Living With Sequestration

by Stuart Shapiro

So, being off of blogging for a bit, I missed the whole sequestration thing.  I have mixed feelings about it.  On the one hand, if you told me a year ago that we would get $600 billion in higher taxes on the wealthy, and $450 billion in cuts to defense, I would have been thrilled.  I even would have been willing to give up some domestic spending for it.  But that something would have been cuts in health care spending, not the random cuts throughout the rest of the government.  There are plenty of examples of the stupidity of these cuts (like the impact on jobs) but one that doesn’t get enough attention is the cuts to scientific research.

The federal government is by far the lead funder for basic scientific research.  When the funding stream dries up, even briefly, work doesn’t just pause for a bit; instead, the blow cuts deeper, past fat, through muscle and into bone.

We make lots of noise about falling behind the rest of the world in science and then we do something like this.  Unfortunately I think sequestration is pretty permanent and we will be living with its dangerous long run consequences for a long time.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.