Today President Bush announced he is planning to appoint CRA Board Chair Dan Reed, to the newly-expanded membership of the President’s Council of Advisors for Science and Technology. Reed, who is Vice-Chancellor of IT and CIO for the University of North Carolina, and Director of the Renaissance Computing Institute, joins 13 other members named as the committee prepares to take on the former functions of the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee, which was rolled into PCAST by presidential order on September 30, 2005.
Here’s the list of those named by the President today [and affiliation, if known]:
F. Duane Ackerman, of Georgia [CEO, Bell South]
Paul M. Anderson, of Washington [CEO, Duke Energy]
Robert A. Brown, of Massachusetts [Dean of Engineering at MIT]
Nance K. Dicciani, of Pennsylvania [Pres and CEO, Specialty Materials Honeywell]
Richard H. Herman, of Illinois
Martin C. Jischke, of Illinois [President, Purdue University]
Fred Kavli, of California [Physicist, philanthropist]
Daniel A. Reed, of Illinois
Hector de Jesus Ruiz, of Texas [Chairman, AMD]
Stratton D. Sclavos, of California [Chairman, Verisign]
John Brooks Slaughter, of Connecticut [President and CEO, NACME]
Joseph M. Tucci, of New Hampshire [CEO, EMC]
Robert E. Witt, of Alabama [President, Univ of Alabama]
Tadataka Yamada, of Pennsylvania [Chair of R&D at GlaxoSmithKline]
Quite an august group. Hopefully this will give the PCAST sufficient depth in IT to make good progress on the broad review of the NITRD program they seemed to be headed towards at the last meeting.
CRA affiliate organization, the Association for Computing Machinery, today released the results of its year-long, comprehensive study on the globalization and offshoring of software. The study contains six key findings:
Globalization of, and offshoring within, the software industry are deeply connected and both will continue to grow. Key enablers of this growth are information technology itself, the evolution of work and business processes, education, and national policies.
Both anecdotal evidence and economic theory indicate that offshoring between developed and developing countries can, as a whole, benefit both, but competition is intensifying.
While offshoring will increase, determining the specifics of this incrase are difficult given the current quantity, quality, and objectivity of data available. Skepticism is warranted regarding claims about the number of jobs to be offshored and the projected growth of software industries in developing nations.
Standardized jobs are more easily moved from developed to developing countries than are higher-skill jobs. These standardized jobs were the initial focus of offshoring. Today, global competition in higher-end skills, such as research is increasing. These trends have implications for individuals, companies, and countries.
Offshoring magnifies existing risks and creates new and often poorly understood or addressed threats to national security, business property and processes, and individuals’ privacy. While it is unlikely these risks will deter the growth of offshoring, businesses and nations should employ strategies to mitigate them.
To stay competitive in a global IT environment and industry, countries must adopt policies that foster innovation. To this end, policies that improve a country’s ability to attract, educate, and retain the best IT talent are critical. Educational policy and investment is at the core.
The report is pretty weighty, but the executive summary (pdf) does a good job of laying out the central findings in more detail. This issue of job migration is a huge concern within the discipline and there’s lots of FUD spread around on both sides of the debate, so having a report from a respected professional organization like ACM, generated by a Task Force with representatives from academia, industry, government, economics and labor should go a long way towards putting both sides on some firmer ground.
There’s been pretty good coverage of the report already. First, ACM’s U.S. Public Policy Committee has its press release and blog post. The New York Times’ Steve Lohr had the first coverage of the report this morning. Lohr’s piece highlights one of the key messages to come out of the study:
The study concluded that dire predictions of job losses from shifting high-technology work to low-wage nations with strong education systems, like India and China, were greatly exaggerated.
Though international in perspective, the study group found that the most likely prognosis for the United States would be that 2 percent to 3 percent of the jobs in information technology would go offshore annually over the next decade or so.
But more jobs will be created than are lost in the future, they said, as long as the industry in America moves up the economic ladder to do higher-value work typically, applying information technology to other fields, like biology and business. They noted that employment in the information technology industry was higher today than it was at the peak of the dot-com bubble, despite the growth of offshore outsourcing in the last few years.
“The global competition has gotten tougher and we have to run faster,” said Moshe Y. Vardi, co-chair of the study group and a computer scientist at Rice University. “But the notion that information technology jobs are disappearing is just nonsense. The data don’t bear that out.”
Yet the view that job opportunities in computing are dwindling fast is both common and potentially damaging to America’s competitive prowess, according to David A. Patterson, president of the Association for Computing Machinery.
He pointed to the declining interest in computer science as a major among American college students, based on a survey last year of the intentions of students entering college. The results suggested that only 1 in 75 students would major in computer science, compared with 1 in 30 in 2000.
“The perception among high school students and their parents is that the game is over that all computing jobs are going overseas,” observed Mr. Patterson, who is a computer science professor at the University of California, Berkeley. “It’s an extraordinarily widely held misperception.”
The concern, he said, is that misplaced pessimism will deter bright young people from pursuing careers in computing. That, in turn, would erode the skills in a field that is crucial to the nation’s economic competitiveness.
The report also saw coverage in CNN’s Money which was subsequently Slashdotted. I’m sure there will be additional coverage of the report in the coming days.
I’m pleased that a number of CRA volunteers were able to serve on the Task Force, including CRA board members Bill Aspray (who served as the Task Force’s Executive Consultant), Moshe Vardi (the TF Co-Chair), Bobby Schnabel, and Dick Waters, as well as Vijay Gurbaxani, who serves on my Government Affairs Committee, and Stu Zweben, who is instrumental in putting together CRA’s Taulbee Survey. The study was an enormous undertaking, so kudos to ACM for making the effort to advance the debate. The study deserves to be read.
