Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona (R) has convinced the House of Representatives to prohibit the National Science Foundation from funding political science programs, according to Inside Higher Ed:
By a vote of 218-208, the House Wednesday night backed an amendment that would bar the NSF from spending any of its 2013 funds on its political science program, which allocated about $11 million in peer-reviewed grants this year. Explaining the amendment on the House floor Wednesday evening, Flake said that given his colleagues’ reluctance to slash the agency’s overall budget — the House defeated his earlier amendment by a vote of 291 to 121 — Congress should ensure, “at the least, that the NSF does not waste taxpayer dollars on a meritless program.”
In hunting for programs that the government should not spend its precious dollars on, Flake said, “I can think of few finer examples to cut than the National Science Foundation’s Political Science Program.”
The agency is spending more than $80 million, he said, on about 200 active projects — and three-quarters of those funds, he added, “were directed to universities with endowments greater than $1 billion…. Think about it. Three out of the four of the grants awarded by the NSF Political Science Program go to the wealthiest universities in the country.”
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