Illinois Governor Writes To Pres. Bush To Restore Science Spending

Illinois Governor, Rod Blagojevich, wrote a letter to President Bush urging him to restore the intended budget for Argonne and Fermilab, both national laboratories in his state. This is just after Bush visited an elementary school in Chicago.

Yesterday, as you visited Chicago, you toured Greeley Elementary School and saw first hand the success we’ve had in promoting math and science based education. Ironically, because of major funding reductions to some of the nation's leading research facilities within the Department of Energy’s budget, the students you saw today may have a hard time starting a technical or scientific career in Illinois.

The omnibus spending bill that you recently signed could cause dramatic funding cuts at Argonne National Laboratory, one of the nation’s largest and most important research centers. In addition to these cuts, the bill includes significant cuts to Illinois’ other federal research facility, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. These two institutions put Illinois and the United States at the forefront of scientific research. Without adequate federal funding, hundreds of people will lose their jobs while the United States will risk falling behind in science and technology leadership.

When politicians starts wondering why we seldom believe in what they say, point them to this debacle. Not even 6 months after they all agreed that more funding should be given to science via that joke America COMPETES Act, what did they do? They cut science spending, and cut it with impunity. Essentially, THEY LIED! They plainly lied in front of our faces, and knew that they'll get away with it too!

Of course, you could say "What else is new?" Maybe this is their standard operating procedure. I can only hope that one day, one of these lies would really come back and haunt them.

Zz.