Automatic budget cuts harm research funding - Iris Liu, The Dartmouth

Across the-board budget cuts looming over Capitol Hill were enacted last Friday after months of debate failed to produce a bipartisan plan to reduce government spending. Slated to shrink the federal deficit by over $1.2 trillion in the next decade, the cuts, collectively known as sequestration, will reduce federal funding for the College’s research and financial aid. The automatic budget cuts will exempt most mandatory spending such as Medicaid, debt interest payments and federal employee retirement benefits, and will instead affect discretionary spending that includes funding for the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the Federal Work-Study Program. In the 2012 fiscal year, federal agencies such as these sponsored $172.5 million of Dartmouth’s research, or 81.7 percent of the total research funding received. http://thedartmouth.com/2013/03/06/news/budget