Whilst on the subject of pretty star pictures, the Bad Astronomy blog also notes a few gems from the omnibus spending bill Congress just passed.
The House and Senate passed an omnibus budget — the budget needed to fund the operation of the government. That would normally be great, but they have made some pretty severe science cuts. At first blush they don’t sound bad, or even really like cuts: in general science agencies got a raise of 1-3% over the previous year.
However, when you account for inflation, those raises don’t keep up, so in reality the agencies affected — NIH, NSF, NASA, and others — got a cut. And while the cuts aren’t crippling, exactly, they come at a time when the US has already ramped up some big projects, which means that any cut at all hurts more than usual.
[…] And here we are again. When budgets get hit, it’s usually salaries that take the heat, so this will suck for a lot of scientists.
I am willing to allow the Democratically controlled (but not dominated) Congress a bit of slack on the biggest headline of the budget bill, the funding toward Iraq (which was inevitable and, at some level, necessary) and the failure to get “conditions” on said funding (besides GOP filibusterability in the Senate, the fact is that, as has been proven in the past, given a no-budget deadlock between Congress and the President, the President tends to win).
What’s actually more disappointing and discouraging is that we have cuts like the above — while things like abstinence-only education got its share of dollars for next year — even while everyone and their brother fed at the earmark food trough, reconfirming that, position papers aside, Dems are just as venal and politics-minded as Republicans. While Bush was smirkingly drawing a line in the sand regarding war funding, the Dems could have been doing some major rejuggling of other funding priorities (would Bush actually veto the bill over abstinence educations?); instead, they won some symbolic victories, trashed science, and brought home the pork to their constituents.