I guess I should point out here that everything in the following post is my own opinion and is in no way representative of that of the government agency where I work. I don't think that I need to worry about this as I'm not actually considered a government employee due to being a lowly postdoctoral fellow, but better safe than sorry.
Unbelievably, the US government is still shut down, almost two weeks after I wrote my last blog post. This is the self-described "greatest representative democracy in the world". Sorry, that was a cheap shot. Although, even now, House representatives have described US democracy as "the envy of the world" during debates, as recently as last week. One could wonder how the US media would be describing this farcical, manufactured political crisis if it happened in a different country, but one doesn't have to, as the Slate already made an attempt here. My favourite line is:
"The current rebellion has been led by Sen. Ted Cruz, a young fundamentalist lawmaker from the restive Texas region, known in the past as a hotbed of separatist activity."
Okay, enough petty bitching. As I said before, being furloughed isn't the end of the world as my work doesn't directly save lives in the immediate-term. However, the government shutdown is affecting the greater science community. During the shut-down, it's illegal to present any data gathered at US government facilities, which makes it impossible for us to attend conferences and share our research with other scientists, even if these conferences were planned months in advance and already paid for by the government. I heard of one researcher who landed in Australia on Tuesday 1st of October to present at a conference, only to be told that she couldn't give her talk and had to grab the first flight back to the US. I can't think of a bigger waste of time, not to mention government resources. Well, maybe the UK trident programme where the UK buys weapons of mass destruction and pretends that it's still a superpower, but that's not relevant here.
I was due to give a talk in Glasgow next week as I'll be home anyway, but some of the data I need are on a hard drive in the lab and I can't access the facility during a shut-down to pick it up. Not to mention that actually preparing the talk at home during the shutdown is technically illegal as well. As is checking government email...
The shutdown has delayed my own work by at least a month or two: all of my experiments require transgenic mice to be a certain age and once the mice are older than this, they become useless so have to be euthanised. This will be the same for many researchers at government facilities so if you scale this up, I'd hate to think how many thousands of animals will be completely wasted due to a political mess. And this is just basic research - shutting down the government has much more tragic, human consequences, such as denying sick children access to clinical trials.
Beyond government facilities, the shutdown is starting to affect scientific research on a much larger scale. Any research grant due to be reviewed or paid out this month will be delayed, causing breaks in research or even leaving labs unable to pay research. A radio telescope in Virginia was closed on 4th October due to lack of funds, and the NSF is having to evacuate researchers from the Antarctic research station. An editorial in Nature describes this aspect of the shutdown better than I can.
Many aspects of biology rely on huge databases to act as repositories for genome sequences, protein structures or searchable databases of scientific literature. These databases are truly fantastic resources that are used globally, but they are funded and operated by the NIH. "Essential' workers are in place, but there is only enough staff to keep the servers running but not updated. My wife is an environmental microbiologist, and an important task in this field is uploading the genetic sequences of organisms found in your samples to NCBI, which is important for both data-sharing and a prerequisite for publication. These databases are curated by humans to make sure that data is uploaded in a reasonably standardised format, so not only is the shutdown slowing down the reporting and publication of data, but it will be creating an epic backlog for when the government does finally re-open.
So, when will the government re-open? According to the Washington Post, a deal may well emerge in the Senate today. Given that the debt-ceiling is due to be reached in 2 days, it's about bloody time. Even if a deal does emerge in time, if any senators dislike it (Ted Cruz, we're looking at you here), they could still delay it by several days. And then it could get a rough ride from the House of Representatives, who started all this mess in the first place. I guess all we can do is buy some popcorn and sit back and watch the show.
Just as a quick footnote: I've been reading the US constitution recently. Mostly because I don't have many friends and am not allowed to work during the furlough. ANYWAY, the 14th Amendment to the US constitution (section 4) states that:
"The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned."
I would interpret this to mean that the debt ceiling in itself is unconstitutional so, in times of crisis like this, Obama could unilaterally decide to raise it and pay, at the least, interest to US treasury bond holders and prevent the economy from going down the pants. He could invoke the 14th Amendment and claim to be defending the constitution. Which is basically his job.
This isn't a new idea. During the last shutdown threat, in 2011, Garret Epps, a constitutional lawyer, wrote this piece in the Atlantic. Some other articles were written (here and here), which support that position, although someone else argued that only congress has the authority to borrow money on behalf of the US government so the 14th doesn't apply. I'm not convinced - it seems like a simple, legal solution to the madness in the House. But what do I know? I'm neither USian nor a lawyer, I'm just a lowly foreign scientist who would like to get back to work.
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