See that increased slope in NIH funding? Republican house, senate and president. Take a look at what has happened since. You can blame the recession, etc., but you can't say that dems/obama have exceeded republican support for research..
If we actually want to be real here, let's not post charts from the American Progress website, let's talk dollars to donuts funding and commitments.
The spending trend that you see precipitously rising from 1999 to 2004 was an unsustainable growth rate. Clinton asked for 7% increase for the NIH and 9% for the NSF, which Congress approved because it was the 90s and we couldn't spend money fast enough. The previous forty years of govt spending were going just fine indexed against inflation and growing slowly above it. Science spending grew at a sustainable rate, we were creating jobs for scientists and keeping up with equipment costs and inflation at a good rate, but Clinton overspent in 1999. Bush committed to doubling the NSF funding in 5 years starting in 2002(which fell flat when we entered Iraq). He committed to raising NASA spending by 5% a year til 2008. He wanted to spend even more on the NIH.
When money got tighter in the US, we deprioritized science spending (because of Iraq and later the financial crisis). Would this have been a problem had we continued along at steady 3-3.5% growth instead of growing like crazy from 1999-2004? Not sure. But from 2005 on we had all these early career scientists looking for jobs, postdocs and midcareer scientists looking for grant money, and PIs and lab heads looking for equipment and resource $, and funding couldn't keep up. Bush corrected the NIH and NSF overspend trend in his second term, not exclusively by choice.
Spending isn't everything when it comes to science policy. Bush was also clearly in bed with oil interests drilling in Alaska. He loudly questioned climate science and withdrew support from the Kyoto Protocol. He appointed former oil industry lobbyist to the head of Council of Environmental Quality, who doctored reports on climate research. He put DOD and USDA biomedical research spending to a halt, cut embryonic stem cell funding (tried to make it illegal), and continually drew ire from the heads of NASA, NSF, and NIH.
Bush's science policy was all over the place. Obama's hasn't been much better. He's just as beholden to oil as Bush was. That spending has slowed for science is generally a good thing, to be frank, though there was a period of overcorrection late in the Bush administration that left a lot of people in a terrible situation. The current NIH Director Francis Collins has come out in favor of a long term commitment to sustainable science spending. No massive jumps that can jar unsustainable growth, and no freezes on spending in the other direction.
When I refer to a conservative war on science and education, I'm talking policy, not spending. Ph may have his own thoughts on education spending, or science spending for that matter, but I'm not sure that point is tenable.
You need only view stats on public opinion on issues such as climate change, evolution, and vaccines to see that people who identify themselves as Republican or Conservative are starkly behind the scientific times.
