Jonathan Chait (LAT):Billions for Pork as Science Is Slashed

[Dudley_DUright]

Does cutting taxes force Congress to spend less money? So far under President Bush, the answer has been a resounding no. Now there's some evidence that Congress actually may be tightening the purse strings. Unfortunately, what it has done so far doesn't exactly prove the conservative case.

The new evidence is that Congress voted last month to cut the budget for the National Science Foundation, or NSF, which supports basic scientific research. This means that next year the NSF will have about 1,000 fewer research grants. This comes at a time when scientific experts worry that the United States is losing its worldwide primacy in science and technology.

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Still, you say, don't we face a huge deficit now? Indeed we do, but cutting support for scientific research is an incredibly mindless way to solve that problem. Deficits are bad because they represent a form of borrowing against the future. Every dollar we spend beyond our means today is one less dollar that we'll have to spend someday down the road. But scientific research is an investment in future prosperity. Cutting the NSF budget is like a family in debt pulling its children out of college but keeping its country club membership.

And this turns out to be utterly typical of the way conservatives practice fiscal restraint. Their strategy of "starving the beast" — trimming down government by depriving it of revenue — is not supposed to chop down spending per se; it's supposed to get rid of waste. As it happens, though, waste has flourished while Washington has sacrificed lots of necessary spending.

more...

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-chait31dec31,1,7598975.column

[n2doc]

1. Definitely haveing an effect

The cuts at NSF (and many other agencies, EPA, DOE, NOAA all have taken big hits or are planning for them) have had a big effect even now. The funding rate for most NSF programs is less than 10%. So if you are a researcher and want to get funding, consider that you now have to spend vast amounts of time writing research proposals that have very little chance of funding, instead of actually doing research. Every program that I know of is turning down grant applications that are worthy by any criteria. What ends up happening is that funding goes to fewer and fewer places, generally to those with established track records and who have enough friends on the funding panels to get their proposals ranked high enough to win. And I don't speak from sour grapes, I have been lucky enough to be included in that group. But it isn't right or fair.
Frankly, many Universities have a unrealistic structure in their science departments- Professors are expected to primarily bring in large grants, churn out students and publications and do enough teaching to keep their admin folks happy. No funding-no Tenure. With the funding agencies getting squeezed this model will not work. There is already a shakeout going on, as there are fewer job openings out there than qualified applicants (at least in Marine Science, my field). My feeling is that eventually all universities will be resigned to the fact that they cannot bring in money this way, and will downsize their science departments until they are only large enough to cover the teaching requirements. The only exceptions will be the Harvard's and MIT's. And frankly, most of the good science will be done outside of the US.:argh:

[Demeter]

2. BushCo and Cronies Eating Our Seed Corn

so they can squeeze another nickel per share profit out of the next quarter's earnings.