The research community learned in February that US President Barack Obama's proposed 2013 budget would keep the National Institutes of Health's budget flat at $30.86 billion. But if researchers were disappointed that NIH wouldn't get an increase in Obama's plan, they would not like the budget proposal announced by House budget committee chairman Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI), says ScienceInsider's Jeffrey Mervis. "In contrast to the spending blueprint that the president submits every February to Congress, Ryan's 'Path to Prosperity' isn't really a proposed budget for the 2013 fiscal year at all," Mervis says. "Ryan doesn't detail how he would allocate some $3 trillion-plus across every federal agency. … Don't bother looking for how much House Republicans want to spend on basic and applied research — a category for which President Barack Obama has proposed $64 billion in 2013, a 5% boost over 2012."
Meanwhile, a House panel questioned NIH Director Francis Collins and Thomas Insel, the acting director of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, on their plan to slash the IDeA program's funding to increase the NCATS budget, reports ScienceInsider's Jocelyn Kaiser. Panel chair Denny Rehberg (R-MT) "emphasized that Congress did not give NCATS the authority to 'compete with industry or become a drug development organization,'" Kaiser says. "He also expressed concern about a shift away from basic research, now about 55% of NIH's budget. Collins assured him that he does not expect that figure to change."
Since the Ryan's budget
Since the Ryan's budget proposal doesn't address spending on basic research... why would researchers not like it? The "path to prosperity" is more about entitlement spending and spending cuts. The United States economy is in difficult shape right now. Very difficult decisions need to be made that may or may not impact research budgets more or less than everyone else. Both democrats and republicans have been pretty focused on and generous toward research, especially NIH over the last couple of decades. Republicans typically more toward big R and democrats moving toward big D... but both sides have recognized the value of basic science. Let's not start taking positions until both sides have their plans on the table... And maybe we can even look beyond just science itself and/or our own self-interests ...
The Republican side of this
The Republican side of this issue appears concerned with shrinking the Federal government (including science spending), thereby turning over many of its functions to the private sector. We ignore at our peril the idea that private business interests are solely interested in profits. Any research considered to be a loser in the long run will be ruled out. Of course, there is no profit in valuing human lives; they are seen only as markets to exploit. The only restraint on such greed is the blow-back from consumers which, of course, will be ameliorated by effective marketing.