Exorbitant Federal Budget

The February 28 issue of C&E News covers the Food and Drug Administrations Budget Boost, and the March 21 issue covers the National Science Foundations Budget Boost.

For the FDA, Obama is requesting a 29% increase over the previous budget, in these times of excessive government and budget deficits. Reasons given are globalization of the food and drug supply, regulating tobacco products, implementing a food safety bill, creating a pathway for generic versions of biologic drugs, and enhancing regulatory science. A closer look at what all of these entail shows a $324 million increase for food safety, $70 million for new tools to respond to emerging diseases, $124 million for generic versions of biologic drugs, $49 million for general regulatory, and $455 million for tobacco related activities.

I have the impression that my food supply is safe enough. I don't see what another $324 million would do except to increase federal hirings and buy more equipment.

I was under the impression that the Center for Disease Control handles communicable diseases. Why do I need FDA involvement for $70 million?

Why would the federal government want to spend $124 million on generic versions of biological drugs? That seems to already be handled by the pharmaceutical companies. Is the $124 million a matter of controls because we don't think the pharmaceutical companies are doing the right thing and we need to have policemen in their operations?

What is the $49 million for general regulatory? The FDA has already been regulating. Haven't we had enough regulating? Are there a lot problems out there that I haven't even thought about? If so, what are they?

Why almost 1/2 $1 billion to be spent on tobacco. We already know about tobacco for all practical purposes. Everybody now knows that smoking tobacco increases the likelihood that they will have lung cancer or emphysema. We also know that it contains nicotine, which is a physiologically addictive chemical. Chewing tobacco increases prevalence for mouth cancers. I don't see what else we need to know that would justify spending a nickel on tobacco.

Bottom line: Obama and the Socialists are still in a big spending mode. It is up to the House to kill the psychology.

Going on to the NSF budget, Obama has requested $7.8 billion, a 13% increase over the previous budget. The NSF director says that in these challenging fiscal times this budget shows the confidence that the president is placing in NSF. What does that mean? If these are challenging fiscal times, why should we be increasing the budget? Is it implied that that the NSF, through an increased budget, is going to take us out of hard times? Only Socialists think that way and it has been proven incorrect many times.

The NSF director went on to say that through support of fundamental research in all disciplinary areas, jobs are generated, the economy grows and adds immeasurably to the global store of knowledge and reeducating our workforce. A lot of hooey. If that's true, why are we in the spot that we're in now after having spent in previous years $6-$7 billion per year?

Let's look at a little of the breakdown. Several programs are tackling multidisciplinary societal problems, to include science engineering and education for sustainability, research at the interface of biological, mathematical and physical sciences, science and engineering beyond Moore's Law and generally increases in the Chemistry Division. Look at the words and consider what they mean in real life. It's all pie in the sky based upon sophisticated wording to confuse the public into thinking that these are magical silver bullets that will correct all our problems.

Take "sustainability", as an example. We already know about sustainability. The sun shines and we have no indication that it will ever stop shining. That's sustainability. The sunshine generates plants, and we have no indication that that will ever stop. That's also sustainability. Coal deposits are well known and are being mined. We can perceive that coal availability will sometime come to an end. That's non-sustainability. What then are we going to study with respect to sustainability? It's applicable to everything we do, and a little common sense on every aspect of its involvement easily leads to the conclusion that we don't need egg heads to decide whether something is sustainable or not.

$63 Million will be spent on Science, Engineering & Education for Sustainability. I need to know how it will be spent. More government jobs to do something that doesn't need doing by government, since it would be better done by private industry? It has been said that chemistry is the key to any advances that will be made in sustainability. I'm a chemist, and I generally agree with that. I also know that private industry is strongly interested in sustainability to keep their businesses running. We don't need government involved in this.

The NSF director says any cuts in the budget will be devastating. She's the director. How can she think otherwise? But that doesn't make it right. Beer drinkers would also like a free supply of beer.

One piece of good news is that the NSF appears to be cutting back on its grants to third-party investigators. I have said before that this is an area for fraud and deception and should be eliminated anyhow.