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US Federal Budget Proposal Cuts Science Funding (washingtonpost.com)
hey! writes: The U.S. Office of Management and Budget has released a budget "blueprint" which outlines substantial cuts in both basic research and applied technology funding. The proposal includes a whopping 18% reduction in National Institutes of Health medical research. NIH does get a new $500 million fund to track emerging infectious agents like Zika in the U.S., but loses its funding to monitor those agents overseas. The Department of Energy's research programs also get an 18% cut in research, potentially affecting basic physics research, high energy physics, fusion research, and supercomputing. Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA-E) gets the ax, as does the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Program, which enabled Tesla to manufacture its Model S sedan. EPA loses all climate research funding, and about half the research funding targeted at human health impacts of pollution. The Energy Star program is eliminated; Superfund funding is drastically reduced. The Chesapeake Bay and Great Lakes cleanup programs are also eliminated, as is all screening of pesticides for endocrine disruption. In the Department of Commerce, Sea Grant is eliminated, along with all coastal zone research funding. Existing weather satellites GOES and JPSS continue funding, but JPSS-3 and -4 appear to be getting the ax. Support for transfer of federally funded research and technology to small and mid-sized manufacturers is eliminated. NASA gets a slight trim, and a new focus on deep space exploration paid for by an elimination of Earth Science programs. You can read more about this "blueprint" in Nature, Science, and the Washington Post, which broke the story. The Environmental Protection Agency, the State Department and Agriculture Department took the hardest hits, while the Defense Department, Department of Homeland Security, and Department of Veterans Affairs have seen their budgets grow.
At some point, someone has to be the grownup in the room and say "you know, that would be really nice, but we simply can't afford it".
One if we apply this logically we would go, "do we really have to spend more on military than the next 10 nations combined, 8 of them are allies and all of them are trading partners?
We pay abysmal interest rates for our T-bills and the world still thinks it is a safer investment than anything else. World trade is dollar denominated and foreign exchange of all the countries are in dollars.
In fact it is criminal not not to borrow to the hilt and invest in infrastructure, at this low interest rates. Not merely bridges and roads, universities, research labs, data collection and archiving, everything we can think of, and then a few we can not think of too.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Trump's Budget is straight from the playbook of the Heritage Foundation. Following the money to the military, I'd say prepare for war; probably the Middle East again, seeing how things are. We'd lose a conventional war with China, and going nuclear is too much, even for Donald Trump.
Fuck you.
"From 1972 to today, the EPA has grown by 115%"
From https://www.epa.gov/planandbudget/budget:
1972: $2,447,565,000
2016: $8,139,887,000
So, first up, you pulled numbers from your ass. Good job. It's actually increased by a factor of 3.3. Before your stupid ass starts gloating, let's look at what inflation has done since then.
From: https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=1&year1=1972&year2=2017
A 1972 dollar is worth $5.83 now. So in constant inflation adjusted dollars, the EPA budget only has 57% of the purchasing power it did in 1972.
Learn to do actual research, with actual sources, and don't quote some fucking "conservative premiere media watchdog." I mean, for fuck's sake, they can't even capitalize shit correctly. Why do you think they can do math?