What was vetoed; $478.54 billion for the Department of Health and Human Services, including $29.65 billion for the National Institutes of Health and $400.98 billion for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

article about the veto of HR 3043 here; http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/14/washington/14bush.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1195146411-VoigM1W9YTXlkrTbKxhUzg


The same day he vetoed this bill he signed the Defense Department's appropriations bill into law.

Which was $459 billion, including $73 billion in Research, Development, Test and Evaluation, an increase of $1.6 billion over this year. (search HR 5631 for details)

Good time to be a defense contractor!... not so good in health sciences, though.

I know... it is ridiculous.

You should put NSF, DOC, NIST, NOAHH in that title as well. He does not care about science, this administration is myopic at best.

Check and see how your representatives voted on HR 3043 here

(house)
http://www.votesmart.org/issue_keyvote_member.php?cs_id=16195

(senate)
http://www.votesmart.org/issue_keyvote_member.php?cs_id=16182


The house and senate need 2/3's majority to overturn a veto.

I learned recently that the bill also contains legislation requiring open access to journal articles produced from research using NIH funding... which has been long, long overdue.

some other HR 3043 points here; http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-3043&tab=summary

If I'm with the libs on anything, it's this. GIVE US FREAKING MORE MONEY! We're freaking curing your diseases. You spend more money on guns than medicine. If you've ever taken an antibiotic, you owe biomedical science your life.

And though I'm a capitalist, I still love the idea of open access scientific journals... It is extraordinarily annoying to go after a paper you need and find you don't have access to it. I'm proud to say that the highest journal in my particular field is open access, that is the Journal of Virology. It kills me to say it however, that I think journals should have the right to choose whether they're open access or not. It's their business. It's their money. I think there should be incentives for them to choose open source. Tax incentives? maybe.

Anyway, does anyone know if this particular funding was attached to other funding in the bill? I expect it was part of a HUGE mess of stuff like most bills. Seeing the trends in congress lately I wouldn't be surprised if it was part of a bill that also would mean MANY other radical funding changes or changes in policy. That way when it gets vetoed, they can cry foul on not funding science. yeesh. Could they please just divide that crap up? It's so obviously political BS anymore. Biomedical science needs money. Make a freaking bill that says just that alone.

Anyway, the Scientist:
http://www.the-scientist.com/news/home/53858/

I will warn that if this thing passes, it will be a MAJOR MAJOR MAJOR upset to non-opensource journals... as in possible colapse of several of them. I hope they are prepared.

FYI, America's "Science" and England's "Nature" are the 2 highest impact journals in the world by a landslide and they are NOT open source journals.

The president is allegedly not opposed to the open source bit, but of pork earmarks in the bill. Most bills have this sort of crap which should be in their own bills in the first place dang it. That sorta crap keeps money from where it should be.

"It kills me to say it however, that I think journals should have the right to choose whether they're open access or not. It's their business. It's their money. I think there should be incentives for them to choose open source. Tax incentives? maybe."

An interesting thing about science journals is they are exceedingly profitable; they get their articles and review papers basically for free, they get editorial work for free, and can charge a lot of money to institutions for subscriptions that they MUST have (...ahem... monopoly... cough...).

Anyhow, search around and you can find a ton of stuff on how companies owning science journals are continually defending their often ridiculous profits while arguing against open-access. Its worth clearly stating that the open-access requirement was that NIH funded research be shared via PUBMED within a year of publication, so its not like they're going to bankrupt Nature. A year in science is a lot of time these days.

HR 3043 was a pretty huge bill... if they formed a bill for every separate thing there would be total gridlock.

You can see the bill here.
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/110-h3043/show

I posted a link to highlights above (govtrack.us site); if a budget does not go through, typically the agencies run on whatever the last budgets funding was until a new budgets makes it through, which then goes into effect months later.

*quality post, although I am always sorry to find that yet again, our government believes that science is y'know, one of those optional investments. Because we could probably get by without science, right?

As for closed source journals...as my PI says, "Look, my friend....these journals, they are all crooks. And we are doing these crooks' work. Smart crooks."

Awarding bamdrew with one star point for this contribution to Sift Talk - declared quality by rembar.

sweet.

I really only posted this to potentially get a star... so... thanks sucker!