HEP Budget Cuts

Robert Park summarizes the federal budget's high-energy physics cutbacks:

DOE will pull the plug on the PEP-II collider at SLAC on March 1, seven months ahead of schedule, resulting in the layoff of 125 employees. To keep the Tevatron at Fermilab going in the search for the Higgs, all employees will take 2 or 3 days a month of unpaid leave. Work on the International Linear Collider was terminated. The U.S. reneged on its commitment to the international fusion energy program, ITER. Other DOE programs were also cut along with NSF and NIST."

What a shame, and what a shameful disgrace for a country to value war and military spending over scienctific research. When I think about these things I am always reminded of the following exchange, one of the best rejoinders ever:

When Robert Wilson, first director of Fermilab, was in front of a Senate or House Committee, they would often ask him "What will your laboratory do to improve the defense of this country?" And basically what he said was, "What this lab does is make this country worth defending."