1. United States
2. Ill.
3. Letter

Please use the full oversight powers of your congressional office to oppose the proposed OMB Federal Financial Assistance Rule. The stated motivations for the new regulations are to save money and to align grant funding with the administration ideologically. In reality these changes are more likely to ensure that tax payer money is spent without any useful output. This is for several reasons: - If any grant must align with the political priorities of the current government, it becomes impossible for researchers to plan on the timescales they need to do good work. - Research is how we do our best to understand the actual nature of the world, despite human limitations. Filtering funding ideologically means necessarily giving up on the pursuit of objectivity, and therefore on achieving any meaningful results. - Good research is built on top of the body of knowledge of the entire field, and hiding results slows down progress, while denying the public their right to use the product of their tax dollars. The proposed changes around conferences and publishing will block these necessary avenues of communication. If the writers of these rules understand what they are doing, then they intend to destroy the useful output of the scientific establishment in the United States. This system has been a major benefit to us, both economically and in building the respect required for beneficial international relations. Do not throw these critical advantages away in the pursuit of short term political gain.