Government Budget Cuts: Great for the Military, Bad for You

This week, the sciences are celebrating a budget increase of $337 million, voted for by the House of Representatives. The bill (HR 2642) for this increase includes $62.5 million each for the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the Department of Energy (DOE). It also includes an extra $150 million for the National Institutes of Health- $150 more than called for by President Bush (who had called for level funding for the NIH).

Lobbyists for these agencies had called for at least a billion dollars of increased funding but are happy with even this gesture of goodwill. As noted in ScienceNOW, "a third of a loaf is better than nothing." NSF director Arden Bement is actually lauding what he calls lawmakers' "strong support for science."

However, the budget "increases" trail a prior $22 billion cut from the 2008 budget for various domestic spending measures, which was passed in late last December. To be fair, Congress did provide the sciences with some money last month (the "war supplemental"), giving $200 million each to the NSF and NASA, $100 million to the DOE, and $400 million to the NIH.

If one adds up all these numbers, a figure of $1.2 billion in total increased science funding results. This is the amount of extra money that the sciences have been given. This should be a reason to celebrate, should it not?

In order to assess what the budget increase will mean to the beneficiary agencies, one needs to look at the past. Since 2003, NIH has been at a funding stand-still, receiving no increases in its budget. This has resulted in the agency cancelling many research projects (such as the National Children's Study), tightening grant approval requirements, or simply not renewing certain research grants. The situation at the DOE has also not been good. The Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory saw its annual budget reduced by almost 14%, resulting in the lab letting go over 7% of its employees.