You're Not Helping

President Obama has recently called for a three-year freeze of all US federal, non-military employee salaries. But Mike the Mad Biologist says all this will do is "make things worse for research in the US." NIH program officers are already overworked and there aren't enough people to get the work done, he says, so this move will make morale worse and make retaining good people even more difficult. And the president's decision is even worse in light of where the money's going, Mike adds — not to fund Pell Grants or build some "supertrains," but to "pay for wars we should not be fighting, and keep taxes low on the wealthy. ... Not hopey. Not at all."