President Trump’s fiscal 2018 budget unveiled Tuesday proposes massive cuts for the National Science Foundation.
The plan would cut $776 million, an 11 percent reduction, from the foundation, which gives grants for non-medical research in science and engineering.
Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, defended the proposal, accusing the foundation of wasteful spending.
{mosads}“The National Science Foundation last year used your taxpayer money to fund a climate change musical. Do you think that’s a waste of your money?” he said in a White House briefing on Tuesday.
While Congress is expected to reject much of the president’s budget, the scientific community blasted the cuts.
“The extreme funding cuts to science agencies and related programs included in the budget released today would harm America’s research enterprise and our nation’s leadership in scientific discovery,” said Science Coalition Vice President Anna Quider.
“From life changing discoveries to innovations that produce new industries, and from building a STEM [science, technology, engineering and math] workforce to creating new jobs, science-driven innovation has been a powerful driver of the U.S. economy for decades,” she continued.
The science cuts are part of a budget blueprint that would cut $1.5 trillion in nondefense spending and another $1.4 trillion in Medicaid spending, while boosting defense by over half a trillion over a decade.
The budget also makes significant cuts to medical research.
The National Cancer Institute would endure a $1 billion cut, the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute a $575 million cut and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases would see a reduction of $838 million in its budget.
The National Institutes of Health would suffer an overall cut of almost $6 billion.