Trump's Proposed Science Cuts Go Far Beyond Climate Programs
By Matt Smith, Seeker | May 30, 2017 06:37pm ET
The Trump administration is proposing sweeping cuts to US science agencies in its $4.1 trillion budget for 2018, asking Congress to kill a variety of medical, energy, and basic research programs, while boosting funding for defense and homeland security.
With a president who came into office calling climate change a Chinese-engineered hoax and vowing to bring back jobs in the declining coal-mining industry, steep cuts to environmental programs and renewable energy were expected. But the fiscal blueprint released Tuesday add some items that weren't included in the bare-bones outline the administration released in March and fleshes out others, leaving some observers sounding stunned.
"I hardly know where to begin to say what would do the most harm to the future of our country and the future of our researchers," Rush Holt, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, told reporters.
AAAS estimates the proposed cuts to all federal science agencies amount to nearly 17 percent of current appropriations. But the physicist and former Democratic congressman said his old colleagues on Capitol Hill "have made it clear already this year, in numerous ways, that they do not buy into this really harsh and abrupt approach."
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