The U.S. Debt-Ceiling Crisis Could Harm Science for Years to Come

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

53% : The push to curb spending comes less than a year after Congress enacted legislation authorizing a massive increase in federal spending on science and innovation, including a doubling of the NSF's budget through 2027.
50% : Meanwhile, lawmakers are still working through the usual appropriations process for the fiscal year 2024, with Republicans seeking to reduce federal spending to levels enacted in 2022.
47% : Also hanging in the balance, as politicians haggle over government spending, is a decade of funding for research and innovation, and many science advocates fear that budget cuts are inevitable.
46% : In the House, they have passed a bill proposing massive budget cuts that could limit government spending across the board over the coming decade, in exchange for raising the debt ceiling.
42% : For many in Washington, the current showdown feels like a replay of events that occurred during former president Barack Obama's first term in 2011, when Republicans used a looming debt-ceiling deadline to try to limit federal spending for a period of nearly a decade.
33% : The impasse between President Joe Biden, a Democrat, and Republicans hinges on the 'debt ceiling', a congressionally imposed limit on how much money the US government can raise by issuing bonds and using other financial instruments to cover its spending (the United States currently spends more money than it raises in taxes).

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