The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is proposing major changes to the rules that govern how federal grants, cooperative agreements, and other financial assistance are managed across the government. The goals are to increase oversight of how taxpayer money is used, align awards with current law and administration policy, and reduce what OMB views as unnecessary burdens on recipients.
These changes apply to all federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). The 412-page behemoth certainly has the potential to shake up the science-industrial complex that has gutted American trust in science to a meager 36%.
Among the action items embedded in this OMB plan, the new rules would allow agencies to terminate awards if they conclude that a grant “does not effectuate program goals, federal agency priorities, or the national interest as they exist at the time of the termination,” and also under any additional termination provisions written into award terms. This substantially widens discretion beyond classic noncompliance or performance failures.
Given the grants that continued to fund Wuhan bat virus research, the ability to slash funds for dangerous research should be viewed as a positive.
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