From wikipedia: With a budget of 9 billion US dollars (approx. €6300M or £5600M as of Jan 2010), the LHC is one of the most expensive scientific instruments ever built in human history.
The Large Hadron Collider is pretty expensive! Why does nobody ever accuse particle physicists of "making up" the Higgs?
$9 billion is nothing compared to the scope of government or environmental spending. In the lifetime of the LHC, US oil alone will process literally tens of trillions of dollars. Making policy decisions about a system that big has nontrivial financial impact. :)
Personally, I like to believe the LHC is too awesome to fail. After the SSC debacle, nobody wants to back out of a second collider. :)
The LHC crew are on safer ground. If they don't find the Higgs, they're still likely to find something interesting. (After all, various people have been worried they'd find something a bit too interesting. :-)
The Large Hadron Collider is pretty expensive! Why does nobody ever accuse particle physicists of "making up" the Higgs?