"WASHINGTON (AFP) – President-elect Barack Obama on Saturday signaled climate change and genetic research will be among his top priorities when he takes office as he named White House science and technology advisers." Article... Obama signals break with Bush in new science team - Yahoo! News
Actually, one of the more important things that should be done by the exective branch is to remove the excess bureaucracy of overwhelming proposals, and non-research paperwork.
i'm not sure exactly what you're referring to. the major research vehicle, the R01 grant, is set to drop to a (i think) 10-page proposal limit soon. i have submitted a couple of ~10 page fellowship applications and while they suck, it is important to have a thoroughly developed plan available for review and criticism by the reviewers- this is how they decide scientific merit for funding. the associated paperwork isn't much in comparison to the work involved in developing the actual proposal. imo the major problem here is that applications are being funded in the 20-30% range. new applications are even sadder- the stat i found for 2006 was a whopping 9%! good science is not being funded, promising young investigators are not being given the chance to even enter the arena, find other science careers instead, and my generation of academic science will be far smaller as a result.
Actually, you described it indirectly. For someone to get funded, they have to submit many, many proposals (yet nobody has many different specialties that are totally independent, so all those proposals are variations on a theme). Then one that is awarded is only good for the years covered before the cycle repeats. After looking at the total picture of how much time is spend writing to get funding and how much time is spend doing the actual science, it really is inefficient.
