http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/04/we-cant-take-another-hit-brazilian-scientists-lament-big-budget-freeze

SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL—The latest federal budget news coming out of Brasília has Brazilian scientists fearing the worst. On 29 March, faced with a stagnant economy and falling tax revenues, the government announced it was “freezing” nearly 30 billion reais ($7.5 billion) of the country’s public funds for the year, including a 2.2 billion real slice of the science ministry’s budget. If the freeze isn’t lifted, funds for scholarships and research will be cut by 42%—a blow that would come on top of a series of other cuts in recent years.

“We were running on a flat tire; now they took out the wheel,” says Ildeu de Castro Moreira, a physicist at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and president of the Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science here. If made permanent, the freeze could have “tragic” consequences, Moreira predicts. Many laboratories and research institutions might be pushed into stagnation, including federally funded facilities that provide crucial services such as weather monitoring and public health surveillance.