Economists warn research cuts could have dire consequences : NPR

When Casey Drayer saw the budget President Trump proposed to NASA, he couldn’t believe the numbers.

“This is the worst NASA budget I’ve seen in my life,” says Drier, director of space policy at the Planet Society, a nonprofit advocate for space exploration.

I’ll propose the budget Deep cut NASA’s Science Mission Director oversees everything from telescopes peering deep into space to robotic probes exploring planets like Mars. Many of these projects cost billions of dollars to build and launch, but budget cuts are very deep “NASA needs to turn off active spacecraft that produces good science for just one dollar for what US taxpayers pay them,” says Dreier.

It’s not just a spaceship. Trump’s proposed federal budget would turn off the huge swath of American scientific companies. The National Science Foundation (NSF) will be cut in half. The National Institutes of Health will lose $17 billion in funds. Other agencies, such as the Energy Agency, the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, will all see deep cuts of billions of dollars.

These proposals “will be devastating if they are implemented,” says Sudip Parikh, CEO of the American Association for Science Advancements. If Republican-controlled Congress follows Trump’s budget overview, Parik warns, it will cut science at all universities and labs in the United States.

“It screams for science across the nation, not just where the administration likes to be elected from time to time,” he says.

The aurora glows near the Antarctic Atmospheric Research Observatory in Antarctica. The lab is run by staff at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in collaboration with the National Science Foundation. Both institutions face deep reductions in research.

Patrick Charis/ap/noaa

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Patrick Charis/ap/noaa

Long-term loss

So far, much of the focus of Trump’s economic policy has been on tariffs. The president says it could raise prices for some items and cause short-term pain.

However, some economists have warned that his disastrous budget for research published last week as part of a larger plan also poses long-term risks.

That’s because basic science supports the economic growth of America, according to Andrew Fieldhouse, an economist at Texas A&M University. The impact of R&D on the economy.

“In dollar terms, economic benefits are really, really high,” he says. Since World War II, “Government R&D investments have driven about 20-25% of US private sector productivity growth fairly consistently.”

Consider NSF grants 8107494. It was given to a scientist named John J. Hopfield in 1981 for theoretical study of biological molecules and processes. The grant was at just under $300,000 (hair under $1 million today) and funded work on Hopfield’s obscure topics: artificial neural networks. That science is now empowering the technological economy and supporting the multi-billion-dollar AI revolution. He also won the Nobel Prize in physics last year.

Some economists believe that the private sector may have done the same thing. Richard Stern, who directs economic policy for a conservative heritage foundation, believes that industry should fund much of the basic research in the United States.

“I think I’ll get federal money from now on – these labs can get money from private organizations who want to sing for their dinner and study practical things for people – I think it’s a much better way to stimulate growth,” he says.

But even Stern says that cutting to these scientific research is not a priority for him.

“If I had ordered order to remove government spending, this would not be at the top of the list,” he says.

And many other economists say that industry never replaces governments as funders of basic research.

“Very often, the private sector becomes underinves investment in these basic basic research areas,” says Vasudeva Ramaswamy, an economist at American universities.

The generated knowledge is too general and the economic benefits are far too far, he says.

That’s exactly the president’s proposed cut – the proposal. It is the council that actually sets the budget. However, if lawmakers choose to follow Trump’s budget overview, Ramaswamy predicts that America’s future domestic production could be more than that 4% small As a result of these cuts. This was the nearest scale of the contraction experienced during the Great Recession that continued from December 2007 to June 2009, and was the longest recession in the country since World War II.

Ultimately, he says these cuts could cost the government itself a lot of money.

“Tomorrow’s economy will be even smaller as we decided to cut that fund today,” he says. “And if your economy is small tomorrow, you’ll cut down on your taxes.”