A short while ago, a Republican in Congress criticized waste and non-science funding by the NSF. A Democrat in Congress criticized waste in the the James Webb Space Telescope project by NASA.
Given that both parties in the US mainstream are taking a critical look at science funding and the debt to fund both a neo-con descent into imperialism (Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan) and socialism (subsidies for Big Oil,ObamaCare) is unsustainable, you might be worried science funding will take a hit.
You might be right. Since science votes overwhelmingly Democrat, Democrats know there will be no swing to Republicans no matter what happens to science funding. And Republicans know appealing to scientists is pointless – Bush doubled NIH funding and boosted the NSF and even NASA after it declined under Clinton, and got no more votes for it from scientists – so they aren’t going to go to bat for science funding, at least not the way scientists vote today.
A $900 billion reduction in discretionary funding will include some science – if JWST is going to get its bloated cost overruns paid for, it will either be that other space programs are gutted or discretionary funded are used – but ‘reduction’ is the key term, as is the timeframe; 10 years.
A reduction in discretionary money is not a reduction in the actual budgets but what should be a concern is if a real reduction in spending becomes necessary, the science demographic may not be a productive part of the solution. When the NSF was criticized, scientists – including everyone who recognizes the flaws in the NSF – circled the wagons around funding. Given the chance to support real change in a flawed system by simply saying nothing, it was made into a partisan issue and scientists protected a system they know is fundamentally flawed. That means the only hope is that Democrats will always support science funding but JWST and the Constellation cancellation show that is not true.
These are politicians we are talking about. They are going to pick their battles. Pres. Obama made no real stand on Guantanamo Bay or troop withdrawals or gay marriage despite campaign claims because he knows the people who list those issues as a top priority are not going to vote for anyone else regardless of his ignoring their wishes. We got a stand on safe issues like gays in the military and embryonic stem cells because polls showed they were not hot-button issues to anyone outside the fringes.
The mounting debt and a persistent economic malaise may mean budgets are more competitive than ever and counting on increases is an impractical solution. Scientists should form a stronger bloc that votes for its core issue and not simply straight-ticket Democrat because the days when that could work may be behind America, economically. It’s one thing for a geographic area to be overwhelmingly partisan – no Republican presidential candidate does more than token campaigning in California – but California has a lot of Congressional seats and two Senators so that can work for a state. For a group reliant on bipartisan agreement to get funding it has less chance of success. Imagine a time when scientists supported candidates in various states, Republican or Democrat, based on their stand on science funding.
Hispanics are a good role model. They are always in play for both parties because they tend to vote together, for Bush in two elections and for Obama most recently, but they vote on their issues and do not become a ‘reliable’ member of some umbrella that gets taken for granted by one party and ignored by the other. So both sides compete heavily for their votes.
I got no dog in this fight, obviously. Science 2.0 gets no government money so budgets are irrelevant to me but a lot of close friends who are doing quality research are already in a tough spot with some great competitors. If budgets are cut because the scientist bloc continues to make it known they are going with Democrats no matter what and Republicans win the next election, that could end up being a bad thing for science overall – and it could happen unless science begins to look more bipartisan or perhaps at least more politically agnostic and about the public good, including the public that are Republicans.