I strongly disagree with Colin Macilwain's claim that the US 'fiscal cliff' represents “the least-bad outcome — for both US society and US science” (Nature 491, 639; 2012). Scientists cannot assume that we shall survive cuts just because we did in the past, that the percentage of the US budget allocated to research and development will remain unchanged or that discretionary spending will rise in the future.

The expiration of tax cuts from the George W. Bush era should not be conflated with the Budget Control Act (BCA): ultimately, one or both of these triggers could end up being pulled. This is what happened on 1 January, when Congress eliminated tax increases for many Americans but left most spending cuts in place.

The BCA makes mandatory, across-the-board cuts to government programmes and establishes spending caps for the next ten years. The 1 January legislation delays the cuts for two months, but the BCA caps ensure that competition for discretionary funding will become much more intense. And although the BCA includes defence programmes, there is no guarantee that these will not be protected by Congress in the future at the expense of cuts to non-defence agencies, including the US National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The NIH faces unprecedented budget cuts of at least 8%, and no one knows exactly how the 27 NIH centres will reprioritize their spending. Yet research projects will still be curtailed or shelved, thousands of jobs will go and promising research careers will end. Macilwain's remark that this is “not pretty, but not exactly penury” seems callous and inappropriate.

The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB; of which I am public-affairs director), along with hundreds of other groups in the research and education communities, reminds Congress, the administration and the US people that research investment is vital to our nation's future.