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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.
the federal government will spend $14,000,000,000 more this year than last, even with these "cuts."
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
A less than 3% cut in funding is going to set medical science back a generation? By that logic, if we were to increase funding by 3% (as we have more than done) we should have seen a generation's worth of progress. So where are my medical tricorders?
Methinks somebody is fearmongering. I'll be the first to say cutting research funding is a dumb idea, but is it too much to ask that the former head of the NIH assess the situation based on the facts and not Chicken Little "the sky is falling" theater?
Colin Macilwain. Science should be ready to jump off ‘the cliff’. Nature 491, 639 (29 November 2012) doi:10.1038/491639a
These aren't real scientists asking that government money stick around, but lobbyists for companies that feed upon science funding. Scientists love more government money of course, but many scientists understand that far must be cut, especially in military spending.
Sequestration merely provides an opportunity to re-evaluate what is important. Our question should be : Do we decide "important" by consulting lobbyists or by looking at the work that gets done.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
It was "the government shutdown" a few years ago. And all sorts of people got on their soap box and blamed everyone else for it. Now it's called something else, the "sequester". And again let's point fingers and blame. However none of that has to do with the real problem - the US is spending more money than it takes in, spending more money than it can print, even, and has been doing this for YEARS. They scream at the federal banks to keep interest rates near zero to "stimulate the economy" meaning that everyone must bear the cost of the devaluation including those smart enough to put their money to work, and then they wonder why all the wealth is leaving the US dollar.
The US will be buried under its Keynesian nightmare. I just hope it doesn't take the whole world with it.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
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.
I'm sorry, but if a 2% cut to expenditure is crippling, then the system deserves to fail.
Know what a government with 2% less money looks like? Take a look at the budget from 2010. That's what it looks like.
I know, using the 2010 budget for 2013. Complete madness!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#Total_outlays_in_recent_budget_submissions
If you are really brave, take a look at the budget from 2001 (Clinton). 1.9 trillion.
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.........
Actually, the sequester mechanism, when it was passed by Congress and signed by the President as part of a short-term funding agreement was designed by both sides to be painful because both sides wanted it that way so that it would be a disincentive to the other side to refuse to compromise on an actual budget agreement that would deal with specifics of addressing budget priorities going forward.
In a sense, it was a version of mutually-assured destruction that went into effect if bilateral action wasn't taken to avert it.
The problem with this is MAD may work when you have to take an active step to trigger it, it doesn't work as well when you have to have to jointly avoid it, because its easy to convince yourself that the other side will back down if you wait a little longer, so you don't have to compromise.