Analysis of Proposed Federal Budget Cuts

Congratulations to Cheryl Hogue and Jeff Johnson of C&E News for their honest reporting on House Federal Funding Slashes in the February 28 issue. A grudging congratulation also to Rudy Baum for allowing Hogue and Johnson to do some honest reporting.

Rudy and I are opinionists. We choose our data and put our personal slants on it to support the political points we desire based on our ideologies. Rudy is a socialist/communist. I am the reverse, whatever term you want to apply.

On the various items covered by Hogue and Johnson in their article, I now make the following personal comments.

Total Spending Cuts - The House wants $61 billion in budget cuts. The Senate is opposed. It's a push and shove contest with the possibility of some temporary compromise. I say temporary, because I think the handwriting is on the wall from the midterm elections that both the House and Senate and new President will be favorable to budget cuts in the next administration. In other words, I think there is hope for a return of government programs at least partial sanity.

The Department of Energy - The House wants to cut $3 billion. This is a step in the right direction but with the wrong momentum. The budget is $13 billion. The DOE has been spending tremendous amounts of money for many years with no practical improvement of our energy supplies. In fact they have been instrumental in reducing energy supply through a program to eliminate oil and gas from the economy. Let's pound the DOE into insignificance.

Office of Science - The House wants to cut $900 million from a $4 billion budget. I don't know what the Office of Science does and they likely don't know either. I suggest we eliminate the Office.

Renewable Energy - I don't know what departments this falls under, but the House wants to cut $800 million from a $1.5 billion budget and eliminate loan guarantees for solar and wind power developments. Good suggestions, but they don't go far enough. Wipe out the whole $1.5 billion budget. We have sufficient oil and gas to supply all of our energy needs for an indeterminate number of years with the possibility of falling back on an indeterminate number of years for coal, which can be used to make syngas. There is a minor place for solar and wind energy, but it can be developed by private industry without government taxpayer support. Oil is presently in short supply, but that is only the result of government restrictions. That can be changed quickly.

EPA - The House wants to cut $3 billion out of a $10.3 billion budget and restrict EPA regulation of carbon dioxide and five other of what they call greenhouse gases. This is a great move to curtail projected expenditures for carbon dioxide control, which has no basis of involvement in climate change. Carbon dioxide and it's associated Cap & Trade have only been used in a political sense as an effort to increase tax revenues and redistribute wealth worldwide. We need the EPA, but we also need them to be an organization concerned with science and the financial aspects of pollution control. It may be that the five other greenhouse gases should eventually be controlled, but there should be scientific data to justify such action.

Other Climate Change - The House wants to eliminate financial support for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That organization is a boondoggle. There will continue to be climate change. We have it every day and every year, but until we have data which supports any supposition that the basis is anthropogenic, we don't need to study efforts to control it. Starve the Intergovernmental Panel.

Ethanol in Gasoline - The concentration of ethanol in gasoline was previously capped at 10%. The EPA later raised to 15%. The House bill cuts it back to 10%. A good move but this doesn't get at the basis of the problem. Ethanol is more expensive to produce than gasoline. The only reason for the dilution is subsidies to ethanol producers, which makes the apparent cost of ethanol less than that of gasoline. Cut off the subsidies for ethanol and the uneconomical dilution will die on the vine.

Research Agencies - The House wants to cut $300 million from the total budgets of the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. The National Institute of Standards & Technologies would receive a cut of $70 million. The establishment of a National Climate Service would be killed. The budget for the NSF is $6 billion. I don't know what the budgets are for the National Institutes of Health and the Institute of Standards and Technologies, but they are likely of the same order of magnitude as that for the NSF. All three of these agencies should obtain zero budgeting, which means they should define every project that they plan to work on, with the objectives, amounts of money necessary to conduct the research, and estimates of the probability for success. I am very familiar with industrial research and know full well the opportunity of pouring money down a rat hole to pursue projects that have little or no significant value.