Time to Contact Your Member of Congress

"Fiscal Cliff" negotiations (or lack thereof) in the US are not just theoretical. An email circulated today from the Population Association of America reminds us that if there is no budget deal by the end of the year, federal funding for research, including population research, will be seriously impacted because of the enforced across-the-board cuts (so-called sequestration--something more akin to castration).

The PAA urges us all to do the following:

Please take a moment to contact President Obama and Speaker Boehner to communicate this simple message:

"I am a population scientist at (enter name of institution) and an educator who relies on direct and indirect funding from the federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation, to conduct research on (enter description of research interests if applicable) and train the next generation of behavioral and social scientists (if applicable). I am deeply concerned about the state of the ongoing deficit reduction negotiations.

As you continue your negotiations, I ask you to recognize two important facts:

1) Funding for non-defense discretionary programs (NDD), which includes funding for all scientific and statistical research agencies, has already been cut by $1.5 billion as part of the Budget Control Act of 2011.

2) This funding should NOT be cut further as part of any new deficit reduction plan to avoid going over the "fiscal cliff."

I urge you to negotiate a balanced approach to deficit reduction that does not include further cuts to NDD programs and that reflects a commitment to investing in the nation's scientific and statistical research agencies."

And here's the contact information you'll need

To write or call President Obama, go to:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/write-or-call#write
To write or call Speaker Boehner, go to: http://www.speaker.gov/contact