The debt ceiling proposal that passed the Congress on August 2 will likely cause deep spending cuts for government scientific research if the Senate passes the bill this afternoon.

…… the bill will also mean significant cuts to the budgets for basic science agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health, the US Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control, although the specific details have yet to be decided. ………..  Earlier plans had mandated that the majority of these cuts come from discretionary funding, which would have meant huge decreases for science agencies such as the NIH, CDC, and FDA. But the wordage of the pending bill would allow the commission to consider cuts in defense spending and entitlement programs such as social security, which means science may be saved from such a worst-case scenario.

Mary Woolley, president and CEO of Research!America, an advocacy group that promotes health research said, “These are horrifying cuts that could set us back for decades,”

The NIH, for example, dedicates the majority of its $31 billion annual budget to grants, many of which are multi-year, rather than administrative costs, so any budget reductions would likely result in cuts to existing granting programs. “It’s not like they can take $31 billion and reprogram it overnight—they can’t,” said Ellen Sigal, the chair and founder of Friends of Cancer Research, an advocacy group for improving cancer drug discovery and safety.

…. Despite the doomsday talk, the long-term effects of the debt-ceiling deal on science are still unknown. High ranking officials, including US President Barack Obama, have suggested that funding for scientific research should be a high priority. In a speech on Sunday night (July 31), President Obama called for a bill that “still allows us to make job-creating investments in things like education and research.” And in a May 16 speech on jobs and economic growth, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said that government investment in scientific research is critical because the private market “won’t adequately fund basic research.”