The light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off due to budget constraints

The news from Capitol Hill this week is terrible. Congress has finally passed an omnibus spending bill for Fiscal Year 2008 – this is a bundled package of 11 appropriations bills that fund the operation of our government. ( Read more... )

In short, this omnibus spending bill is at best disappointing, and at worst a total disaster, for science funding in the US. Overall, the research agencies all received a meager increase in their budgets (roughly 1% for NIH, 2% for NSF, 3% for NASA, and 2% for the DOE).That’s disappointing because these increases don’t keep up with inflation, are far, far short of the Administration’s request and the American Competitiveness Initiative, and won’t support all the scientific projects in the pipeline.

The disaster occurs in two specific areas, Fusion Energy Sciences and High Energy Physics, which are targeted for deep, roughly 10%, cuts. The cut in fusion research comes about

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For High Energy Physics, well, the situation is dire, and I am not exaggerating. The numbers are:

FY07 current operating budget is $751.8M

The Bush Administration’s request for FY08 was $782.3 M.

The final bill (with the mandatory rescission) provides $688.3 M

This is a reduction of $63.5 M from FY07 and $94 M from the President’s FY08 request.

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So, WTF do we do? Even though the $63.5/94 M shortfall is targeted at projects, it’s important to recall that most of this money is spent on salaries. Not equipment or fancy gizmos, but people. Basically, there are two extreme choices on how to handle the shortfall: shut down all of our operating facilities now, today (yesterday would have been better) and halt science output from the US, or fire $63.5 M worth of people. Don’t ask me how you accomplish the latter. The final solution will clearly be a mix of the two. The young physicists, grad students and post-docs, will be hurt the most as funding for those positions will dry up first. Next come the folks who work at National Labs. We’re going to have to start a discussion about closing and consolidating labs.

It will take a little bit for the DOE, lab directors, project managers, advisory panels, etc to formulate a plan, but no matter what they decide, the consequences of this budget shortfall will be drastic and will be felt for years to come. Our science output will be reduced and we will lose good people with valuable talents.

Oh, and just so folks can calibrate, the countries in the European Union spend about $2 B/year on High Energy Physics, roughly $1 B forCERN, and another billion in individual grants. Germany alone has just infused its total science funding with an additional $2 B Euros. The US continues to fall further and further behind.

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