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

Bush did what?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Bush did what?

[artor3]

Well, for starters, he only asked to increase the budget for science in his last year in office. In previous years he had been cutting it. Also his party opposed him on the increases. Then there's the fact that he routinely cut funding for agencies that violated the Republican dogma, such as the EPA. Oh, and the fact that one of the key aspects of the Republican Party platform is the lie that all the scientists in the world are part of one big conspiracy to trick people into thinking the world is getting hotter. Not to mention the Republican Party's constant support for creationism. And their turning the world "intellectual" into a pejorative.

The Republicans are very much anti-intellectual. You can pretend otherwise if that helps you sleep at night, but you are fooling yourself.

Re:Bush did what?

[PickyH3D]

You're confusing Republicans with Catholics.

Not all Catholics are Republicans, just as not all Republicans are [Socially or Fiscally] Conservative.

Ignoring the argument about being for or against contraception, which I think can be a valid argument in both angles simply based on your belief system, I do have trouble with the government mandating that one side simply accept it. My particular trouble comes from the exemption that some religious groups have from the health care bill (many other Christian groups). If one recognized religious group gets a pass, then why doesn't another for similarly recognized notions?

Besides that, I imagine that the Catholic fight has a lot less to do with contraception in the form of birth control (even though Catholics are strongly opposed to that alone) than it has to do with drawing a line in the sand. I believe that the fear is a lot more than Big Government forcing them to cover Birth Control. It probably stems from the fact that the logical next step is one that crosses a much larger moral quandary: abortion. And it's really not much of a leap to assume that that is the next step given the nature of the current step.

I happen to be a fiscal conservative, and I am not a Catholic, nor do I particularly like the Republican party (even if I do tend to side with it in politics, but only because they tend to be more conservative).

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.

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:Social agendas like battling AIDS in Africa?

[Hatta]

That's a great example. Bush put a lot of money into AIDS prevention and research, which is a great thing. But the groups he funded were prohibited from advocating for contraceptive use, ignoring all the research that tells us family planning is crucial to women's health. Look at all the good Bush did with that money, and think of how much better that would be if it was spent the way science tells us is effective?

Like I said, they only care for science when it fits their social agenda.