[Protesters in Washington D.C. standing against budget cuts on Feb. 19th (Image via apnews.com / John McDonnell)]
Volunteer Writer: Maya Arruda
Email: marruda@arizona.edu
Maya is a ’24 UMassD alum studying her Ph.D. in biology at Arizona State University.
Nobody wants to become sick and die, but life rarely cares about what we want.
We experienced this personally during the pandemic, a global pandemic that caused a reported 7 million people to lose their lives. That is 7 million people who were someone’s child, someone’s parent, someone’s sibling, someone’s friend. Everyone knows someone who was personally impacted by COVID-19.
The COVID vaccine came a long way to prevent the spread of disease and reduce its severity. The death toll has come down exponentially since the beginning of the pandemic.
Unfortunately, not all diseases can be tackled as quickly as COVID was.
Life long conditions like sickle-cell anemia and cystic fibrosis are currently incurable. However, due to medical research funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), viable treatments are available that extend patient’s lives and minimize the pain caused by these genetic diseases.
It is the same case with strokes, cancer, autoimmune disease, hepatitis, and even mental health. We have come far developing treatments to prevent loss of life and maintain its quality. No longer is HIV a death sentence, and cancers can be combated—even cured.
All of these medical discoveries and hundreds more in the US can be attributed to the NIH, which leads and funds health research to work towards cures for all diseases. The NIH also has done interventions for disease prevention from environmental toxins like pesticides and chemicals, finding risk factors for heart disease, and using electricity to restore nerve function.
They have done good work, which has undoubtedly saved countless lives.
They are also a major source of funding for public universities.
When a research professor at an institution receives a grant from the NIH, the host university receives an additional stipend based on the amount of the grant. This stipend goes towards facility maintenance cost and, importantly, staff salaries—from the janitors to the graduate students to even the professors.
In 2024, this stipend was at least 50% of the grant value. Some universities like Harvard had negotiated for 69%.
Under the Trump regime, these stipends that are vital for public universities—what has been labeled “indirect costs” —will be limited to just 15%. This will make an estimated $200 million deficit for some universities.
Scientific research—especially biomedical research—will be near impossible to conduct.
This is not the first time Trump targeted the NIH. At the start of the year, his regime froze plane travel for NIH scientists and grant applications. That’s an estimated $1.5 billion not going towards finding cures or life-prolonging treatments.
The NIH is not the only research institution attacked by Trump’s administration. It is planning to devastate the National Science Foundation (NSF), which also ho provides research grants to public universities. The administration is proposing a lay-off of 1,600 people and cutting the budget by two-thirds.
“My boss was crying when she told us,” one NSF employee said. “This is not something NSF wants to be doing, but they weren’t given a choice.”
Other important research institutes like the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have all had severe staff cuts—around 10% of the workforce—due to the regime. All these agencies are integral to the continued health and wellbeing of the American people.
Decades of research into diseases have already been lost.
With NIH and NSF foreseeably crippled for years (if not decades) by these demands of the current administration, there are concerns that publicly available research sources like NCBI and PubMed will also be eviscerated in Trump’s “cost-cutting” crusade.
Consequently, universities are starting to tighten their belts. Hiring has been frozen, and so have raises and “non-essential” expenses. Graduate student acceptances, especially in STEM fields, is also expected to decline dramatically because labs can no longer afford to take on more students with the slashed funding.
More worryingly, the other major source of funding for public universities is student tuition. Because the other major source is cut, will universities raise tuition prices to cover the deficits? Will students be left footing the bill for these “indirect costs?”
With all due frankness, college is ridiculously expensive even without Trump nuking research funding. Without financial aid, getting a bachelor’s is well unattainable without getting at least $50k in debt.
Trump’s previous reign stripped away Obama-era policies aimed at making high-quality secondary education accessible by Gainful Employment policies and debt relief programs. Even though FAFSA is not affected by the federal NIH funding freeze, financial aid is still on the chopping block.
Let’s digress briefly.
A lot of what I hear from Republicans is economy this, economy that. The entirety of these dismemberments to science have been done in the name of the economy. So, let’s talk about the economy.
As expected from a grifter who bankrupted his businesses six different times, Trump’s understanding of the economy is about the same as a sixth grader who repeatedly failed his math and social studies class.
Which is to say, abominably poor.
Under Keynesian economic theory, which was developed during the Great Depression when prior economic theories utterly failed the people on a global level, government spending should be increased and taxes lowered to stimulate the economy. This makes new jobs and motivates the working and middle class to circulate money.
During the The Great Recession, we can see how the early government initiatives that cut funding negatively impacted the economic outlook of the country. The more successful policies that led to economic recovery were the Economic Stimulus Act, which increased tax rebates for the working class and incentivized businesses, and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which created new jobs.
To be explicit, the successful policies of this economic downturn in the US followed Keynesian economic theory. Reduction of federal spending that had preceded the successful policies was horrible for the economy.
Guess which approach Trump is using to “improve” the economy.
Even his tax cuts do not benefit the working or middle classes. Rather, Trump’s tax cuts are set to favor the top 1% of Americans, the people not actually suffering from inflation and the current cost of living crisis. This policy is reminiscent of trickle down economics, a policy passed by another Republican president of ill repute, Ronald Reagan, known for its horrendous failure in practice.
Money is not water—it does not trickle-down.
The loss of jobs from these budget cuts will have a crippling effect on the economy as well as people’s personal lives.
However, the worst is yet to come.
Universities are not the only ones who will suffer from the mutilation of the NIH funding. The NIH funds small businesses and hospitals, both of which are also expected to lose millions of dollars of funding.
In the state of Massachusetts alone, the NIH directly supports 28,842 jobs and impacts 147,887 jobs in the bioscience industry. 5,474 businesses are supported. (For other states, that information can be found here.)
When that funding gets cut, all those businesses and jobs will be in jeopardy. The economy will only worsen. Unemployment will skyrocket.
Currently, federal courts have blocked Trump’s tyrannical demands. Lawsuits from states and universities are trying to prevent this deathblow to science in America due to the “irreparable harm” it will cause.
The deadline for action is March 14th, when Congress must release a federal budget to avoid government shutdown. With the federal and executive branches at each other’s throats, the Congressional branch has the deciding power: will the NIH receive full funding or incapacitating cuts?
This is a decisive point for this country.
If these cuts get passed, college education will become even more inaccessible due to increased tuition. Graduate programs will be harder to get into. Entire programs will be cut. Quality of education will be degraded.
If these cuts get passed, the economy Trump is allegedly trying to save will enter an even starker downward spiral. Hundreds of thousands of people nationwide will be at risk of losing their jobs. Companies will go bankrupt, or they will have the consumer foot the bill.
People with lifelong and/or terminal medical conditions will pay more money for basic quality of life treatments to make up the cost.
If these cuts get passed, people will die at an exacerbating rate.
Parents, children, siblings, and friends will never receive medical care. Hospitals will not be able to treat people. Infectious diseases will spread unchecked, and we will be incapable of defending ourselves. Another pandemic like COVID could ravage this country, and more than 7 million people will die.
There will be no more cures.
Do not let this man steal your life and your future in the name of cost-cutting. Human lives are worth more than dollar signs. It is time we remembered that.
Act now.