Trump's Pick for Budget Director Isn't Sure the Government Should Fund Scientific Research

[JHan]

http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2016/12/trumps-pick-budget-director-isnt-sure-government-should-fund-scientific-research

If confirmed by the Senate to lead the Office of Management and Budget, Mulvaney, a deficit hawk who recently spoke before a chapter of the right-wing-fringe John Birch Society, would be in charge of crafting Trump's budget and overseeing the functioning of federal agencies. One thing he seems to believe the budget and the agencies should not be funding is research into diseases like the Zika virus.

Two weeks before Congress finally passed more than $1 billion to fight the spread of Zika and its effects, Mulvaney questioned whether the government should fund any scientific research. "[D]o we need government-funded research at all," he wrote in a Facebook post on September 9 unearthed by the Democratic opposition research group American Bridge. Mulvaney appears to have deleted his Facebook page since then.

If there wasn't a trend to Trump's cabinet picks I would be less worried, but all of them believe in regressive, anarcho-capitalist "the market will solve it" principles.

And we're screwed anyway: Trump already wants to scrap climate change research.

If Mulvaney guts funding, and you're an epidemiologist whose area of expertise is vaccines, and you don't depend on funding from pharmaceutical companies to avoid conflict of interest, you're screwed.

Our Government research agencies are the bedrock for R&D, gutting agencies will see us lose ground to China and Russia, and affect researchers or all stripes directly.

#GoodGoingAmerica
#YouDidIt

[Turbineguy]

1. A nice epidemic

would depopulate the country nicely.

Nice in the republican sense.

[bluedigger]

2. We could call it a Final Market Solution.

[Turbineguy]

3. We should really stop with the Hitler references.

It's not fair to Germans. They did not elect this guy.

OK, just this once: Eindmarktlossung.

[bluedigger]

5. On the other hand, there's no sense reinventing the wheel.

Give credit where credit is due, I say.

[JHan]

4. And Trump is going to put the money where we most need it....

Defense Funding.
Because our military industrial complex isn't YUUUUUGGGGEEE enough..

[Girard442]

6. Apparently Mulvaney's grand ambition...

...is to die atop a giant heap of money, of a disease that could have been prevented if only the CDC had been able to research it.

[zipplewrath]

7. Unless DARPA or the DoD

Someone ought to ask him which research programs over at DARPA he wants to defund, or those in the many labs that the DoD runs.

[JHan]

8. they will never touch those, trump is going to expand "research" in those areas...

even if it breaks the budget.