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

House Republicans

[Cruxus]

Hate to say it, but the House Republicans take the majority of the blame for this one. Some on the Right see crippling the government as a good thing.

Re:Total BS

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Which is why he has to make the cut hurt. Instead of minimizing waste (reducing travel budgets, etc.) he's going to cut positions with that 1% ...

Pot meet kettle. I think we all can agree that minimizing waste in the government should be a high priority. Unfortunately both parties color their cuts with their ideology. Instead of making across the board cuts and making agencies make do with less, they target specific programs. You accuse the democrats of singling out the 1% with their revenue increases and cuts in subsidies to corporations, yet the republicans aim their cuts almost exclusively on social programs.

Sadly this fact becomes more apparent everyday when the house republicans use the bush era temporary tax cuts as a "line in the sand" instead of taking any compromise on the position. Neither party can claim any moral high ground, but the republicans in particular are making their unwillingness to make across the board compromises apparent to all who ask. If only we had a real third political party.