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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."
Thanks a lot, /. And just how do you propose that I cram this datum into the politically-convenient narrative of science-hating Republicans that the internet has been spoon-feeding for years?
And a 1% increase is actually a decrease. You have to talk in inflation-adjusted numbers for it to mean anything. That said, just maintaining the status quo is somewhat generous; we do need to back off govt. spending as the economy improves.
Better to cut defense spending and fix the tax laws than to cut research spending. The last thing this country needs is to fall further and further behind the rest of the world.
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.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
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.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
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.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
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.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
But cutting a far smaller research budget will? Where's the logic in that?
And who says that a balanced budget is the right thing to do? Economists will tell you that a balance budget when you are trying to grow the economy is a bad idea. People just think blanketly that you always have to balance your budget but it just doesn't work that way on the scale and scope of a government our size.
Now that's not to say that things aren't out of whack. You just need to prioritize things.
Sure they can, just allowing the Bush era tax cuts to expire gets rid of basically all of the growth in the deficit (as a percentage of GDP, which is what matters) for the next twenty years or so. Science research is a self funding line item in that it increases GDP pretty much as fast as you fund it (within reason, mythical man month applies to science just as well as programming).
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
But cutting a far smaller research budget will? Where's the logic in that?
The budget can't be balanced until people learn to give up things. That means everyone. If you want to say "my pet program is exempt", then so will everyone else. Then no one gives up anything, and the problems just get worse.
And who says that a balanced budget is the right thing to do? Economists will tell you that a balance budget when you are trying to grow the economy is a bad idea.
When do we not want to grow the economy? Apparently, the answer is "in the future, when the bill for the spending comes due". Ask Greece how well borrowing and spending works to permanently sustain economic growth.
You just need to prioritize things.
Says the guy who wants money spent on his pet programs.
yeah, liberal with money we don't have. asshole.
You are erroneously assuming that liberals would only spend what isn't there. A liberal could cut the military budget and have enough to bring research spending up to where it should be and reform health care without increasing the national debt.
Instead we get one conservative after another conservative after another conservative. We don't seem capable of breaking this chain. We've had nothing but conservative presidents for around half a century now and no matter what happens we'll get another 4 years of a conservative president after the 2012 election.
Even more frustrating people will wonder why nothing changes... Quoth Lewis Black:
The American Democracy is a bucket of shit looking at itself in the mirror
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Republicans love science as long as it's something they can monetize and doesn't conflict with their social agenda.
Social agendas like battling AIDS in Africa?
"President-elect Barack Obama doesn't often offer praise for President George W. Bush's foreign policy, but on Monday he offered the outgoing head of state accolades for battling AIDS in Africa. "I salute President Bush for his leadership in crafting a plan for AIDS relief in Africa and backing it up with funding dedicated to saving lives and preventing the spread of the disease," Obama said in taped remarks to the Saddleback Civil Forum on Global Health.""
http://articles.cnn.com/2008-12-01/us/world.aids.day_1_aids-relief-anti-retroviral-president-s-emergency-plan?_s=PM:US
A 5% increase, devoted mostly to energy research would make sense. Diverting all money from the Mars/Moon budget would certainly help. Near Earth orbit is research. Until we have a money-positive, energy positive use for the moon or Mars, they're hubris and nothing more.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Current politics has pushed out all rational discussion of good debt vs. bad debt. Nationally and individually we would all suffer with lower quality of life if not for good debt.
Good debt produces a return on that debt greater than the interest paid on that debt. Who here paid cash for their house, or for their education? Both are considered good debt (generally speaking) since wise purchasing using that debt results in accrued equity (the house) or increased income (education). Assuming you don't buy a McMansion at the height of the market or pay $100k for a university of phoenix degree, both debts produce value over the long run.
At the national level, research and infrastructure - even when funded by low-interest debt - produce returns far greater than the intrest paid on those loans. Infrastructure makes our economy attractive to business, and basic research gives us a technological edge in every field.
These are two areas of spending that SHOULD be funded via low interest debt, and our creditors don't seem to think that the US is in danger of default any time soon based on recent US Treasury auctions.
Why do you keep calling it my pet program? Do I look like a politician to you? And what makes you think that science and research is a pet program? You wouldn't be debating on this website with me if it wasn't for government spending on science and research.
Yes you usually want to grow the economy but you definitely don't want to shrink it now.
Cutting defence spending would actually make things worse, not better. The government, no matter the programme, is a giant mechanism to pay its own citizens money from other citizens. If you cut defence spending by 500 billion dollars that 500 billion dollars worth of people who now collect unemployment, income supplements etc. And there's no other jobs eagerly awaiting those people unfortunately, oh and all of the stuff they were working on no longer exists to try and sell to other people.
It seems odd, but governments should more or less do the exact opposite of the economy. When the economy is doing well they can trim spending and cut employment, since the private sector absorbs all of those people. And when the economy is doing badly they hire more people to do things to make up for lost jobs and because they're paying unemployment insurance anyway, you may as well pay people to actually do something.
The US deficit is only about 1 trillion USD. (Not debt, deficit), which is about 6%, but the economy is growing by about 3%, so the net is a 3% of GDP increase in relative debt. Even with debt 100% of GDP lots of countries have sustained themselves quite well for a long time with much higher debt than that, and the US deficit is a two fold product of unnecessary tax cuts and the economic downturn moving people from paying into the government to taking from in in the form of unemployment and various reduced income benefits they now qualify for. Raising taxes by 200 billion a year, and having 200 billion dollars worth of benefits no longer necessary due to those people working again suddenly puts your debt back to relatively shrinking. And even a few years of 3-4% economic growth shrinks the US debt as a percent of GDP a lot.
