Two cheers for congressional science funding

Things were looking grim for federally funded science earlier this year:

• Trump proposed an overall cut in science funding from $198 to $154 billion, a reduction of 22% that would have been the largest reduction in federal science spending since World War II:

• Trump proposed that the National Science Foundation budget be slashed from $8.8 billion to $3.9 billion, a drop of 56%.

Now, it looks like the House and Senate are converging on a far more modest reduction in science spending.

“So far, the House’s moves on this year’s science budgeting add up to an estimated total of $185 billion -- close to the Senate figure of $188 billion, and putting the two chambers not far apart for negotiations on a final budget.”

Of course, Trump could veto the budget, but that would almost certainly lead to another unpopular government shutdown.

It should be mentioned that that the effects of even modest budget cuts are magnified by the effects of inflation. So, two cheers instead of three. Still, things are much less grim than they seemed, and kudos for the GOP majorities for standing up to Trump’s cuts. Of course, this doesn’t address the Trump Administration attacks on foreign scientists who do a large share of the research in the US today.

Finally, I want to stress that US science funding is the seed corn for American innovation. The transformative work that has led to mRNA vaccines and CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing, for example, began as basic research, mostly federally funded. The health of our children and grandchildren depends on this funding.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/01/10/nation/congress-reverse-trump-budget-cuts-science/

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