Scott Adler, a political scientist at the University of Colorado, contacted Senator Mark Udall about the Coburn amendment and received the following letter:
Scott writes:
bq. I seriously doubt they had a form letter ready as the issue was likely to have garnered little more than a handful of constituent emails, calls or letters…mostly from political scientists.
bq. The part that caught my eye was: “NSF spends approximately $9 million each year on political science research. While this amounts to only 0.1 percent of NSF’s budget, it funds 95 percent of all political science research in America.” I’m not sure where they get their math from on this 95 percent figure, but if it keeps Congress from cutting the Poli Sci budget at NSF, I’m fine with it.