You mean like RHIC and JLAB? They had to compete mightily over comparative trump change for an upgrade to an electron-ion collider? (RHIC won but JLAB will cont

You mean like RHIC and JLAB? They had to compete mightily over comparative trump change for an upgrade to an electron-ion collider? (RHIC won but JLAB will contribute) There are plenty of other areas of real research that are still nominally 'particle' physics that are actually able to put to paper real goals for what they expect to achieve. There are also facilities like NSLS II that are heavily subscribed and doing research that is both very real world and pie in the sky. Keep this in mind too - the Tevatron at FNAL would have had the Higgs discovery if they could have run another 3-5 years - they already had data order 3 sigma IIRC. Likewise, they would have had a lot more data on the top, something LHC has been gathering since the confirmation of the Higgs. This would have come at a fraction of the cost of the Higgs. Beyond that, has Higgs done anything more than add to the already known to be narrow avenues left for SUSY? She is absolutely correct that the particle physics community needs their feet held to the fire to justify such an enormous single outlay and being a jobs program for a few thousand physicists is not one of them.