"In Bush's Budget Plan, Shifting Priorities"

Read the full article by ROBERT PEAR in The New York Times, February 5, 2006. (Registration required.)

"President Bush wants to spend more on bird flu and the physical sciences next year, but would freeze the budget of the National Institutes of Health and would slightly cut federal support for research on cancer and heart disease, two of the leading killers of Americans, budget documents show."

The budget of the federal government it too complicated for a lay person to really understand. Thus intelligent comment is difficult. The shift from research on cancer and heart disease to development of improved vaccine production technologies could be very beneficial. But might it be better to cut back somewhere else? How important is it to have manned travel to the planets, compared to improving fundamental understanding in the sciences and engineering. Are the tax cuts really that important? And of course, a significant part of the budget problem is a war that appears to have been started due to a misunderstanding of the threat posed by Iraq.