re: #292 wrenchwench

With their mouth, yes. With their wallets a lot less so. Science funding grew substantially in the early years of the Bush Administration. We started having problems in about 2007 or 2008 because that huge surge meant NIH, NSF, etc. funded a lot of new grants in the first half of the decade. But when the budgets were cut back (under both a Republican and later Democratic Congress), they couldn’t fund any new grants. I know people who left the field at that time.

Having been on Capital Hill and met with Congresspeople and their staff to talk science, I’ve found no real difference in enthusiasm for science between the parties. Some Republicans oppose it for anti-science reasons; some Democrats do as well (or more often, think we are wasting money on science instead of helping people). Some Democrats are very jazzed about science; some Republicans are as well. The space program was crippled by bi-partisan consensus. It was a Democratic President who killed the SSC (and with it, much of American particle physics). Neither part has a monopoly on cutting science funding.

President Obama’s NIH request this year is actually $400 million less than his request last year and nearly $2 billion less than the FY 2011 request. I checked my math and NIH funding *has* been a bit poorer under the GOP House than in the President’s request. But NASA funding has done better.