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Technophobe View Drop Down
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    Posted: March 12 2019 at 4:47pm

Trump seeks big science cuts — again


The US government’s budget for the 2020 fiscal year proposes spending cuts at the National Institutes of Health, the Environmental Protection Agency and NASA, among other science agencies. The Food and Drug Administration budget would increase, including US$55 million to tackle opioid addiction and the same amount to boost digital health technologies. It's not clear whether Congress will go along with it — some of the cuts have been proposed, and rejected, in past budgets.

[Technophobe: That was the short version, here it is in full:]

NEWS 11 March 2019
Trump seeks big cuts to science funding — again
The president wants to cut spending at the National Institutes of Health and Environmental Protection Agency, but it's not clear whether Congress will go along.

Heidi Ledford, Sara Reardon, Emiliano Rodríguez Mega, Jeff Tollefson & Alexandra Witze

The United States Capitol Building in Washington DC

Congress has largely rejected US President Donald Trump's calls to cut science funding over the past two years.Credit: M. Borchi/Getty

On 11 March, US President Donald Trump released his budget proposal for the 2020 fiscal year, which begins on 1 October 2019.

Nature’s news team reports on what Trump’s budget would mean for US government science agencies.
National Institutes of Health

The White House plan would give the National Institutes of Health (NIH) US$34.4 billion, roughly $5 billion below the current level. The plan would move the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), an independent agency within the Department of Health and Human Services, to the NIH.

“I think it would be a disaster for science if it was enacted,” says Benjamin Krinsky, associate director for legislative affairs at the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology in Rockville, Maryland.

But Krinsky and others are sceptical that Congress will go along with the Trump plan. This is the third year that Trump has proposed cutting the NIH's budget. Congress has rebuffed Trump’s proposed cuts the past two years, and last year rejected his plan to move AHRQ to the NIH.

“I look forward to Congress rejecting these budget cuts, just as they have rejected all the other cuts the president has proposed,” says Benjamin Corb, director of public affairs at the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in Rockville, Maryland.

Corb adds that the president’s budget makes no sense in light of the proposal that Trump unveiled in January to halt the spread of HIV over the next decade. “The president committed to eradicate HIV/AIDS by 2030, and cut the very programmes that would be necessary to make that goal happen,” he says.
National Science Foundation

The budget request includes $7.1 billion for the National Science Foundation (NSF), roughly 12% below the current $8.1 billion. But the Trump plan does not include any detail on how to distribute that money within the NSF.

“Like everybody else, I don’t know what the details are,” says Joel Widder, a research lobbyist at Federal Science Partners and a former NSF public affairs officer. He says that the White House proposal would reduce the NSF's budget below the 2015 level. “They’ve set the agency back at least five years with this budget request.”
Environmental Protection Agency

The Trump plan would provide $6.1 billion for the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a 31% drop from the agency's current $8.8 billion budget. That includes $440 million for science and technology. Trump proposed similarly drastic cuts to the EPA's budget in 2017 and 2018, which Congress rejected.
NASA

NASA’s proposed budget of $21 billion — 2% below the current level — focuses heavily on the administration’s goal to return astronauts to the Moon. The Trump plan would set aside $10.7 billion for various programmes to advance human and robotic exploration of the Moon, including $363 million for a lunar lander that could carry cargo and astronauts to the lunar surface. Smaller commercial landers could fly to the surface as early as this year, and the agency claims it will put humans on the Moon by 2028. “We’re looking at going fast,” said NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine in an agency-wide address on 11 March.

The White House plan would cut NASA science by 8.7%, to $6.3 billion. Of the agency's four science divisions, planetary science would receive the biggest pot of money; the administration's proposed funding of $2.6 billion is 4.9% below the current level. The Trump plan includes funding for a mission to retrieve rock samples from Mars; it could launch as early as 2026. The samples would be gathered by NASA's Mars 2020 rover, now in development. It also includes funding for a mission, set to launch in 2023, to fly past Jupiter's icy moon Europa. The project was championed by former Rep. John Culberson (Republican, Texas), who was voted out of office in November in part because his constituents felt he focused too much on Solar System exploration and not enough on their issues.

Astrophysics would suffer the deepest cuts. The budget request would fund the James Webb Space Telescope, the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, at $353 million. That would keep it moving toward a March 2021 launch. “This administration is committed to the James Webb Space Telescope,” Bridenstine said. But the White House proposal would cut the rest of the astrophysics budget to $845 million, a drop of 29%. And for the second year in a row the administration has sought to cancel the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope, which is designed to hunt for exoplanets and dark matter. Congress restored funds for it last year despite Trump’s requested cuts.

The proposed $1.78 billion budget for Earth science is 7.8% below the current level. The Trump plan would cancel two missions that the White House has twice tried to eliminate: the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, Ocean Ecosystem satellite and a solar-reflectance mission called CLARREO Pathfinder. Two others that had previously been on the chopping block — the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-3, which is expected to launch in April, and the Earth-observing instruments on the DSCOVR space-weather satellite — are not threatened this time around.

Funding for heliophysics would drop 2%, to $704.5 million. The Trump plan would continue funding for missions such as the Parker Solar Probe, which is currently swooping around the Sun closer than any spacecraft has come before.
Department of Energy Office of Science

The Trump plan includes $5.5 billion for the US Department of Energy’s Office of Science, just over 16% below the 2019 funding level. The 2020 request would set aside $169 million for quantum information science, $71 million for research into artificial intelligence and machine learning, and $500 million for supercomputing. The office's current budget includes $936 million for advanced supercomputing research; it is not clear how the administration's $500 million proposal for 2020 compares to the 2019 figure. The White House provided few other details on its 2020 request for the energy department. It is unclear how Congress will greet the plan; last year, the Trump administration sought $5.4 billion for the Office of Science, but Congress ultimately gave the office $6.6 billion.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

The White House budget documents do not include a detailed proposal for funding the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which received $5.4 billion in 2019. It does list $1.2 billion for NOAA's satellite programme, including "polar weather satellites, space weather instruments, and satellite data collection systems".The Trump budget also seeks to eliminate NOAA's National Sea Grant College Program, which supports more than 30 US universities that conduct research, education and training about ocean and coastal topics. The White House proposed ending the Sea Grant programme in 2017 and 2018 as well, but Congress has continued to fund it.
Food and Drug Administration

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) budget would increase by $362 million, bringing it to $3.3 billion. The Trump plan includes $55 million to tackle opioid addiction, and $55 million to speed digital health technologies to market. The budget request would also add a user fee on applications for the approval of new tobacco and nicotine-related products, including e-cigarettes.

Stephen Grossman, deputy executive director of the advocacy group Alliance for a Stronger FDA in Silver Spring, Maryland, is pleased with the proposed increase for the FDA, but notes that the full details of the agency’s budget are unclear. “The agency will be able to apply new monies to important programs,” he says, “as well as hire needed scientific personnel.”

But Ryan Hohman, vice president of the advocacy group Friends of Cancer Research, says that even if the FDA’s budget increases, there is scant cause to celebrate given the proposed cuts to NIH. “By taking a hatchet to the agency that is providing the baseline science that leads to all of the lifesaving therapies that the FDA evaluates, you’re putting at risk decades of potential progress.”


Source 'Nature':   https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00719-4?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=934c9a01b5-briefing-dy-20190312&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c9dfd39373-934c9a01b5-43962649
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote jacksdad Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 12 2019 at 6:57pm
I was reading about this earlier today. Hopefully Congress can rein him in, particularly the cuts that he's proposing to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid - all things he vowed not to touch on the campaign trail.

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