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Posted on: 3/17/2013 12:00:00 AM... A joint op-ed piece in the March issue of The Atlantic by the directors of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory outlines the potential long-term effects of the U.S. sequester.

The sequester, passed as part of the Budget Control Act of 2011, is a set of automatic cuts to federal spending that was intended to provide incentive for Congress to develop and pass a plan to cut $1.5 trillion over 10 years to address the U.S. federal deficit. The sequester cuts, which went into effect on March 1, are evenly split between domestic and defense programs and target discretionary spending. Barring any meaningful action on the part of Congress, the sequester cuts will total $85.4 billion in 2013, and then cut $109.3 billion a year from 2014-2021.

In their article, “The Sequester Is Going to Devastate U.S. Science Research for Decades,” the laboratory directors discuss the short-term disruption and long-term impact of the sequester on basic research, technological progress, and long-term competitiveness of the United States. “Less than one percent of the federal budget goes to fund basic science research,” they write. “By slashing that fraction even further, the government will achieve short-term savings in millions this year, but the resulting gaps in the innovation pipeline could cost billions of dollars and hurt the national economy for decades to come.”

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