{"id":17532,"date":"2013-03-22T12:18:26","date_gmt":"2013-03-22T16:18:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=17532"},"modified":"2013-03-22T12:18:26","modified_gmt":"2013-03-22T16:18:26","slug":"tom-coburn-axes-taxpayer-money-for-absurd-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/17532\/tom-coburn-axes-taxpayer-money-for-absurd-research\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Coburn Axes Taxpayer Money for Absurd Research"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From Quin\u2019s lips to U.S. Senator Tom Coburn\u2019s ears\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday, Quin highlighted <a href=\"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/17504\/taxes-pay-for-ducks-to-get-goosed\/ \" target=\"_blank\">one of the many wasteful uses<\/a> of taxpayer money funded by the National Science Foundation, a federal government agency that subsidizes some pretty dubious projects. (Such as the sex lives of ducks.)<\/p>\n<p>Also yesterday Coburn, a Republican from Oklahoma and a committed budget cutter, persuaded a majority of his Senate colleagues to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2013\/03\/21\/tom-coburn-national-science-foundation_n_2921081.html \" target=\"_blank\">limit NSF political science grants<\/a> to only those studies that are certified as \u201cpromoting national security or the economic interests of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Citing just one example, Coburn said that \u201cThere is no reason to spend $251,000 studying Americans\u2019 attitudes toward the U.S. Senate when citizens can figure that out for free.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As I understand it, Coburn\u2019s amendment only curtails political science-related research, meaning that the project Quin cited may still be allowed going forward. Even so, it\u2019s a hopeful sign that Coburn established a precedent for at least one part of the federal budget that aligns national spending with the (true) national interest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From Quin\u2019s lips to U.S. Senator Tom Coburn\u2019s ears\u2026 Yesterday, Quin highlighted one of the many wasteful uses of taxpayer money funded by the National Science Foundation, a federal government agency that subsidizes some pretty dubious projects. (Such as the sex lives of ducks.) Also yesterday Coburn, a Republican from Oklahoma and a committed budget [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[70,3090,38,61,1240,15],"class_list":["post-17532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-budget","tag-science","tag-senate","tag-spending","tag-taxpayer","tag-tom-coburn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17532"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17535,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17532\/revisions\/17535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}