APS April 2008: Lobbying on the go
Many physicists are still smarting from the blows they took after Congress slashed various high-energy physics programs in the fiscal year 2008 budget. In the main conference area on Saturday morning, five computers sat beckoning. They weren't for quick email checks, but for physicists to sign and send form letters to their representatives in Congress. The form letter calls for a total of $510 million in emergency supplemental appropriations: $180 million for the NSF, $30 million for the NIST Core program, and $300 million for the DOE Office of Science.
Many Washington insiders think chances of this happening are quite slim, but APS officials are still pushing hard.
They collected 1,753 signatures at the March meeting in New Orleans, and in the first morning in St. Louis, they had garnered 142. Don Engel, a science policy fellow at APS in Washington, DC, was giving out stickers that read "I support science funding" to everyone that signed the form letter. "You want a sticker?" Engel asked his latest petitioner. "Then we know not to bother you again."
