Obama Budget Asks For 1% Boost In Research

sciencehabit sends this excerpt from ScienceInsider: "One of the big three research agencies appears to be lagging behind its doubling peers in the president's 2013 budget request released this morning. The $4.9 billion budget of the Department of Energy's Office of Science would rise by 2.4%, to $5 billion. In contrast, the National Science Foundation would receive a nearly 5% boost, to $7.37 billion, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology a hike of 13%, to $860 million. These three agencies were originally singled by President George W. Bush in 2006 for a 10-year budget doubling, a promise that President Barack Obama and Congress have repeatedly endorsed despite the current tough economic times. ... Obama is asking for a 1% increase in overall federal spending on research, to $140 billion. Within that total, the White House seeks a similar 1% hike in the $30 billion devoted to basic research."

Comments

Re:How about zero?

[SydShamino]

Research is food for the economy. We won't be able to balance the budget if there's no revenue, and there won't be revenue without businesses providing jobs, and there won't be jobs without innovative new technologies and products.

Your proposal for the economy is like balancing a household's budget by eliminating all spending on food. Sure, if you can do that over 10 years you'll go a long way towards balancing your budget, but more than likely by that point your household's members are either all dead or spending all their time subsistence begging while living under a bridge (with a household budget of $0).

And if research is food, education is water. Sorry this is a food analogy instead of a car analogy.

Re:President Lawnchair, at it again

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Thanks a lot, President Lawnchair. Maybe some time in my lifetime we'll get an actual liberal in the white house (though I can't think of when that would be)?

I too would like to get a real liberal in the White House. Till that date comes, all I can do is to try my best keep the wacko Republicans from getting the Presidency, pack the courts, and hand over what little remains to the Mulitnational Corporations and the banksters. That means voting Obama.

And the National Institutes of Health Gets ...

[damn_registrars]

...Nothing.

The National Institutes of Health would also see its budget remain flat, at $30.7 billion

Thanks a lot. And for those of you who think you don't care, it's worth pointing out that NIH is the first funding agency to require publications coming from its work to be put in open-access or publicly-accessible journals. The other agencies are still allowing their work to go into paywalled journals at the time. So even if you don't agree with their mission of health research, you might want to at least take notice that they are trying to ensure that the work the taxpayer pays for is in a place where the taxpayer doesn't have to pay again to see the results.

And being as NIH grant success rate is at an all-time low (same source), the odds of more great original research coming from their effectively-reduced budget is miniscule.

Re:What about the Green Overlords?

[afidel]

How do you grant an X prize for basic science research? Basic science is the area where the government is absolutely needed because no company can afford to fund it as there is no payback in the horizon that a companies shareholders will find acceptable (excepting those with a government granted monopoly like Bell Labs). Most practical research should be left to the private sector because as you say the government is not particularly effective at picking the right horse.

Re:Bush did what?

[NeutronCowboy]

What would you rather do: pay a few dollars for someone to get a set of birth control pills, or a few thousand dollars to house kids in orphanages, pay for parents with kids that they're not prepared for, or, heck, just deal with the social outcomes of children being born unwanted?

It's not a fucking right, but it has a fucking awesome ROI compared to the alternative.