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How the U.S. Sequester Will Hurt Science and Tech
Later today, the U.S. government will enter the sequestration process, a series of across-the-board budget cuts put into place automatically because U.S. politicians are bad at agreeing on things. "At that moment, somewhere in the bowels of the Treasury Department, officials will take offline the computers that process payments for school construction and clean energy bonds to reprogram them for reduced rates. Payments will be delayed while they are made manually for the next six weeks." The cuts will directly affect science- and tech-related spending throughout the country. Tom Levenson writes, '[s]equester cuts will strike bluntly across the scientific community. The illustrious can move a bit of money around, but even in large labs, a predictable result will be a reduction in the number of graduate student and post – doc slots available — and as those junior and early-stage researchers do a whole lot of the at-the-bench level research, such cuts will have an immediate effect on research productivity. The longer term risk is obvious too: fewer students and post-docs mean on an ongoing drop from baseline in the amount of work to be done year over year.' The former director of the National Institute of Health says it will set back medical science for a generation. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden has laid out how the cuts will affect the U.S. space program. He said, "The Congress wasn’t able to do what they were supposed to do, so we’re going to suffer." The sequester will also prevent billions of dollars from flowing into the tech industry. This comes at a time when there's a pressing need in the tech sector for professionals versed in the use of Linux, and salaries for those workers are on the rise.
In total agreement. Anyone can shave 1 to 2 percent of a budget .. In fact as you so rightly point out, we all were asked to do this in 2013. The thing that gets me is how Obama got away with raising a regressive tax like the payroll tax and didn't get slaughtered in the media for raising taxes on the poor and middle class.
Just fyi, the scientist whose budgets are being cut agree with you. We cannot adequately fund science, education, and social services while gratuitously financing gratuitous military spending and asinine wars on drugs, brown people, etc.
We should first cut it all by 10% per year for a few years, make all those federal contractors show declining profits despite their lobbyists efforts. We should then evaluate which government financed industries tightened their belts but still did the work and which just pocketed the same amount while cutting real work. Any industries in the second category should continue getting cut.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
NIH budget in 2011: $30.9 billion
NIH budget in 2012: $31.9 billion
NIH budget requested for 2013: $30.8 billion
NIH cuts from the sequester: $1.6 billion
NIH budget after sequester (assuming 2012 levels continued): $30.3 billion (which LESS THAN 2011)
Accounting for 2% inflation, the real NIH budget after sequestration in 2011 dollars: $29.1 billion
It's called math, and you are wrong.
When I started looking a bit more closely at this, it isn't a cut at all. It is like you said...only a reduction in spending.
Even with sequestration, we're on schedule to spend more this year than last year, just what we need.
Obama got his tax increase....we all saw it in our paychecks in January. Why can't they start cutting...but in an INTELLIGENT manner?
*SIGH*, you know...we really need to just stop...sweep EVERYONE out of Washington, no one in office can come back to it, and start over. Maybe then we'd have a chance going forward for a bit without all the crap that is currently entrenched in DC.
Just start over with a whole new crowd with no one having seniority, no power clicks...etc. It is too bad that there was no periodic "clean the house" type provision in the Constitution where every few decades...whoosh, everyone there is out and must be replaced.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The US is fighting an economic war with the rest of the world, and it is winning. We are essentially pushing for a global economy, but doing it by crashing every other country's economy. We can do this because the US is the largest economy, the US Dollar was accepted very broadly, still is (for now) the reserve currency, and has moderately retained its value in comparison to other countries. Despite all the money the US has printed through the recession (2-3 Trillion, note this is not the same thing as the US deficit or debt), it is not really a huge percentage of the real total US money supply (the US stopped releasing their numbers a few decades ago, but everyone estimates them). The estimated real total US money supply is ~70 Trillion, so 3 Trillion is only a 4% increase over 4 years. Even with the US debt of 16 Trillion, it could print all that money and repay every last borrowed cent and only devalue the currency by ~20 percent. Of course it won't do this because all that debt keeps other countries very dependent upon the US and the US economy. That debt gives the US a big stick in negotiations, though nowhere near as big as the US Military's stick.
Make no mistake, the US is aiming for global economic domination.
Yes, because [the Republican plans to avoid sequester] are all total BS.
I don't think that's true. There was one suggestion to allow the president to make the choice of what to cut. With such a small cut, it should be easy to find things that won't cause huge damage. Obama threatened to veto it, because of pork-spending, jobs, defense, and kids. Think of the kids.
It's not clear to me the real reason why he opposes that bill.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."