The Cost of the US Government Shutdown To Science 355
An anonymous reader writes "Richard Schiffman writes in The Guardian that the Republican-led shutdown of the U.S. government caused significant damage to many scientific programs. For example: shortly before the shutdown started, over a hundred scientists had gathered to perform critical equipment tests on the James Webb Space Telescope — Hubble's successor — and that work was unable to continue without the government around. 'Not only did this delay cost the program an estimated $1M a day, but, given NASA's tight schedule, some tests may never get done now.' It doesn't stop there: 'This is only one of untold thousands of projects that were mothballed when Congress's failure to approve a budget defunded the US government at the start of the month. Federal websites were taken offline, scientists couldn't receive emails, attend meetings, or interact with their colleagues. Crucial environmental, food safety and climate monitoring programs were either suspended, or substantially scaled back.' Schiffman provides a few more examples, including one project that's losing a year's worth of work and equipment that will end up buried under snow in Antarctica. But it goes beyond even the basic funding issues; in many cases, scientific work is simply too intertwined with the government to continue without it. Andrew Rosenberg, the director of the Union of Concerned Scientists' center for science and democracy, said, 'It is all so interconnected now. Federal researchers collect data that is utilized by researchers in academia, by people working in industry, at state and local levels, so when you ask how dependent are we on the federal government in terms of science, it's a bit like asking: do you need your left leg?'"
Thank you (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Better model needed (Score:3, Insightful)
Kickstarter!
Re:Thank you (Score:0, Insightful)
Special shout out to Reid and Obama who refused to negotiate with the GOP and threw a tempter tantrum unless they got their way.
Oh and super special shout out to Reid and Obama who've refused to pass a CONSTITUTIONALLY MANDATED BUDGET for 3 years since the Republicans have held the house and forcing the budget from 2009, which contains all the billions of above and beyond economic stimulus funding to save the economy in 2009.
(Which still, btw, isn't saved...)
The fundamental problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Is that the government is spending too much money. It doesn't matter how you try to spin this, the fact of the matter is they need to start cutting costs.
Notice I'm not blaming one party over another. I just think the American people are doing a disservice to themselves when they accept mud-slinging in order to distract them from this fact. Keep your eye on the ball and demand that *any* party that is elected into power balance the budget and start paying back the debt.
Re:Ta Da (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because making "Science!" unessential could be parlayed into news articles.
Face it, a news article about the fact that government bureacrats had to empty their own trash wouldn't have nearly the appeal of "This Science! project was delayed by two weeks, and some of it may NEVER be done now! It was going to cure death, but now we've lost any chance of that, thanks to those EVIL Republicans!!!"
Note that running the National Parks was also considered nonessential, even to the extent that a lot of EXTRA work was done to shut them down - I especially like the traffic cones blocking the highway shoulders OUTSIDE Mount Rushmore - only put up in places from which someone could pull off the road (outside the Park, remember?) to take photos of Mount Rushmore....
Re:Ta Da (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is, the majority of all the representatives in both houses of Congress were able to reach agreement once the requirement was dropped that the agreement had to have the support of a majority of the Republicans. This is where the system broke down -- a minority of all the representatives could force a shutdown over the wishes of the majority because the (not defined anywhere in the Constitution) 'rules' of the House allowed a smaller group to enforce their wishes on the majority. Why did they do this? Because the pro-shutdown group could not win enough elections across the country to set policy the way they wanted it, so instead they thought shutdown and default were legitimate tactics. That is all on the Republicans. As the President stated afterward -- if you want to legitimately set policy, go out and win some elections!
Re:Better model needed (Score:5, Insightful)
17 trillion dollars sounds like a shipload of money, but you have to put in perspective: It's not that much compared with the GDP of the US. Given how gigantic the US is in terms of assets and operations, and in political and economic power, 17 trillion is quite ok.
The biggest structural problem the US has is its insane right. The debt ceiling standoff was very, very dangerous, far more dangerous than even 20 trillion $ of debt would be. It would have taken very little additional bad luck to triger a financial calamity of biblical proportions.
Re:Thank you (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, yes, the conversation that lead to the shutdown was one sided. There could have been two sides to it, but one side got crowded out by billionaire funded insanity. Take back control of your party from the tea party. I'm a hardcore liberal, but I'd welcome a real two sided argument in Washington any day over what we have now.
Re:Better model needed (Score:4, Insightful)
Even more than the fiscal unreliability, the big problem with government funding is that it makes science a political football, with brain-dead demagogues getting to decide what is and isn't studied according to their religion.
