Dear IMS Members:
ASA has sent out an appeal to its members to urge US politicians to
oppose budget cuts of research and statistical agencies. The IMS presidents (current, past and elect) think that this is an issue that is critically important to our US members, and thus we have decided to send the same appeal below to them, with the approval of the ASA. We apologize to those who are also members of ASA and receive the same appeal a second time.
Sincerely,
Hans R. Kuensch
IMS President
Large across-the-board federal budget cuts will take effect in January unless Congress and President Obama negotiate a compromise. With 8.2% cuts for NIH, NSF, and the statistical agencies, statisticians and probabilists will see far fewer funding opportunities, and statistical agencies will have to scale back their vital work.
We ask you to urge your U.S. senators and representative not to cut the budgets of these important agencies. Here are three options for contacting them today.
1. Call their offices. You can find contact information at the House of Representatives website (or enter your ZIP code at www.house.gov/representatives/find) and at the Senate website.
2. Use the contact feature on your senators’ and representative’s websites. See option 1 for accessing these web pages. Use the template language at the end of this email.
3. Use the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology’s action-alert website.
https://ncse.com/current-campaigns
This website has customizable template messages and will send them to your senators and representative based on your ZIP code. The template message includes this broad language: “[The across-the-board cuts] will require NIH, NSF, and other federal agencies to make funding cuts that will affect all areas of research and prevent critical projects from being completed at universities and institutions across the country.” If you use this option, you may want to edit the language to include the federal statistical agencies.
For options 1 and 2, your message will be more powerful if you personalize it by explaining how budget cuts could affect your research, students, or institution. Generally, these cuts would mean an estimated 2,300 fewer grants funded by NIH next year and 1,500 fewer by NSF.
If you are a government employee, please do not use your work resources to contact your members of Congress.
To learn more about the across-the-board budget cuts, go to the following websites:
AAAS
Coalition for Health Funding
ASA
By sending you this action alert, IMS seeks to ensure NIH, NSF, and the statistical agencies don’t suffer disproportionate budget cuts. As you can imagine, Congress is hearing from constituents concerned about a wide swath of federal programs, and it’s easiest for Congress to cut programs they are not hearing about. That’s why it is so critical for you to communicate your concerns about the planned budget cuts.
Thank you for your consideration.
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