Tim Clancy, President of Arch Street was interviewed by the prestigious science journal Nature regarding the proposed FY 2021 federal science budget released by the President yesterday.
For example, the 2021 request for the National Science Foundation is not a good one with large cuts being proposed, similar to prior administration requests. The budget released on Monday, February 10 would cut NSF support for fundamental research by nearly 8%. While Congress has rejected prior proposed cuts and provided modest increases, this not be possible this year as the overall federal budget top line for FY 2021 is essentially flat. Given that both the administration and key congressional leaders are calling for increases in priority research areas such as artificial intelligence and quantum information science, any research not in these fields may get squeezed even further.