Here at New Voices, we've been encouraging you to reach out to your members of Congress in support of science and research funding in the recovery package. It's a big package with a lot of details in it. Two Sundays ago, the Washington Post had a great graphic overview of the House bill that we recommend. For those of you who are interested in how the recovery package is actually being broken down for research, science, and technology, AAAS has a good analysis of both bills.The House version is being reconciled with the Senate version in conference at this very moment. We'll keep you updated as we know more, but we'd love to hear any questions/ comments/ advocacy messages you have in the comments section.
I saw an interesting article yesterday about the breakdown of the sciences. The post is here: http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/physics-vs-medicine-in-stimulus-bill/
ReplyDeleteIt discusses how the physical sciences have been dealt a blow in the Senate version of the bill.
I saw that too. It is hard to know what exactly caused sections of the bill to get cut in one place or another.
ReplyDeleteMy personal opinion is that there are two distinct reasons behind physics research being cut over health research:
1. It is a heck of a lot easier to defend spending on health research to constituents than money spent on an apparatus like the large hadron collider - regardless of the value to science.
2. The health community is pushing - hard. Advocates speaking up and calling their members of Congress really do make a difference.
We could also talk about congressional champions or the history of cut funding in biomedical research that needs to be recovered. No one will ever really know for sure though because while this stimulus is about the U.S. economy, it's being put together by politicians. Politics will always be politics, whether we like it or not.