Yesterday President Obama signed the stimulus bill. With the stroke of a pen, $789,500,000,000 has been “spent”. The bill includes roughly $18B for science research, and over $50B for education.
The National Science Foundation receives $3B, of which $2B goes directly to peer-reviewed science. Given that the total budget for NSF is $6B a year, this is a significant increase. The Department of Energy Office of Science receives $1.6B, while energy programs at the DOE receive over $30B. NASA receives $1B, of which almost half goes to Earth science climate research.
If you sent email or made phone calls, please take a moment now to thank your Senators and Representatives. Many people worked very, very hard to ensure that science was adequately funded.
This is a lot of money, all of which needs to be spent on a very short timescale. But it sends a clear message that science is important to the future of this Nation, and this Planet.
February 18th, 2009 at 10:12 am
I thought that NSF usually gets ~$6B a year.
February 18th, 2009 at 10:24 am
This is just great news for science. But poor news overall for the economy. We needed a bill that was easily twice that size, perhaps more.
February 18th, 2009 at 11:28 am
Science should be appropriately funded during the regular budget process. The ‘stimulus’ bill is based on the dubious notion that any government spending is good government spending and that there are no consequences to a skyrocketing national debt. An interesting experiment that I’m sure will prove once again that there is no free lunch.
February 18th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
I think I’ll wait until there is some evidence of useful results before I thank anyone.
Someone has to pay, sometime; perhaps the extra research money will result in scientific discoveries that will help pay the debt off? Get out there and DO it, you scientific types! Find a way to put Dark Energy to work! Re-establish the American economy! It’s now all on your shoulders…
February 18th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
I guess credit is just like Crack’s evil twin
February 18th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Gary: if you’ve followed the threads on the stimulus in these pages, you’ll know that there is a big difference between the money for science in the stimulus, and the year to year program support. We cannot hire scientists, postdocs, or grad students on stimulus money – it goes away in two years. We need an increase to our base yearly budgets to hire scientific personnel.
We are presently operating in FY 2009 (since October) under a continuing resolution. The new administration needs to request funds from Congress to fund the rest of the year. In high energy physics, I can tell you, if there is no increase in funding for Fermilab, the other national labs, and the university groups, then the “reduction in force” (that is, layoffs) will be hundreds of jobs. It would not seem to be a good time to do that – why give the DOE Office of science a huge $1.6 billion stimulus but then tell us to go fire 10% of the scientists?
Stimulus money for science should (and I hope will) go for lab renovation, construction of large projects, and the like – this will certainly help stimulate the economy in the near term. We know that the consequence of the stimulus bill is a 5% larger national debt. And we know that the stimulus alone will not get us out of the economic mess we are in. A lot more is needed: fixing the banking sector, freeing up credit, and stabilizing the housing market are all major challenges. The private sector is crippled until the wheels are greased by the public sector.
February 18th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
“The private sector is crippled until the wheels are greased by the public sector.”
That is a hypothesis, and a controversial one at that. The activities you described as ‘stimulous spending for science’ sound like normal capital projects that should be funded (or not) on their own merits.
I’m not arguing against spending on science. I’m suggesting that borrowing the money in unprecedented amounts has its own consequences that should not be overlooked just because some of the borrowed money is being routed towards worthwhile projects.
February 18th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
A reality check from writer Iain Levison in the Washington Post:
February 18th, 2009 at 9:02 pm
It’s easy too loose track of money that is being issued out at this point.
Here are some numbers that don’t include the trillion from this last bill. Actually, what is the interest that will be paid on this money?
Total numbers for bailout as of Nov 8, 2008.
(TAF) Term Auction Credit (allocated) : 900 billion
AIG (allocated minus Treasury 40B) : 112.5 billion
Bear Stearns (initial loan to JPMorgan) : 29.5 billion
(TSLF) Term Securities Lending Facility : 225 billion
(MMIFF) Money Market Investor Funding Facility (allocated) : 540 billion
(CPFF) Commercial Paper Funding Facility *upper limit from Reuters : 1800 billion
(TALF) Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility : 200 billion
GSE MBS NO NAME Program : 600 billion
(TARP) Treasury Asset Relief Program : 700 billion
Exchange Stabilization Fund to guarantee principal in money market mutual funds : 50 billion
Treasury direct purchases of MBS since Sept. (08) : 26.5 billion
Citigroup (Treasury+FDIC guarantees) : 238.5 billion
Guarantees for Banks : 1900 billion
Automakers : 25 billion
(FHA) Federal Housing Administration : 300 billion
Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac : 350 billion
total ~ 7.361 Trillion $ before the bill this week. I guess we need to add another trillion.
February 18th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
It seems important to the perspective here that we include NSF data on science spending here.
Note that: “National Science Foundation (NSF) estimates indicate that U.S. spending on research and development (R&D) totaled $368.1 billion (current dollars) in 2007, up from $347.9 billion in 2006 (table 1). This increase represented growth in 2007 of 5.8% over the 2006 level, or 3.1% in inflation-adjusted year 2000 dollars.”
We spend about 350 billion a year on science, that is more then any other country. Baisic research sees about 60 billion a year, 10 from the private sector, 38 from gov, and ~9 from Universities and Colleges, as I understand the NSF numbers.
Source: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf08317/
February 18th, 2009 at 9:21 pm
Here is a nice statement from the NSF brief:
“The United States continues to account for somewhat more than half of the total annual R&D expenditures by the Group of Seven (G-7) industrial countries (of which the United States is a member). U.S. R&D expenditures are some 40% larger than the total for the 27 countries of the European Union. Among the 30 nations who are members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), U.S. R&D expenditures annually are about 2½ times larger than Japan’s (the second ranked country) and more than 5 times that of Germany (the third largest). While fast growing in recent years, China’s annual expenditures on R&D are only a quarter of the U.S. level.”
That statement is for the year 2007. I’m having trouble getting 2008 numbers. (I reckon there their, but I’m a little slow finding them!)
I think what is important to see is the we spend a tremendous amount, more then anyone, on science in the USA.
February 18th, 2009 at 10:12 pm
I think it is important to contrast the total spent on science with the total money paid on the interest for our national debt.
In 2008 we spent 450 billion on paying the interest on our national debt. We spent ~350 billion on science.
Our national debt today is at 11.1 trillion I believe.
Source: http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/ir/ir_expense.htm
February 19th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
These comments were put in yesterday, but for some reason were delayed in showing up.
Vanessa: That was a typo! Thanks for catching it.
Jason, you may be right. Time will tell.
John, thanks for chiming in. Indeed, there are lots of reasons that science and stimulus can go together.
February 19th, 2009 at 11:33 pm
Are some of you people insane? We barely have 1.8 trillion in US circulation. I’m also wondering about the quote of 7 trillion- there’s only 43 trillion in circulation world wide, your talking about taking the world down with America if Obama ever approves a 7 trillion stimulus.
But then again, whats the worst to happen huh? It’s just jobs and business, maybe its time for another revolution in history, I’m getting tired of the old back and forth rut anyway. Lets just scrap it and do it better.
February 20th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Here is the source for the 7 trillion number: note that it is from late last year, so the numbers are now bigger I believe.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/27719011/
February 22nd, 2009 at 2:34 pm
The worst affliction our country has experience in the past decade (or longer) is succumbing to the notion that policy is more important than science in igniting progress in American society. So many policy issues preclude science–it should be our bedrock, our foundation, not just an afterthought. Im glad Obama has stood up and made that first move to recognize that. I hope it continues–we have a lot of reversing to do.