White House budgets, generally speaking, aren’t serious governing documents. Even so, they’re a declaration of national priorities — and by that measure, the latest blueprint is deeply troubling. What sort of administration aspires to shrink its budget for scientific discovery by 40%?

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently testified before a House committee to defend cuts at the National Institutes of Health, the world’s biggest funder of biomedical and behavioral research.

The agency going forward “will focus on essential research at a more practical cost,” the secretary said. His plan would end taxpayer support for “wasteful” academic areas, including certain gender-related topics.

It’s fair for the administration to set its own research priorities. But one would expect such cuts to free up (if not increase) funding for other urgent concerns, including chronic disease. Confoundingly, Kennedy appears intent on shrinking the entire research enterprise, thereby jeopardizing the White House’s stated goals of improving public health, maintaining global leadership in science and staying ahead of China, which is set on closing the gap.

His proposal also undermines the core principle that science is a vehicle for national progress. America’s explicit commitment to support scientific research began in 1945. Inspired by wartime innovations, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked his top science adviser to develop a program that would advance medicine, boost the economy and develop a cadre of young researchers. The resulting framework established science as a “proper concern of government” and sought to reward academic inquiry with generous public funding.

For the better part of a century, this formula worked quite well. The NIH enthusiastically funded basic research — largely through universities — and innovation bloomed. NIH grants have supported countless lifesaving advances, from cancer treatments and gene therapies to vaccines and diagnostic equipment. Almost a fifth of Nobel Prizes have been awarded to NIH scientists or grantees.

Yet several factors have sown doubt about this model in recent years. Reports that the NIH supported Chinese research on coronaviruses, a type of which caused the COVID-19 pandemic, inflamed the public and increased scrutiny over grants writ large.

Some lawmakers started to question whether the current system overwhelmingly favors established insiders to the detriment of promising junior scientists. Others raised doubts that elite universities — with their swelling administrative costs, staggering tuition rates and contentious ideological fixations — are prudent stewards of taxpayer dollars.