U.S. Science Funding Will Soon Be Cut Because Of The Debt Deal

U.S. Debt Deal Could Dramatically Slash Science Funding In 2013 -- Scientific American

US science agencies avoid immediate pain but could be devastated by automatic cuts in 2013.

Scalpel or guillotine? Those are the possible fates in store for US science funding after Congress and the White House reached a deal to cut federal spending and raise the nation's self-imposed debt limit before a 2 August deadline.

The product of tumultuous negotiations, the deal largely spares science in the short term but puts a day of reckoning on the horizon: 2 January 2013. If politicians cannot agree on how to improve the government's fiscal outlook by then through targeted cuts and other means--the scalpel option--their failure will automatically trigger the guillotine: a deep cut applied across a range of expenditures, including research. In the worst case, the automatic cuts could mean shuttered laboratories and mass lay-offs at universities.

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My Comment: The cutting has already happened .... look at NASA

Defense Last In WH Science Goals

From DoD Buzz:

The Obama administration’s budget guidance for 2011 makes clear that basic research spending will stay flat in most areas or decline, including at the Pentagon.

Money will first go to research that can “drive economic recovery, job creation, and economic growth,” says the guidance issued in an Aug. 4 memo by White House Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag. The administration also makes clear that since they expect little new money for science and technology funding then government agencies must move dollars to what it calls four “practical challenges.”

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My Comment: Many of our greatest technological and engineering accomplishments have come from the labs of Darpa and other defense related laboratories. So much for the campaign rhetoric that the sciences will benefit from an Obama administration. In fact .... it is the science that conforms to the political agenda of the White House that will now get the funding.