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Related: About this forumCuts Loom for U.S. Science
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=cuts-loom-us-scienceIn an ordinary year, a flat budget for the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) would be considered dire news. This year, it is far from the worst possible outcome. Hanging over the effective decrease in support proposed by the House of Representatives last week is the sequester, a pre-programmed budget cut that research advocates say would starve US science-funding agencies.
A sharply divided Congress is showing few signs that it can defuse the situation before the self-imposed fiscal time bomb explodes, in less than six months time. And even if Congress does manage to introduce last-minute legislation, as many observers expect, the sequester will have cast a shadow over the contentious process of funding science in a time of fiscal constraints and in an election year.
The sweeping cut, scheduled to take effect on 2 January, is a by-product of last years Budget Control Act, which requires law-makers to find ways to reduce the federal deficit (see Nature 476, 133-134; 2011). When a congressional committee failed in its remit to do just that last November, the clock began ticking towards an automatic cut that will claw the required amount from across the federal government, including all military and non-military spending that is not required by law. The precise amount to be cut depends on several variables, including tax revenue, but an estimate by the Congressional Budget Office puts it at 7.8% in 2013 for the non-military component.
Nobody wants to see the sequester, because its a terrible budgetary tool, says Mike Lubell, director of public affairs for the American Physical Society in Washington DC. You dont just take a meat axe and chop off one finger from every pair of hands.
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Cuts Loom for U.S. Science (Original Post)
xchrom
Jul 2012
OP
If they want to decrease the deficit they MIGHT consider raising taxes and growing the economy nt
Vincardog
Jul 2012
#1
Even gently polishing the Pentagon would probably free up enough to triple science funding. (nt)
Posteritatis
Jul 2012
#3
Vincardog
(20,234 posts)1. If they want to decrease the deficit they MIGHT consider raising taxes and growing the economy nt
Warpy
(111,357 posts)2. It just never occurs to them to cut the Pentagon
which is the one institution in this country that is way overdue to be put on a diet. We can't afford them any more and cuts into vital services and investment in the future via research are the proof of that.
Posteritatis
(18,807 posts)3. Even gently polishing the Pentagon would probably free up enough to triple science funding. (nt)
Johonny
(20,889 posts)4. The Pentagon I think see cuts coming like everyone else
and next years budgets are up in the air on much of the science projects funded through the Pentagon. The war budget is probably ok, so it is the science that the Pentagon supports that will get cut.
A lot of science is directly/indirectly lumped in to the vast industrial/military complex argument and it is the science part that gets cut first