Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft Corp, testified before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on competitiveness issues this morning. A web cast of the hearing is available here. He emphasized three areas: educating students and workers, immigration, and federal funding of basic research and R&D tax credit. His extensive written testimony (where he […]
The House Committee on Science and Technology held its first budget hearing of the year today with testimony from Dr. John Marburger, director of the Presidents Office of Science and Technology Policy. The focus of the chairman and several of the committee members, including perennial science champion Rep. Vern Ehlers (R-MI), was on Science, Technology, […]
As we noted yesterday, the National Science Foundation does quite well in the President’s FY 2008 Budget Request, slated to grow 6.8 percent over FY 2007 (or nearly $409 million) to $6.4 billion. That growth rate would continue NSF on the 10-year “doubling” trajectory originally set by the Administration as part of last year’s American […]
As stated in a previous post about the FY08 Budget Request, Department of Energys Office of Science did well with a $296 million, or 7 percent, increase over the FY07 request. The Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) request is $340.2 million, an increase of $21.5 million or 6.8 percent. The ASCR has three overarching programs: […]
President Bush released his FY 2008 budget request today and it appears that, as promised, the Administration remains committed to the American Competitiveness Initiative and the doubling trajectory for three key science agencies begun in last year’s budget request. We’ve only just started digging into the budget documents — and we’ll be getting more in-depth […]
It appears House and Senate appropriators have reached a final agreement on the “continuing resolution” for FY 2007 and it looks like good news for federal science agencies. For weeks now we (and the other members of the science community) have been concerned that FY 2007 appropriations debacle would freeze agencies like NSF, NIST, and […]
In contrast to last year’s State of the Union address by the President, this year’s speech didn’t feature much in the way of competitiveness or themes. While we’ve gotten many assurances from the White House in recent weeks that the President’s American Competitiveness Initiative — introduced with great fanfare last year and currently mired in […]
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, along with Majority Leader Harry Reid, gave the State of Our Union speech last week at the National Press Club. Pelosi’s portion of the speech covered many topics including innovation. Highlights: Essential to our children’s future is the economic security of their families now. Preparing for the 21st century […]
NSF has released some data on the impact of a “continuing resolution” on the agency for FY 2007, something we have discussed previously in this space. It confirms essentially what we expected: programs will have reduced funding for FY 2007 or be put on hold and award rates and award size will decline signficantly. Some […]
As we’ve previously noted, the potential adoption of a “continuing resolution” to freeze funding at federal agencies at FY 2006 (or lower) levels through FY 2007 has the potential to cause major disruptions at federal science agencies and imperil the increases for science called for in the American Competitiveness Initiative. In response, the leading organizations […]
