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Comment by xqcgrek2

5 days ago

With their large untaxed endowment, they should be fine without federal funding. Make it so.

They are already are spending billions a year from their endowment, which covers nearly 40% of their operating revenue, which is around the maximum they can sustainably spend.

Sustainable spending is the whole point of an endowment.

Also endowments are created by a vast number of individual donations which often come with restrictions. For example someone leaves a bunch of money to university to support a professorship. That money and its earnings can only be used for that.

Generally the things that are funded by research grants from the government are things that cannot be funded from the endowment.