{"id":9361,"date":"2017-06-06T18:44:14","date_gmt":"2017-06-06T22:44:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=9361"},"modified":"2017-06-12T14:46:50","modified_gmt":"2017-06-12T18:46:50","slug":"2018-us-hep-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=9361","title":{"rendered":"2018 US HEP Budget"},"content":{"rendered":"

HEPAP has been meeting the past couple days, with presentations available here<\/a>. Much of the discussion is about the President’s 2018 budget proposal recently submitted to Congress, which contains drastic cuts to all sorts of programs, including for support of scientific research. In particular the proposal is to cut the total NSF budget from \\$7.5 billion to \\$6.65 billion (-11.3%), and the DOE science budget from \\$5.4 billion to \\$4.47 billion (-17%).<\/p>\n

At the DOE, for HEP physics, the cut would be from \\$825 million to \\$673 million (-18.5%). For topics less popular with the new administration the cuts are even larger, e.g. a 43% cut for biological and environmental research. <\/p>\n

At the NSF (numbers with respect to FY 2016), the proposed cut for DMS (Mathematics) is 10.3%, for Physics 8.5% (-\\$23.6 million) and for Astronomy 10.3%. The FY 2016 budget number for Physics was \\$277 million, of which \\$13.2 million went to HEP theory.<\/p>\n

Budget cuts on this scale would be extreme and unheard of, requiring shutting down major planned experimental projects. For some sorts of spending, this sort of cut is painful but manageable, but cutting out 18.5% of the spending on an experimental apparatus under construction may likely mean you don’t have an experiment anymore.
\nThe HEPAP presentations are from people working for DOE\/NSF and under orders to plan for these cuts and not complain about them, so I think don’t reflect at all what the real implications of such cuts would be. <\/p>\n

There’s a summary of discussion here<\/a>, including a discussion of last year’s HEP theory letter<\/a>. It sounds like nothing much has been done about that, and it may not get much attention given the current situation.<\/p>\n

It’s important though to keep in mind that this budget proposal may very well already be dead on arrival at Congress. Take a look at slide 22 of this presentation<\/a> that reports that of the staffers and representatives asked about (a preliminary version of) this, only 8.4% were in favor. In recent years the US budgeting process has been quite dysfunctional, with actual budget numbers only appearing at the last minute of an opaque process leading not to a budget but to a “Continuing Resolution”. I doubt anyone has any idea what is going to happen this year, with the passing of something close to this budget probably one of the least likely eventualities. Physicists and mathematicians up in arms about these proposed budget cuts need to keep in mind the context: this budget is an extremely radical proposal of an unparalleled sort, with even larger cuts aimed at groups that are far needier than scientists (for one random example, food stamps are to be cut by 25.3%). Yes, scientists should be organizing to fight this budget, but the impacts on them and their research are one of the less important reasons for doing so.<\/p>\n

I’m setting all comments to go to moderation. If you just want to rant pro or con about the awful situation the US is now in, please do it elsewhere. If you have any actual information about the effects of this on the physics and math communities as the budget process gets underway, that would be worthwhile and interesting. Two people tweeting about this are Kyle Cranmer<\/a> and Matthew Buckley<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Updates<\/strong>: Details of the DOE HEP budget proposal are here<\/a>. It explains that about 20-25% of the research positions funded by DOE at all levels would be eliminated. There would be an “extended shutdown of the Fermilab accelerator complex”.
\nAbout 1\/3 of DOE HEP theory funding would be eliminated, but it would be replaced by an equal amount of funding for quantum information science as a subfield of HEP. Looks like someone in the Trump administration is a great believer in “It From Qubit”…<\/p>\n

Update<\/strong>: According to this story<\/a>, if this budget passes about 700 jobs at Argonne and Fermilab would be eliminated. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HEPAP has been meeting the past couple days, with presentations available here. Much of the discussion is about the President’s 2018 budget proposal recently submitted to Congress, which contains drastic cuts to all sorts of programs, including for support of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9361"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9372,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9361\/revisions\/9372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}