In a column focusing on China, Tom Friedman notes that cutting NSF will leave us without the kind of workforce the U.S. will need to compete:

Finally, on competition policy, the Bush team and Congress cut the budget of the National Science Foundation for this fiscal year by $105 million. I could not put it better than Congressman Vern Ehlers, one of the few dissenting Republicans, who said: “This decision shows dangerous disregard for our nation’s future … at a time when other nations continue to surpass our students in math and science and consistently increase their funding of basic research. We cannot hope to fight jobs lost to international competition without a well-trained and educated work force.”