Keith’s Note: according to a press release/letter “Today, Science Democrats submitted a public comment to the docket of the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) proposed revisions to the Guidance for Federal Financial Assistance. OMB’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking is far-reaching and would have severe consequences on our nation’s scientific enterprise. The Members demand that the proposed rule be withdrawn.”
“A summary of the many issues arising from OMB’s proposed rule is as follows:
- The proposed rule sets a double standard for political influence on grantmaking by declaring that agencies must prioritize alignment with Trump’s Presidential priorities, while arguing that Biden-era Executive Orders and grant decisions were illegal.
- The proposed rule allows agencies to terminate duly awarded grants if they are not in alignment with Presidential priorities — a clear waste of taxpayer dollars that have already been spent on projects that will now never see completion.
- The proposed rule insists that all diversity, equity, and inclusion-related activities are illegal, ignoring existing law that explicitly encourages efforts to broaden participation in STEM.
- The proposed rule would supplant existing bipartisan, heavily negotiated, reasonable research security laws, undermining the longstanding principle that fundamental research should remain as open as possible.
- The proposed rule formalizes the creation of blacklists, a strategy this Administration has already used to target politically disfavored institutions.
- The proposed rule limits the ability of agencies, the Government Accountability Office, and Offices of Inspectors General to initiate audits, hobbling independent oversight and shielding political appointees, who would have unprecedented power under this rule, from true accountability.
- The proposed rule would require political appointees to conduct reviews of all grants to ensure that selections are in alignment with Presidential priorities and advance the President’s policy interests. This provision undermines merit-based grant selection and would make it extremely difficult to fund high-risk, high-reward, curiosity-driven research.”
“If the drafters of the rule have any understanding of the range of professional activities outside of the lab itself that are essential to advancing both the careers of individual scientists and the progress of science itself, they seem not to care. Specifically, the draft regulation severely limits the use of federal dollars for both conference participation and publication. These activities are not, by any metric, wasteful uses of taxpayer dollars that fall outside the interests of grantmaking agencies. The proposed limitations would put U.S. scientists at a significant disadvantage compared to their global peers.”
