Why is this completely erroneous fact believed by so many people? Other than a 1 time injection due to the 2008 crisis, NSF funding increases nearly every year and is currently at its second highest budget ever: https://dellweb.bfa.nsf.gov/NSFRqstAppropHist/NSFRequestsand...
In FY2019 NSF reduced its budget for Arecibo from $8M to $6.08M a 24% reduction in support for this instrument.
And personally I was surprised that for $8M a year you could fund the program (presumably that was with a bunch of clearly needed maintenance being deferred). It really is too bad that some billionaire didn't just fund it. I'm wondering if Paul Allen helped out when he was alive.
(That is, the 2010 NSF budget of $7.045 B in 2010 is in real terms equivalent to about $8.413 B today, about a billion dollars more than the real 2020 budget of $7.066 B, using the inflation calculator at [1].)
Here, for instance, is the actual appropriations bill for 1998 [1]. As you can see,
> "There are authorized to be appropriated to the Foundation $3,505,630,000 for fiscal year 1998."
For comparison, the value in the aforementioned table for FY1998 is $3,430.63 M. This is a bit off, presumably because in contrast to the bill the values in the table are " after supplemental appropriations, transfers, and reprogrammings".
I had missed, though, that the appropriations for the last two years were actually higher than the request, so some signs of recent growth.
[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/105th-congress/house-bill/1273...