Proposed Bush Budget Cuts Would Gut Harvard-Smithsonian Center

A tentative Bush administration budget would reduce funding to the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics by $20 million, according to Timken University Professor Irwin I. Shapiro, director of the center.

If the proposed budget makes it through Congress, the center will bear the brunt of the total cut to the Smithsonian Institution, which is currently slated to be $37.5 million.

“It would be a very serious blow,” Shapiro said.

The funding is slated to be redirected from the Smithsonian to other scientific organizations, Shapiro said. Potential beneficiaries may include the National Science Foundation.

If the funding reduction makes it to the final budget, the center would likely be forced to downscale its infrastructure.

“We would be competing naked [with other scientific institutions], so to speak,” he said. “It would require us to do some heavy thinking and planning.”

According to Shapiro, who said the figures had been leaked by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the proposed cut has caught the center off-guard.

But because the preliminary budget proposal is subject to changes and alterations as it goes through Congress, the center has held off on considering adjustments.

“We haven’t done any planning, and we’re not yet going to begin planning for this contingency,” he said. “It’s very difficult to see how this would work.”

Shapiro said he is hopeful the cut will not be included in the final budget.

One “must remember that we have checks and balances,” he said. “There are so many ways this can go.”

Already, an opposition to the cut has materialized on Capitol Hill.

Thirty-two members of Congress, among them Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), signed on to a letter to OMB Director Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. condemning the cut in funding to the Smithsonian two weeks ago.

According to Shapiro, the letter did not address the center funding specifically—it expressed opposition to the entire cut.

The letter called on the Bush administration to support the Smithsonian “as the preeminent caretaker of American history and culture and the home of much American scientific excellence,” according to The Boston Globe.

Shapiro said he is hoping more legislators will realize the ramifications of the proposed cuts and come to support the effort.

“I don’t know why 32 people signed [the letter] and not 332,” he said. “I am hopeful that the best interests of the country will prevail.”