Haves and have-nots

Today I attended the Scientist Council meeting at work, to get approval to submit my current proposal. One of the topics was what to do about the new NIH salary cap – eight of our people will have to reduce their full-time salary from $199,000 to $179,000. I know that they’ve worked hard, for years, to get there, but? I’m not terribly sympathetic. And times have changed – there’s so much less money available now, and proposals can only be resubmitted once, not three times. If I can even get one half-time grant funded under these conditions, I would be very fortunate.