Comment from Alexander Hulpke

I am a mathematician, working as a tenure-track faculty member at Colorado State University. I worry that the proposed changes are detrimental to research in all, but the most applied areas. They will move the research environment of the US in the direction of what was used by the former Soviet Union, and as such will undermine the source of prosperity of our nation for much of the past century. By reducing funcing for conferences and collaborations [200.220, 200.202(e), 200.432], it will curtail the ongoing interaction of researchers that maintains knowledge of inventions at other places. Other countries will not do this and their researchers will continue to benefit from such knowledge. Just US-based researchers will. By replacing the merit-based review process with administrative decisions based on policied of the administration of the time [200.202(a)(iii), 200.202(c), 200.202(e), 200.205], it will eliminate the active pursuit at the edge of knowledge, but always hold it back at the level to which information has filtered through the administration. There are many examples outside reserach that demonstrate that action and decisions at the local level are far more successful, timely, and financially effective, than central bureaucratic actions. (The 5-year plans of communist countries being the whale example). We have no reason to believe that it should be different for research. By expanding the administrative cancellation of grants and micromanaging expenses through subawards, it reduces stability in planning, wastes researchers time on paperwork, and stifles agile researcher reaction to new results or changed environments. The US funding system for research, in particular NSF is the worlds envy. It is a star assett of our country. The proposed changes risk turning a system built on free enterprise and individual initiative to a soviet-style top-down bureaucracy, where administrative inertia will sap the energy out of innovation. Our country deserves better.