MADISON, Wis. -- An increasing financial squeeze is prompting many researchers to spend more time searching for ways to fund their experiments and studies than in actual performing.

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Officials said that this situation is essentially slowing the discovery of new developments.

"With us being so close to making major breakthroughs, to pull the plug on it, it's just devastating. It's very bad social policy, and it's being pennywise, and a pound foolish," said Bob Golden, dean and professor of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

Leaders on the UW-Madison campus are now voicing their displeasure with five years of congressional decisions. They said that what's at stake is the future of things like food supplies, public health and the U.S.'s reputation as the world leader in innovation, WISC-TV reported.

The effects are as great on the UW campus as anywhere else in the country. This is because the UW is tops among public universities in research spending -- with totals reaching $832 million in 2006. The bulk of that figure comes from federal funding, officials said.

Researchers said that the federal government has decided to spend taxpayer dollars elsewhere, which comes at perhaps the worst time possible with constant threats to the food supply and needed developments in fighting disease and illnesses.

Golden said that he thinks federal officials' logic is faulty.

"It's like the story of the fellow who tried to swim the English Channel, gets two-thirds the way across (and) decides he can't make it so he turns around and swims back," Golden said.

The UW boasts multimillion-dollar buildings and some of the country's top scientists working toward world-class advancements, but it could soon grind to a halt.

Dr. Jo Handelsman, department chair of the UW's Department of Microbiology, said that they soon won't be able to do a key aspect of their jobs.

"We're in this awkward position of having a great facility but being stymied by the lack of federal funding to do the research and train the students," she said.

This is because much of the money to do the research comes from the federal government, specifically, grants from the National Institutes of Health.

From 1998 to 2003, NIH research funding was doubled. The result was historic progress. By 2004, however, the budget leveled off. Take into account inflation and research funding at facilities like the UW has dropped 14 percent in real-time dollars.

"I think this is a serious crisis for our country. It's going to have an impact of long-term health of not only research but the health of the people in the country," Golden said.

To get the scarce dollars that are available, many scientists are increasing worrying about money and applying for grants wherever they can find them instead of doing actual research, WISC-TV reported.

"Writing grants has always been part of a scientists' job, but now it's such a dominant part that it squeezes out a lot of the other important things that we do," Handelsman said.

"They're spending less and less time actually doing science and training the next generation because they have to rewrite their grants and rewrite their grants and there's such a bottleneck that it's getting worse and worse and worse," Golden said.

This has many young researchers finding other things to do or other places to do it.

"There are young people that are seeing the struggles their mentors are having in getting grants and keeping grants so they are going off to pursue other things," Golden said.

At the UW, the commitment to microbiology is so great that it has the biggest research building on campus, and the microbes studied here are vital to basic-life necessities.

"Our economy in Wisconsin is essentially a microbial economy," Handelsman said. "The microbes underpin at least $20 billion of the dairy industry, the beer industry, and certainly all of our crops are healthy because of microbes."

Golden said that the federal officials should be taking the opposite tact.

"This is a time to really cross the finish line and capitalize on all the discoveries and momentum we've made to this point rather than turn around and swimming back," Golden said.

Officials said that this is about more than just curing disease. A lot of this research is far more basic -- like keeping the food supply healthy -- and this is something science must constantly try to keep up with.

Some researchers are discouraged to enter the field and some who are already in it might be looking to get out. Some are heading to places like Singapore and China, WISC-TV reported.

Note: This is the first of a two-part series focusing on research funding and how scientists and school administrators are facing shrinking budgets.