Obama keeps promise to boost science
President Obama stressed in his State of the Union address on 27 January that he wanted to freeze “discretionary” government spending for the next three years to rein in the sprawling federal budget deficit – but investment in science not only escapes this freeze: in his 2011 budget proposal, obama is seeking $61.6 billion for research — 5.6 per cent more than this year’s agreed budget
In his first year in office, President Barack Obama has an enjoyed an extended honeymoon with scientists. It was a possibility that yesterday would bring the first big rift, as researchers waited anxiously for his 2011 budget request to the U.S. Congress. The love-in continues: Obama is seeking $61.6 billion for research in 2011 — 5.6 per cent more than this year’s agreed budget.
Peter Aldhous writes that after last year’s unprecedented largesse for science, largely due to the one-off boost provided by the economic stimulus package, New Scientist warned of the danger of boom turning into bust, if the investment was not continued.
Anxiety rose after Obama stressed in his State of the Union address on 27 January that he wanted to freeze “discretionary” government spending for the next three years to rein in the sprawling federal budget deficit. Research definitely falls into that category, and last week The Scientist’s blog caught the jumpy mood, asking: “Will Obama’s freeze chill science?”
No, says the president’s science adviser. “He did not mean he was imposing a mindless, across-the-board freeze,” John Holdren, director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) told reporters at a budget briefing in Washington, D.C., Webcast by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Instead, it is a case of cutting projects that no longer fit with priorities to back the Obama administration’s established line that increasing spending on research will boost innovation and create jobs.
“There were tough decisions made,” says Holdren. The most notable casualty is NASA’s Constellation Program,which was to return astronauts to the Moon, but is now marked for cancellation.
Among the winners is clean-energy research, with $300 million requested for the new Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, created to make investments in potentially game-changing energy technologies. The request keeps the three main agencies for physical sciences research — the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy Office of Science, and the National Institute for Standards and Technology — on course to double their budgets by 2017. And there is also good news for biomedical research, with an increase of 3.2 per cent requested for the National Institutes of Health, which would boost its annual budget to $32.1 billion.
Aneesh Chopra, the federal government’s chief technology officer, claims that innovative methods of collaborating over the Internet will make these “new dollars” more effective than previous investments. At the OSTP’s budget briefing, he championed the team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that in December won the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Network Challenge, harnessing an online network of more than 5,000 participants to locate 10 red weather balloons flown at sites across the
Aldhous writes that maybe there are some lessons there for politicians in Washington, D.C. Obama’s budget request must now go for amendment and approval to the U.S. Congress — known more for discord and impasse than a spirit of innovative collaboration.
