The Flake amendment Henry wrote about appears to have passed the House last night with a 218-208 vote. The amendment prohibits funding for NSF’s political science program, which among others funds many valuable data collection efforts including the National Election Studies. No other program was singled out like this. The vote was essentially party line, with only 5 Democrats voting in favor and 27 Republicans against. Here are some of our previous posts on Tom Coburn’s failed efforts to achieve the same thing.
This is obviously not the last word on this. The provision may be scrapped in the conference committee (Sarah Binder?). But it is clear that political science research is in real danger of a very serious setback.