It's not spectacular, but overall the US debt situation really isn't that bad. The vast majority of debt is owed in your own currency, to your own people, and with a growing population and economy it doesn't take very long for things to get sorted out pretty well.
My raise taxes by 200 billion and cut spending by 200 billion is arbitrary, but not far off from raising taxes by 150 billion a year (i.e. clean up the tax code, considering you collect almost 3 trillion in taxes), cutting defence on foreign wars by their current 150 billion, cut medicare and medicaid expenses by everyone having health insurance, slightly reduce US regular defence spending and in not too long the situation is pretty good.
If you want to actually have any economic growth or job creation in the US you need publicly funded research. Those are the people who create industries that create jobs and who train the people who can lead those industries.
Research doesn't balance the budget.
That's like saying college tuition doesn't pay for your salary after you graduate.
That whole internet economy? Government funded research built it (insert stale Al Gore joke if you must).
Interstate highway system, infrastructure 'investment' without which this country simply wouldn't be a shadow of itself today. And you know how they built it? Using research paid for by the government.
There isn't enough money to balance the budget through cuts. The only way to balance the budget is through growth. And research investment is a tried and proven way to increase growth.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
I don't care who's president; I fully endorse this. If anything, they're not putting nearly enough money into these programs. This sort of thing is where our tax dollars should be doing. This and infrastructure. But I don't mean the kind of crap infrastructure programs like we've been seeing these past few years that do nothing but keep a few construction workers employed and puts money into the hands of companies that would have gotten business anyway.
What I mean are public works projects like those seen in Japan, South Korea and China; programs that have a long term positive impact but that actually make sense for the region. Of course, that pointless high speed rail that's been bandied about is not one of them. Unless we were developing our own high speed train and not just buying something overseas. We don't even have the expertise in this country to build our own high speed rail.
Absolutely money should be shifted away from defense spending, but I'd also like to see less spent on wasteful, shortsighted social programs. There are people out there who need the help, but many of these programs don't provide any long-term benefit for the country and merely increase dependency. Change the cultural mindset in this country and teach these people to fend for themselves and you'll see a much more profound improvement.
Of course, a lot of jobs have moved overseas and there's no bringing them back. The real challenge is to strike a good balance, something like Japan or Germany has managed. But I think the mindset in those cultures is quite different to what we have here in the US, at all levels. Unlike the average American workers, the lowliest employees still have a strong work ethic and take pride in what they do. And at the other extreme, upper management still has a lot of pride and maybe even nationalistic tendencies. And they still have a drive to actually make something. American management, however, seems intent on finding with quickest and easiest way to make a buck at the expense of everything else. But then, sometimes you can't blame them. I've got friends who complain that you spend several times more getting someone in the States to make something, but you don't even have a guarantee of quality.
Look at something as simple of toys. The nicest, highest quality stuff routinely comes out of Japan and Germany and often it's still made domestically. Compare that to American toys which are always made in China, usually poorly conceived and where the cost-cutting is always evident. With the vast majority of "American" products it's only a matter of time before China builds brand strong enough that they can stand on their own. At that point why bother with the middleman? The middleman being the American corporation that does nothing but own a brands, logos on the box, basically.
And that's where the fundamental problem arises. Will we be able to maximize the benefit of this investment in science if we end up offloading all of the actual design and manufacture to a foreign company? Are we just going to end up making a bunch of guys at the top even more wealthy? But then, I guess we have to start somewhere.
A pet program implies that it only benefits the person interested in it and a small constituency. Like a senator from idaho might have a project that gives tax credits for purple potatoes. That would be a pet project of his. Advancing society through science and research is everybody's project.
We should have balanced the budget during the last boom. Instead we went to war and cut taxes for the wealthiest people. Now we are in the shit and can't afford to. Best we can do is hold out until things get better and then hope that congress will get off its ass and actually do something.
This is why the US is doomed. $15 trillion in debt and and $117 trillion in unfunded liabilities, and the /. crowd is so opposed to cutting any spending that just mentioning the idea gets you unfairly moderated into oblivion.
I guess I need to learn Mandarin or Hindi.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Keynesian Economists will tell you that a balance budget when you are trying to grow the economy is a bad idea.
FTFY
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Says the guy who wants money spent on his pet programs.
I have a hard time believing that basic research is a pet program. Science research puts America ahead economically. It's an investment. I feel like pet programs generally benefit the few, and aren't of great concern, and generally lose money. Major infrastructure, like bridges around New York City, aren't pet programs because they must be taken care of for the good of the economy as a whole. Major bridges that are built when small bridges would work - those are pet projects. Basic science research in pretty much all areas is for the advancement of the whole economy.
We think of "research" as a collection of buzzwords like NASA, Stem Cells, and Genetic Engineering. Really, there is such a wide range of stuff that you can't cut out anything with a broad brush.
Whether you are researching the reduction of phosphates in cleaners (which affects all manufacturing - hard goods and food, as well a agriculture, waste treatment, and river systems) or living on Mars (a complete study of "quality of life" in a manufactured environment) - basic research and technology is an investment more than an expense.
Expenses? Those are things like tax subsidies and every bit of government that isn't "doing" something - like Congress.
Unfortunately I agree with you. Obama's been a disappointment at best and a damned disaster for civil liberties, but our system is Broken and so we're left with the binary choice of Bad or Worse. Worse is letting the Republicans run things again, after they've shown they can't be trusted with a free hand, /and/ most of their leadership from the Bush II years are still in place, so they're not even /sorry/.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Wow. Two guys who can't link to any numbers are arguing over which set of un-cited numbers are right and which are wrong.