Science Programs Hit Hard By Proposed Budget

BJ_Covert_Action writes "The House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations has released a list of proposed spending cuts for the US Federal Government. The proposed cuts include reductions in spending on many science organizations and funds such as NASA, NOAA, nuclear energy research, fossil fuel energy research, clean coal research, the CDC, the NIH, and numerous EPA programs. There are also quite a few cuts proposed on domestic services, such as Americorps and high speed rail research. The House Appropriations Chairman, Hal Rogers, acknowledges that the cuts go deep, and would hurt every district across the country. But they are still deemed necessary to rein in Congressional spending. Notoriously absent from the proposed budget cuts are two of the largest spending sinks in the federal budget: the Department of Defense and Social Security."

Comments

Re:Great Idea

[nbauman]

Did you ever hear of the National Institutes of Health?

http://healthpolicyandreform.nejm.org/?p=13733&query=home

Sounding Board
Biomedical Research and Health AdvancesNEJM | February 9, 2011 | Topics: Other Health Issues
Hamilton Moses, III, M.D., and Joseph B. Martin, M.D., Ph.D.

In 1945, the President’s science advisor, Vannevar Bush, wrote in Science, the Endless Frontier 1 that basic scientific research was “the pacemaker of technological progress” and that “new products and new processes do not appear full-grown. They are founded on new principles and new conceptions, which in turn are painstakingly developed by research in the purest realms of science.” He recommended the creation of what would become the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which was created in 1948, and the National Science Foundation, created in 1950.

The biomedical-research enterprise in the United States soon became the envy of other nations, as well as the primary source of the world’s new drugs and medical devices. Since 1945, biomedical research has been viewed as the essential contributor to improving the health of individuals and populations, in both the developed and developing world.

Financing of research was ensured by the successes in the early 1950s of polio vaccination, antibiotics, and antipsychotic agents. Equally dramatic advances in surgery and medical devices, such as cardiopulmonary bypass, dialysis, and organ transplantation, followed in the 1960s. In the 1990s, the conversion of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome and some cancers from uniformly fatal diseases to chronic conditions created an expectation that similar advances would occur for other devastating diseases.

P.S. Vannevar is not related to George. He invented the Internet in 1945. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1969/12/as-we-may-think/3881/

Re:Is anybody really surprised?

[h4rr4r]

All taxes are wealth redistribution, they take from us all and spend on things we all in theory need. Surely a social safety net is far more important than invading nations half way around the world. If you don't like paying for civilization I would be glad to provide you a one way ticket to Somalia or Liberia. If you decide to come back to the States I would require you give my money back so I can continue my "Educate a Libertarian Program".