A Warning On Centralized OMB Grant Review

Walter Olson

On May 29, the Office of Management and Budget published a new proposal that would revamp and centralize control of all federal grantmaking, including scientific and health research. Under its terms, every discretionary award “must, where applicable, demonstrably advance the president’s policy priorities” and must not be used to facilitate or encourage any initiatives “that compromise public safety or promote anti-American values,” the latter of which is an especially elastic category. 

George Mason University economist Alex Tabarrok, who is associated with the free-market Mercatus Center and is seen frequently in these pages, has written in a highly critical vein about the proposal. An excerpt:

Political review of every award, peer review demoted, agency review promoted, termination whenever ‘priorities’ change. Chilling. It’s a nightmare of petty low-trust review of the kind that is already drowning science.…

The machinery is centralized too. OMB’s guidance becomes binding regulation, effective government-wide with no agency rulemaking. One dial in the White House now turns every grant program in the country.

The new rules will be sold as getting rid of DEI but that is an excuse to bring in the commissars. The new rules don’t depoliticize science[,] they create even more politicization with the sign flipped, and the drafters admit it. 

In a follow-up post, Tabarrok writes: 

.…please look just one move ahead in the game tree. When AOC controls the executive branch, she will inherit every tool Trump normalized. Look a few moves further and see the damage to American institutions.

The culture war is a civil war. If we don’t end it, American science will be collateral damage.

The Planetary Society has a breakdown of the proposed changes, and President and CEO David Skorton of the Association of American Medical Colleges has been one of many with a written criticism. 

Deadline for public comments is July 13; more than 39,000 comments have been logged so far.