The U.S. government has its hand in every pie, and it takes so much out of the system one is practically forced to come hat in hand to get some of it back directly or in the form of tax breaks or exemptions; which is why every industry lobbies the government.
U.S. support for Science is mostly in the form of grants to University Scientists, and support for education. We recently added 20,000 high skill immigration visas to the cap because U.S. Universities were not producing enough Scientists and Engineers.
You’ll win few enemies decrying government spending, but we spend very little on Science research comparatively, most of it is done in the private sector where I work. But that research of course is focused directly upon how we are going to make a drug to treat or cure a disease; basic research is done in the Universities and they get grants for specific research into specific fields to ‘get to the bottom’ of something, more than to find a drug to treat a disease.
So what government funding do you think needs to be cut?
Is it Molecular Evolution that you want cut? Nobody doing any research into the pattern of convergence and divergence in nested hierarchies of interrelatedness in DNA and matching it so closely to the fossil record. Is that your intent, get rid of all that embarrassing data?
Or is it High School Biology class that needs to be cut. All Biology? Is that enough for you, or would you go after Geology also. Not much support for a universal flood in contemporary Geology. Astrology and their million light year distances and a universe capable of making planets and stars through utilization of natural and predictable forces and that this most likely explains our star and our planet, are they safe? Why would they be when their ‘crime’ is the same, teaching that the universe is capable through utilization of natural and predictable forces to mold life into many divergent species, and that this most likely explains our present state.
When no Science is taught in any school that receives government funding, THEN will you be content? When no research Scientist gets any grants to put the U.S.A. once again at the cutting edge of scientific research, THEN will you be content?
With the exception of national defense issues, I want the government completely out of the science business. I want free market science, not socialist science. And, as I have stated many times, if the government wishes to receive the benefits of science, they can purchase those benefits from the private sector just like everyone else. We have way too many scientists on the government dole who are paid to generate mountains of worthless data. Most of them have way too much time on their hands, as evidenced by all the phony impending disasters they promote in order to give a false sense of importance to their careers, inflate their fragile egos, not to mention using these phony disasters to scare the public/congress into inflating their already bloated budgets. Free market science would take care of these problems in a jiffy, and it would force all would-be scientific orthodoxies to fend for themselves in the free market of competing scientific ideas.