Chad Speaks on $. You listen.

Chad speaks out on the upcoming, devastating, cuts in science and takes on Gordon over where the blame lies.

You may be surprised. Either way you ought to read it.

Here is my take on the issue, when the news came out last month...

The root cause of these cuts is with the White House - the budget process was stymied by their veto threats and by the "silent filibustering" of the individual budget bills in the Senate (where the Republicans threaten to withold "unanimous consent" for bringing the bill to a vote if they don't like it - which is a bluff to filibuster - and for some reason the democrats cave on the issues each time).
There is further fault in that the White House then effectively refused to negotiate any of the budget details, insisting the budget be exactly as submitted by the President (which is a historically terrible precedent to accede to of monumental proportions).

The democrats fault is that they caved in on the White House budget total demands, and the amended omnibus bill has no new spending, and then to fit in their earmarks and random priorities they just hacked out bits an pieces incoherently, going for items with not protectorates or constitutencies. Chad has that right!

The bizarre thing is that both parties, both chambers and the White House wanted the science budget increased but it got cut in the end. Some interesting multi-player alternative choice game theory examples in there.

The worrying thing is not the current year fiscal pain - and that is a pain I am expecting to feel personally in the worst way...
The worrying thing is that the Executive is pushing back on 400-800 years of constitutional history and precedent, bringing back the Imperial Presidency with a vengeance.
Congress is folding in a way not seen since the late Roman Republic, and we all remember what happened next then.

I'm half expecting the White House to challenge Article I.6 next, just to complete the undoing of all the gains since the death of Elizabeth I.

(US Constitution - Article I.6: "... They shall in all cases, except treason, felony and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any speech or debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other place.")

Seriously, they seem to be working their way up Article I. Sections 10, 9, 8, 7 all seem to have been dinged in major or minor ways during the current presidency.
Sections 5 and 4 are clearly in line of fire, which leaves section 3... Hm.