Durbin: Budget cuts could devastate Argonne, Fermilab

The national fight over a House GOP-backed spending bill reached DuPage County on Monday when U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin toured Argonne National Laboratory, which is in danger of losing some of its federal funding.

Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, said $2 billion in cuts to scientific research also would have a “devastating” effect on U.S. efforts to keep pace with the rest of the world in technology.

“We are ... in the midst of a fierce, global economic competition,” Durbin said. “Countries which a few decades ago we would never have identified as our competitors, are our major competitors.”

Durbin made the comments at the Lemont research facility, which officials say could lose as much as one-third of its work force if a federal spending bill that passed the U.S. House last week makes it through the U.S. Senate.

The plan would cut about 20 percent of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science’s $5.1 billion budget request as well as about 35 percent from the $2.4 billion budget of its energy programs.

Additionally, the department’s advanced research projects would be severely gutted with 83 percent of its $300 million budget possibly to be eliminated.

“The House went too far, too fast,” Durbin said. “This isn’t about bragging rights for cutting the deficit. This is about doing it in a sensible way. Let’s do it in a thoughtful way. Let’s do it in a way that reflects our vision that America’s future involves research innovation, education and training and the basic infrastructure that builds the American economy.”

The cuts are among $61 billion slashed from the $1.2 trillion budget passed by the House on Feb. 19 that has touched off a firestorm and threatened to shut down the government.

However, last week, the parties reached a stopgap, two-week spending agreement that has staved off a shutdown until at least March 19.

Closer to home, the reductions would cost Argonne and Batavia’s Fermilab a combined 1,450 jobs, officials said.

However, more importantly, they say, it would cause the U.S. to fall behind in technology studies and could push the most promising research and researchers elsewhere as the two labs may have to shut down for several months.

“These are facilities the whole country uses,” said Fermilab Director Pier Oddone. “What we do is an integral part of the scientific structure of the country.”