The structural problems go even deeper than that. The demagogues don't actually directly interfere that often, although it's especially annoying when they do. The bigger problems are a) the supply-and-demand problem created by poor and/or inconsistent government policy, and b) the uncertainty created by crises like the shutdown and the sequester. Naturally, neither of these problems is unique to government service! People working for companies have the same problems all the time, and I can't imagine that being stalked by MBAs much more fun than worrying about Congress. But most scientists in the public sector have made an implicit trade: we accept lower salaries in exchange for decent benefits, decent job security, and the freedom to study what excites us without worrying about "how do I bring this to market within 18 months?" Most of us spent our 20s in school just to qualify for these jobs - which is not quite as bad as it sounds (we get a small stipend at least, and flexible hours), but most academics postpone having children until relatively late, and we get to watch our more financially motivated peers make vastly more money, often with less formal education. The base starting salary for an NIH-funded postdoctoral fellow is $40,000; that is by definition someone with a PhD, usually around 30 years old. There are some truly mediocre postdocs out there, but many brilliant ones - and if they want an academic career, they basically have no choice but to spend several years in such a position. Meanwhile, their friends with real jobs are probably making at least twice as much.
On top of this, the success rate for grants has dropped precipitously, and the sequester has made it even worse. The biomedical research sector grew with NIH funding, and now that funding is contracting, there are more people competing for less money. So even the long-term job security isn't very good any more.
I'm relatively lucky; I managed to only spend a little more than a year as a postdoc before getting a more permanent position, and the research group I work for is well-funded, non-controversial, and very successful in our field. But I still make tends of thousands less than my grad school friends who work in industry. And it's far from certain that we'll continue to get funding. More importantly, a large fraction of the people who control the purse strings think I'm a lazy, useless welfare queen, and want to close down the department I work for and send our jobs to China. Or, barring that, they're happy to do that temporarily just out of spite because they think the Heritage Foundation's healthcare plan is a socialist takeover. So, after spending most of my adult life working overtime (unpaid, of course) while assuring myself that the implicit bargain was worth it, leaving academia is not a hard decision for me to make. Fuck this, if you want to treat me like shit and continually threaten me with unemployment, you'd better fucking pay me for it. None of the public (certainly none of Congress) understands what I do anyway, so why should I care whether or not I'm contributing to human health and knowledge?
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
He "rammed it through" after it was obvious to anyone paying attention that republicans wouldn't allow healthcare reform until it was a republican president doing it.
Re:Better model needed (Score:5, Insightful)
Limit campaign funding
Curtail Lobbying
Impose term limits
Realize corporations "are not people too.."
Improve education
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
If it is outside of the national park area then it is under the jurisdiction of the state government, none of which shut down during this period. If it really came down to that, they could have just dispatched their state troopers just like anything else.
This is just a stupid typical politician move to get people to pay attention to them. This is also why we can't have a balanced budget: Instead of taking away useless programs, they decide to cut funding from things that people will complain the loudest about, that way they can keep all of their pet projects.
People like you eat it bait, line, and sinker.
Re:The reason why you're a moron (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The reason why you're a moron (Score:5, Insightful)
it sounds like you've put yourself in a shitty situation and prefer to blame others for it rather than accepting responsibility.
Bonus: I only had to look one page back in his comment history to find this gem:
"That's because you're a poor person, who will always be poor, thanks to your poor person mentality."
So, when other people are poor, it's because they're lazy and stupid; when he's poor, it's because the evil leftist government is oppressing him.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just a stupid typical politician move to get people to pay attention to them. This is also why we can't have a balanced budget: Instead of taking away useless programs, they decide to cut funding from things that people will complain the loudest about, that way they can keep all of their pet projects.
Add up Social Security, Medicare, interest on the debt, the Defense Department, and Veteran's Affairs. Subtract tax revenues. You're already way into red ink. I'm not counting the CDC, FEMA, FDA, NIH, or any of the other nickle-and-dime line items.
So, according to your definition of "useless programs," which would you propose to cut? Social Security? Medicare? Veterans Affairs? Do please be specific.
Re:Better model needed (Score:2, Insightful)
Very FEW average citizens were in any way affected in any significant way, and for many of us, if the 24/7 news machine hadn't been railing how much of a 'disaster' this was....the majority of the US public would have never noticed that the federal government had 'shut down' at all.
Re:Better model needed (Score:5, Insightful)
I can hold my breath for a brief time and not suffer in the slightest for it. According to you that means oxygen isn't needed.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Boehner screamed 'shut it down'
Cruz screamed 'shut it down'.
Cantor screamed 'shut it down'.
All tea baggers screamed 'shut it down'.
Most neo-cons screamed 'shut it down'.
The few remaining real republicans said, lets compromise and create a deal.
But it is Obama's fault.
Just amazing.