What do the leaders of our top national labs think about the sequester? It is bad news.

In an open letter published yesterday, the Directors of the Department of Energy‘s top national labs put it pretty clearly. “Interrupting — or worse, halting — basic research in the physical, biological, and computational sciences would be devastating, both for science and for the many U.S. industries that rely on our national laboratory system to power their research and development efforts.” By slashing the budget Obama proposed this year for science and reasearch, “the government will achieve short-term savings in millions this year, but the resulting gaps in the innovation pipeline could cost billions of dollars and hurt the national economy for decades to come.”