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.

Comments

Re:Total BS

[ultracompetent]

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.

Re:Total BS

[cayenne8]

That's what gets me.

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.