6 Comments

1. 1. drafter 04:40 PM 3/12/13

   Is there something wrong with your graph, did you leave out the increases in the budget for 2013 which are greater than the sequester cuts. The total 2013 budget is greater than 2012 budget. Some information is missing here.
   also your graph starts out at zero, is the EPA required to give back 28 million since there getting cut from nothing. Lets also ignore all of the increase of all of their budgets for the last 12 years.

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2. 2. dubina 06:11 PM 3/12/13

   So a pertinent question is:
   
   Is US research and development / science more or less subject to wasteful funding and management than other areas of the economy? Alternatively, is government and privately funded waste widespread and homogenous?
   
   Yes, it's a bitch that our politicians had no more guts and brains than to sequester funds rather than make tough budget choices that might have angered some of their constituents / special interest groups, but it should be easy to rank and pare so-called science projects that do not pass the sniff test of ultimate practicality and common sense. Science only for the sake of someone's employment should not be supported in these days and times.

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3. 3. hanmeng 01:10 PM 3/13/13

   Since the government funds more than one third of all research and development in this country, it's no wonder that scientists generally support big government.

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4. 4. Charlie0057 in reply to dubina 03:45 PM 3/13/13

   "might have angered some of their constituents / special interest groups", Dubina, you hit the nail square on the head. The politicians are more worried about getting reelected, than doing what is best for our country.

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5. 5. mclayton200 05:02 PM 3/17/13

   The major US expenditures by far have been for military weapons and defense systems, sometimes under other agency names like NIH or NASA or DOE.
   
   But these subsidies end up in most cases at private corporations, who bid on the contracts, or who are selected as only viable contractor for cost-plus deals, famous for over-runs. So they in turn influence elections. Sequester gives those Senators cover, so they are not biting the hand that feeds them.
   
   Those who feel that military spending is the only thing the federal government should fund, leaving all else up to "free market system" constantly attack the much smaller spending on other R&D. And yes, much of Nasa's budget is really dual purpose, military and scientific.
   
   National Institute for Health is fighting a major war against killer virus' as well as the bad effects of the many antibiotics sold by big Pharma companies and prescribed by doctors, making those lesser virus' stronger long term. We cannot assume the drug companies will do pure research, or share their good and bad results openly. So one might make a good argument for doubling the expenditures at NIH, while cutting weapons research.
   
   So yes, we should make cuts, intelligently.
   
   But the huge spending by private companies to fund re-election of Senators that favor their "R/D" needs prevents those type of cuts. $50,000,000 per individual Senator for election campaigns is the going price it seems. Keep that in perspective when viewing these cost cutting measures. This what Eisenhower warned about long ago, the military-industrial-congressional-complex and its power to spend taxpayer money for their own purposes.

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6. 6. mthorman in reply to dubina 11:15 PM 3/27/13

   Your case is based on misinformation. A study that may appear on the surface to a layman as impractical because it has no immediate practical applications may actually be of the utmost importance. Science and technology do not jump from nothing to something useful. Every advance in medicine, defense, or technology comes along with many (sometimes thousands) of years of research behind it. Many years ago (long before modern computers), I was involved in a research project trying to understand the movements and changes in protoplasm in an amoeba. Sounds very impractical, but it was being funded my the Navy. The Navy needed to know the behavior of fluids in very, very tiny spaces. An amoeba is a very tiny space and protoplasm is a fluid. If we also gathered great insight into the basics of how a living cell operates along the way, that, too is extremely practical. The reason the government has become very involved in scientific research is that such research is supremely important for the health of our citizens, the security of the nation, disaster preparedness and many other duties of government. "Just to keep someone's job" may sound like a real waste of money. Once a researcher leaves his research, it is extremely difficult to begin again with an entirely different set of people and a different funding source when it becomes evident that the research was important. The experience, training, and mind that is lost whenever funding cuts also cut researchers' jobs, can never be fully replaced. It may be a simple matter to replace a guy on an assembly line whose job consists of pushing a button. Replacing a brilliant scientist with years of specialized training and experience is not a simple matter.

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