The tumultuous fiscal year 2026 budget process has recently concluded, but attention is already turning to what comes next. By law, the administration must submit its budget proposal for the following year to Congress by early February, laying out the White House’s funding priorities for federal agencies and programs, including science and research. As of now, the fiscal year 2027 President’s Budget has not yet been released.
While Congress ultimately controls federal spending, the President’s Budget signals what the administration would like to see funded, reduced, or eliminated. Last year’s proposal included significant cuts to science agencies and research programs, raising concerns that similar threats could reemerge in the FY27 budget. Also of concern is that the administration withheld or delayed the spending funds that Congress had already appropriated last year because they didn’t want the agencies to spend it on issues or projects that were not White House priorities.
So now the question isn’t just what the President will propose for 2027, but whether enacted funding for this year (FY2026) will actually be carried out as directed by law or will it be delayed again. The delays introduce uncertainty for future budgets and erode public trust when funds do not reach those who depend on it.
When it comes to science, budget cuts carry real costs, and those costs are rarely borne by the people making the decisions.
Costs Beyond the Lab
Communities already exposed to risk are often the first to feel the effects — and those communities are disproportionately Black, brown, Indigenous, and low-income. Long-standing inequities in housing, infrastructure, environmental exposure, and access to resources mean these communities are more likely to live in floodplains, heat-prone neighborhoods, wildfire corridors, and areas affected by industrial pollution. These communities rely on publicly funded science to understand and manage risk.
That reliance extends far beyond extreme weather and climate forecasts. Public health surveillance tracks emerging diseases and environmental exposures. Geological research informs earthquake and landslide preparedness. Agricultural science supports food security and water management. Environmental monitoring helps identify contamination in air, soil, and drinking water before it becomes a crisis.
When research stations close, data collection slows, or monitoring programs are reduced, early warning systems weaken across sectors. Models become less reliable. Planning decisions are made with outdated or incomplete information. For communities deciding when to evacuate, how to protect public health, where to build, what to plant, or how to invest in infrastructure, the consequences are immediate and tangible. Cuts to science do not simply limit knowledge. They limit the ability to anticipate problems and reduce harm.
Economic Shockwaves of Science Cuts
The economic effects follow quickly. Federal science funding supports far more than scientists. It sustains technicians, engineers, ship crews, data analysts, educators and the local economies built around research institutions. When grants disappear or agencies downsize, those jobs are often among the first to go. Many are stable, middle-class positions in regions with few comparable alternatives.
The losses ripple outward: fewer local businesses supported, fewer young people seeing science as a viable career, fewer reasons for skilled workers to stay. Yet the economic role of federally funded science is often overlooked in broader debates about government spending, even in the communities that benefit most directly from it.
When Industry Loses Its Compass
Entire industries also depend on publicly funded research, whether they recognize it or not. Farmers rely on climate data, soil research and long-term weather trends. Fishers depend on stock assessments, ocean monitoring and ecosystem science to keep fisheries productive and sustainable. Utilities and insurers use hazard modeling and scientific projections to manage risk.
When science funding is cut, uncertainty grows — and uncertainty is costly. It leads to poor investments, lost harvests, depleted fisheries and higher expenses that are ultimately passed on to consumers. Cuts to science do not protect the economy. They undermine it.
The Long Tail of a Short-Sighted Cut
Some of the greatest costs are not visible right away. Reductions in science funding slow progress on public health, environmental protection and climate resilience. They limit understanding of emerging diseases, air and water quality, and long-term environmental change. They also narrow the pipeline of future scientists, engineers and problem-solvers.
Children inherit those consequences: more severe disasters, fewer tools to adapt and a weaker foundation of knowledge. When science is weakened today, the costs surface later — often at a much higher price.
Scientists and researchers are often the most visible casualties of funding cuts. Laboratories close. Careers stall. Research goes unfinished. But focusing only on scientists misses the larger impact. The deeper loss is felt by the public, often without realizing it: the storm forecast that could have been more accurate, the disease outbreak detected too late, the ecosystem that crossed a tipping point without warning.
Cuts to science rarely announce themselves dramatically. More often, the damage accumulates quietly, leaving society less prepared than it could have been. That’s why the release of the President’s Budget matters. While Congress will ultimately decide funding levels, the proposal will signal the administration’s priorities for fiscal year 2027 — including which science programs it values, which it views as expendable, and where reductions may be proposed.
Those proposals deserve close attention. Past budgets have shown how quickly science funding can be targeted, even when the consequences fall far beyond laboratories and research institutions. Once proposed, cuts can shape negotiations, influence agency planning, and create uncertainty that reverberates long before final decisions are made.
The question is not whether the nation can afford to fund science. It is whether it can afford not to — and whether it is prepared to recognize the stakes early enough to protect what underpins public health, economic stability, and community safety. Science cuts do not spare costs; they simply transfer them.
The price of cutting science is paid by the public, not the policymakers who authorize it.
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