[Rhodes22-list] Politics and Science

[Brad Haslett]

Ron,

You stumbled on to some of the serious issues of how our government
currently works (or doesn't) and how budgets are created.  First the good
news (not necessarily for you but good for the country), after seven years
in office, Bush 43 has finally learned he can veto spending bills with the
stroke of a pen. Had he learned that a bit sooner he'd still have his
conservative base behind him.

 "Fermilab was hit particularly hard because Dennis Hastert, former speaker
of the house,
  had resigned a month earlier and none of the Illinois delegation was
watching the store."

This is one of the biggest problems we face and it works both ways.  Why
should spending that benefits everyone in the country depend on the power of
the local congressional representation? Why should spending that only
benefits a few depend on the power of the local congressional
representation?  (Think Katrina and Big Dig)  Maybe the funding of these
labs were earmarks to begin with, I confess ignorance, but the continued
funding in this case behaved like an earmark.  The first solution to
overcome is to eliminate earmark spending (and the power of entrenched local
politicians).


 "The international community will get yet more evidence that the US is not
a reliable partner."

Well, we certainly don't need that.  Our reputation as a reliable partner
has suffered tremendously over the last several decades starting with the
newsreels of helicopters evacuating the American Embassy in South Vietnam
after the Congress cut off their funding.  Pulling Marines out of Lebanon
and Somalia after a single attack, and arguing in Congress to cut funding
for Iraq just as things were turning around are also examples.  It is
important that we maintain an image as a reliable partner.

If we were corporate turn-around artists and were looking at a company with
a budget problem, we'd probably study the situation briefly and then
"measure it with a micrometer, mark it with a crayon, and cut it with an
axe".  In other words, every department would get cut by a substantial
percentage and would then have to argue to get their funding back. It's
crude but effective.

Then of course, there's the old guns v butter questions. Mix in a little
class warfare and you get to where we are now - deadlock.  Here's my
two-cent answer:  term limits and line-item-veto.

I hope you get your funding re-established.

Brad




On Jan 11, 2008 11:17 PM, Ronald Lipton <rlipton at earthlink.net> wrote:

> 2008 was supposed to be a good year for science in the US.  A study
> by the National Academies had made a strong argument that basic
> research is vital to the economic health of the US.  That resulted in a
> bipartisan agreement to increase funding for the physical sciences.
> Budgets were increased for the NSF and DOE Office of Science in
> the appropriations bills passed by the House and Senate.  Last summer
> these bills were vetoed by the president as "budget busters".  The
> government
> operated on a continuing resolution until the end of last year when
> the Omnibus bill was passed.
>
> This bill reduced overall funding for Science by $1 billion below the
> level agreed last summer.  The cuts in Particle Physics and at
> Fermilab, where I work were particularly devastating.  All funding
> for a new experiment to measure the properties of neutrinos was
> cut.  R&D funds for the next generation particle accelerator, the ILC,
> which was intended to regain leadership in the field in the next decade
> from
> a new machine in Europe scheduled to start up next year, were cut to 1/4
> the level expected.  Since the budget was passed 1/4 of the way through
> the year all of this money has been already been spent.
>
> As a result all work on the projects which would have been the future of
> the
> field in the US have to stop.  At Fermilab 170 people were working on
> these projects and will be reassigned and 200 layoffs are planned.  At
> Stanford Linear Accelerator Center 125 people will be laid off.  The
> Fermilab
> budget was $52M below the budget initially passed by Congress. Those of
> us who survive will be asked to take 2-3 days/month of unpaid furlough.
>
> The cuts were a result of a last minute flurry of adjustments to bring the
> budget below the limit set by President Bush for veto.  Fermilab was
> hit particularly hard because Dennis Hastert, former speaker of the house,
> had resigned a month earlier and none of the Illinois delegation was
> watching the store.  The cuts were not the result of any plan as far as
> I can tell, just a random cut in the final weekend of preparation of the
> Omnibus bill. US commitment to ITER, a demonstration fusion reactor
> to be built in France was also cut to zero in spite of international
> funding
> agreements that took decades to negotiate.
>
> This is the sort of thing that can't easily be recovered from.  The
> accelerator
> group at Stanford, the best in the world, will be fragmented.  People
> will be
> laid off and leave the field.  Bright students will go elsewhere.  er.The
> international
> community will get yet more evidence that the US is not a reliable partn
>
> I had been working on detectors for the ILC.  We had a program
> that led the field in the development of advanced silicon detectors and
> electronics. Because we do R&D much of our work with US companies funds
> beyond state-of-the art work too risky for immediate commercial
> applications but which
> lay the technical base for the future.  We we strongly involved in 3D
> electronics,
> where ~10 micron thick layers of circuit are stacked vertially,
> increasing the
> density of electronics without decreasing the transistor size.
> We may be able to continue, but certainly at
> a reduced level. Our group of IC design engineers, one of the best such
> groups
> in the world, will likely fragment, and much of the R&D will be delayed or
> narrowed.
>
> This was not due to on party or another, but our government has become
> increasingly
> dysfunctional.   As by far the richest country in the world we could
> afford to be inefficient,
> but we have real challenges now.  Killing the future of a field of
> science that, aside
> from enormous scientific and intellectual contributions, has generated
> technologies such
> as medical imaging, fast electronic logic, practical superconducting
> magnets for MRI,
> and the world wide web protocols, essentially by accident, is one
> example of that
> dysfunction that hits close to (my) home.
>
>
>
> Ron
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