Science Budgets

A few years ago I wrote about how both Republicans and Democrats were generally pro-science funding, and that the problem with science funding is that it wasn’t a priority to either group and so would be left off at the negotiating table.

The Trump administration has been repeatedly and broadly anti-science and anti-education. The Republican Party has changed to match Trump on many of his positions, and while there has been push back, in the Republican Party, against Trump's broad anti-science and anti-education tilt, I am concerned that the Republican Party will become broadly anti-science and anti-education.

The Trump administration recent budget had cuts to Higher Education (10% cut) (trumps budget proposal would cancel public service loan forgiveness), the NSF (12% cut, 1 billion) (trump proposes cutting national science foundation budget by billion dollars) and NASA (3% cut, 550 million) (President Trump proposes 550 million cut to NASA).

I am suspicious that this is similar to his tax cuts which were design to hurt the upper middle class in blue states, and is based on transactional politics.

I can hope that the Republican Party in the senate continues to push back against this anti-science budget and the Democrats in the House continue to support Science.