After our lively discussion of what if about the proposal to cut science funding from the stimulus package, you may want to know what happened. The Republicans gave up substantial ground, but some cuts were secured. The NY Times story didn’t have the specifics I was looking for, but ScienceDebate2008 sent it in an email:
They have a link to the full excel spreadsheet, too. The NSF will get a substantial chunk of stimulating cash: $1.2 billion. Of course, the deal is not yet done, but the other hurdles are much smaller than this one posed by Senate Republicans, so it is looking good.
3 Comments
The full list from CNN sure reads like a laundry list of science and education cuts. Even education construction got cut. Evidently, paying a bunch of men (use of gendered pronoun is intentional, and accurate) to stand around and look at holes in the road is more stimulative of the economy than paying a bunch of men to stand around and look at holes on a university campus.
I am totally unstimulated:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/07/stimulus.cuts/index.html?iref=mpstoryview
NSF got fully cut. along with $98 million for school nutrition
@2 LBN: The presentation in CNN is misleading, since they only include the cuts and not the amount that was funded. Just to be clear NSF was cut a bit, but $1.2 billion of new money is still on the way there.