As a matter of public policy — of finally taking a stand for what kind of government spending should remain immune to the whims of politicians — President Barack Obama’s $100 million brain research proposal could not have come at a better time.
The proposal is similar to the Human Genome Project in that its goal is to completely map out every detail of the human brain. The hope is that this will develop a deep enough understanding of the brain to help researchers find new ways to cure and prevent brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy and traumatic brain injury.
How successful this project will be is, of course, still up in the air as with any research proposal. However, the actual success of this specific project may be a moot point, as the crucial aspect of this initiative is its representation of a bold policy move to solidify our government’s dedication to funding academic research.
But $100 million is not a lot of money when it comes to scientific research. To put it into perspective, annual federal government spending in research and development reaches about $140 billion. Obama is clearly not making a large dent in either scientific research or the federal budget with this new brain-research initiative — but making a large dent isn’t the point. Commitment to academic research is.
The political climate in Washington today is one determined to balance the budget and lower our national debt at seemingly any cost. That said, Republicans and Democrats are in a huge disagreement on how to actually achieve this.
The two main areas of conflict are entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and tax rates. The Republicans refuse to budge on taxes, and the Democrats are likewise unwilling to make meaningful cuts to entitlements, though Obama took heat recently for proposing reforms to how social security benefits are calculated each year. The loser in this battle is discretionary spending — the category that academic research falls under.
Politically, cutting discretionary spending isn’t all that bad for either party. Making cuts in something like neuroscience research does not affect the short-term interests of a politician’s constituents in nearly the same way as an increase in taxes or decrease in retirement benefits would. Consequently, our leaders have continued to pander to people’s momentary desires while ignoring what is best long-term — academic research chief among them.
We saw a similar political calculus in the abysmal failure for Washington to compromise on sequester cuts in March. Unwilling to make bold policy decisions that might upset their bases on entitlements and taxes, Democrats and Republicans decided to take the ax to discretionary spending instead — despite how reckless these cuts were to the overall health of our economy.
Obama’s brain-research initiative, however, has the potential to reverse this political calculus. Obama is doing something that a president of the United States hasn’t done in years — he is showing interest in a specific area of scientific research. Couple this with Obama’s initiative to capture an asteroid, hold it in the moon’s orbit and study its mining potential, and we have a president who is seriously committed to the sort of scientific research and innovation our country needs most right now.
And a president’s interests are contagious.
Moreover, and more importantly, Obama’s brain-research proposal has the potential to truly resonate with the imagination of the American people. We are trying to unravel the inner workings of one of the most mysterious aspects of nature: the brain. Perhaps with this new research we might begin to understand more about how we think, how we understand, how we remember and what consciousness is.
The project might just reinvigorate our nation’s interest in the sciences and academic research in general, impacting the nation’s drive as the race to the moon did a generation ago. If the academic community has the support of the public behind them, politicians will no longer be able to use cuts in research as political scapegoats.
We might start to see our leaders make meaningful changes in Washington and finally recognize what is — and what is not — a reasonable program on which to spend money.
Obama’s brain-research proposal is a reminder to the politicians in Washington and their constituents at home that sacrificing long-term security for short-term gains stops at the door of academic innovation.