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I think most republicans are pretty much up to speed on a round earth. When are you liberals going to get up to speed on the downward-sloping demand curve, which has been a consensus among economists since Alfred Marshall (1842-1924)?
You seem to be confusing total spending on R&D with the funding of university based research.
The first sentence of mine you quoted makes it clear that I was not confused on basic research being a subset of R&D. It was my entire line of reasoning on the NSF budget, which is pretty much the government's input to basic research, and represents about 56% of the total basic research funding in the US.
The point was that the budget for NSF, even with 5 separate YOY reductions, has grown faster than inflation (53.06% since 1998, vs 45.2% total inflation, according to CPI) since 1998.
Since 1998, the Republicans have held the majority in Congress for 12 of 16 years, and yet that budget that the GOP allegedly is going to either cut or repeal altogether (depending on your individual level of partisan fear) has outpaced inflation.
I tossed in the point about getting PhDs even if the funding is $0 to rebut the false dilemma that government funding is the only possible way to obtain a PhD because well, that's not true at all. But even the $0 scenario is nowhere near true, because the budget goes up on average 2.7% per year and outpaces inflation over time, like almost all other government spending.
So between the hyperbolic false dilemma of "GOP = no science EVAR!!" and some basic historical budget figures, the point made by the OP is a bunch of freaking nonsense.
Students will be ejected from PhD programs long before the federal share of the basic research pie reaches $0... and, given what I want out of my PhD is not something that will be favored that much for industrial funding (particle cosmology) so I am vulnerable. Admittedly not as much as if I was a biologist, but I am vulnerable nonetheless (and not just because I am an international student).
It's not "Republicans = no science", but scaling back research programs could mean some international PhD students will be pressured to either leave or to rush graduation (depending on how far from graduation they are). The extent of the pressure is estimated to be highly topic-dependent.
But I simply wanted to know the Republican candidates' positions. One that I forgot to ask about was Rubio.
Environmental/climate-related science could be in trouble, but I don't see how any party that is concerned with national security can afford to undermine the state of American technology, and that requires funding basic research. Just a question of what grants will be supported.
What do you consider an "extreme Republican"? One who follows the Constitution? Transcript of the Constitution of the United States - Official Text Take an hour from your studies and read it for yourself. Nowhere in that document does it give the power to the federal government to fund science research or any education for that matter.
If you don't have time the the entire document, stick to Article 1, Section 8. Those are the enumerated powers of the federal government.
Article I Section 8 gives the Congress the power " to provide for the common defense and the general welfare" Do those last two words have any meaning to you? Some of us think they might mean Congress can raise taxes to buy food, shelter and clothing for people so they don't go naked ,sleep ion the streets or starve. It might mean building hospitals and paying doctors and nurses to study modern medicine so Americans aren't any sicker than they have to be. Some of us also think that we educate and employ millions of scientists and engineers to build modern weapons so our Navy and armed militias down have to go up against enemies with laser weapons and microwave or electromagnetic weapons only having hand guns and rifles.
Also how would men no mater how bright or educated at the finest colleges of the late 18th Century be able to enumerate all that their descendants some 238 years later can do or conceive when it would have been impossible for them to even imagine in the first place! The best they could do is to say if it promotes the general welfare of future Americans then by all means raise the taxes to pay someone to do it for their is no Constitutional barrier to using ones brains and imagination. Being stupid is by implicatation un Constitutional and if it threatens the welfare or security of the American people punishable under this Constitution!
I think by reading the Republican's responses and obfuscation here, you have the real answer that you are seeking.
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