Today six leading organizations — ADSA, ACM, CASC, CRA, SIAM, and USENIX — representing more than 305,000 people in computing, information technology, and technical innovation across US industry, academia, and government, joined together to urgently call on Congress to safeguard and advance the nation’s research enterprise:

March 3, 2025

The Honorable Mike Johnson
Speaker of the House
United States House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

The Honorable Hakeem Jeffries
Democratic Leader
United States House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

The Honorable John Thune
Republican Leader
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

The Honorable Charles Schumer
Democratic Leader
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Speaker Johnson, Leader Thune, Leader Schumer, and Leader Jeffries:

As six leading organizations representing more than 305,000 people in computing, information technology, and technical innovation across US industry, academia, and government, we urgently call on Congress to safeguard and advance the nation’s research enterprise.

Recent executive actions that include funding freezes; proposed cuts to critical facilities and administrative costs; and unprecedented layoffs at the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy, the National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and other critical technology and innovation-driven agencies, have caused disruption and uncertainty across the research enterprise. We are deeply concerned that these actions and potential reductions in our nation’s investments in science and technology research will severely harm America’s research productivity, with long-lasting negative consequences for our competitiveness, national security, and economic prosperity.

The United States currently leads the world in critical and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing. This leadership is built upon a robust research ecosystem – what the National Academies described as “an extraordinarily productive interplay of U.S. universities doing federally funded research, industry and federal labs, and the flow of people and ideas between them.” History has repeatedly shown that breakthroughs supported by federal research agencies yield substantial returns for our nation, fueling new economic sectors. A study by the Dallas Federal Reserve estimates the return on investment of non-defense government R&D to be between 150 and 300 percent. In computing alone, a federal investment in research of just over $10 billion annually across 24 agencies and offices underpins a technology sector that contributes more than $2 trillion to the US GDP each year.

However, this American scientific and technological leadership is now at risk. Deep cuts to the nation’s research programs, science agency personnel, and research institutions risk crippling our world-leading research enterprise. These actions will have far-reaching consequences: damaging our ability to sustain our technical workforce, reducing opportunities for future innovations, undermining our economic competitiveness, and leaving us vulnerable to technological surprises that threaten our national security. The nation’s investment in science and technology – in cutting-edge research, researchers and support staff, the students and postdocs who will lead our future research, and the facilities and infrastructure that enable discovery – is a cornerstone of our current global standing and quality of life. Cutting this investment would be a costly mistake, far outweighing any short-term savings.

The U.S. research enterprise, that vital collaboration between academia, industry, and government labs, enabled by the federal research investment, has been the engine of innovation and prosperity in our nation for over 70 years and a model for the world. We urge Congress to protect our nation’s science and technology research enterprise and reject major cuts to science and research funding.

Academic Data Science Alliance (ADSA) academicdatascience.org

Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) acm.org

Coalition for Academic Scientific Computation (CASC) casc.org

Computing Research Association (CRA) cra.org

Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) siam.org

USENIX – The Advanced Computing Systems Association usenix.org

 

Download the letter.