Yeah... by Penguinisto · · Score: 4, Funny
      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

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    2. Re:Yeah... by flyingsquid · · Score: 5, Insightful
      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.

    3. Re:Yeah... by Penguinisto · · Score: 4, Insightful
      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

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
  3. Re:Should be cut entirely by krlynch · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  4. It is the fault of Congress by Noksagt · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  5. This budget is a joke by mzs · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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

  6. Not quite the whole truth... by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.