While there has been some progress in straightening out the mess that is the visa process post-9/11, as this Washington Poststory indicates, the situation is still pretty bad for those who have research interests in high-tech areas.
A decision two weeks ago by a U.S. consulate in India to refuse a visa to a prominent Indian scientist has triggered heated protests in that country and set off a major diplomatic flap on the eve of President Bush’s first visit to India.
The incident has also caused embarrassment at the highest reaches of the American scientific establishment, which has worked to get the State Department to issue a visa to Goverdhan Mehta, who said the U.S. consulate in the south Indian city of Chennai told him that his expertise in chemistry was deemed a threat.
…
The consulate told Mehta “you have been denied a visa” and invited him to submit additional information, according to an official at the National Academy of Sciences who saw a copy of the document. Mehta said in a written account obtained by The Washington Post that he was humiliated, accused of “hiding things” and being dishonest, and told that his work is dangerous because of its potential applications in chemical warfare.
Mehta denied that his work has anything to do with weapons. He said that he would provide his passport if a visa were issued, but that he would do nothing further to obtain the document: “If they don’t want to give me a visa, so be it.”
The scientist told Indian newspapers that his dealing with the U.S. consulate was “the most degrading experience of my life.” Mehta is president of the International Council for Science, a Paris-based organization comprising the national scientific academies of a number of countries. The council advocates that scientists should have free access to one another.
As Bill Wulf of the National Academy of Engineering points out later in the article, these consular officials overseas are under tremendous pressure to not make mistakes in deciding who to allow in the country. Still, if the process leads to the summary denial of entry for someone like Mehta, the process clearly needs some work.
“Making the wrong decision would be career-ending, so they play it safe, not really understanding the macroscopic implications of their decision,” Wulf said. “Denying a visa to the president of ICSU is probably as dumb as you can get. This is not the way we can make friends.”
As promised, we’ve got some further detail on the individual agency budget requests for FY 2007 and what those requests might mean for computing research.
But before diving into that, I thought I’d point out that the FY 2007 NITRD Budget Supplement produced by the NITRD National Coordinating Office is now available in a pre-print version (pdf). We’ll have more details on that when we get a chance to tear through it a bit. I’ll just note for now that it indicates NITRD will increase 7.7 percent in FY 07 (versus the 2.0 percent indicated in the President’s budget and the 9.4 percent indicated in the OSTP documentation…see the whole sordid story here). But, the supplement is the most comprehensive look at the actual contributions of the participating agencies, so we’ll consider that the “number of record.”
Anyway, the descriptions below come from my forthcoming Computing Research News article on the budget submission. Previous issues are available online. National Science Foundation
NSF would continue to be the lead agency in the NITRD program in the President’s plan, making the largest contribution at $904 million in FY 2007. NSF’s Computer and Information Science and Engineering directorate (CISE) would continue to be home of the largest share of that investment with a budget of request of $527 million, an increase of 6.1 percent over CISE’s FY 2006 current plan. The CISE investment is spread relatively equally between its Computing and Communication Foundations activity ($123 million in the request, an increase of 16.5 percent over FY 2006), Computer and Network Systems ($163 million, an increase of 15.2 percent), and Information and Intelligent Systems ($119 million, an increase of 15.1 percent). The double-digit increases to these programs are made possible by both the 6.1 percent overall increase for the directorate and funding freed up as grants under the old Information Technology Research (ITR) program – which officially ended in FY 2004 – continue to expire. ITR expenditures in FY 2007 would decline by 17 percent to $122 million under the current plan.
Also included in the CISE budget request in FY 2007 is $10 million for the agency’s new Global Environment for Networking Innovations program (detailed by Peter Freeman, NSF Assistant Director for CISE, elsewhere in this issue). The GENI proposal – a plan for a $300 million computer science facility and $40 million research program — faces an internal NSF design review on February 22, 2006. The results of that review will determine whether the project stays on track for presentation to the National Science Board in the coming year, with the aim of securing approval for consideration for inclusion in FY 2009 budget request.
The overall NSF contribution to Cybersecurity and Information Assurance would also grow significantly under the President plan. The budget request boost NSF’s Cyber Trust program $10 million to $35 million in FY 2007, bringing NSF’s total contribution to information assurance research to $97 million (an increase of 26 percent).
Proposed investments in NSF’s Office of Cyber Infrastructure (to be headed by University of Michigan professor and computer scientist Daniel Atkins) account for $182 million of NSF’s NITRD share in FY 2007, an increase of $55 million, or 44 percent, over FY 2006. The great bulk of that increase — $50 million – would begin the acquisition of a new petascale computing system.
The remainder of NSF’s investments in NITRD programs would come from the other research directorates, which on average received about the same level of overall increase as did CISE (about 6 percent vs. FY 2006). One notable exception is the Engineering directorate, which would grow 8.0 percent in the President’s request, largely due to the establishment of a new $20 million Improvised Explosive Device Detection research program. Freeman said that program should provide opportunities for computer science researchers, especially those in artificial intelligence and sensors, to compete for funding. Department of Energy, Office of Science
The Department of Energy’s contribution to the NITRD effort would grow to $387 million in FY 2007 in the President’s plan, an increase of nearly 33 percent over FY 2006. The focus of much of the DOE SC investment will be on leadership-class computing efforts. The President’s budget calls for $103 million in DOE SC towards the goal of deploying petascale computing systems by the year 2010. The Advanced Scientific Computing Research Program would be funded at $319 million in FY 2007, an increase of $84 million, or 36 percent, over FY 2006. DARPA
Computing research at DARPA would grow significantly under the President’s plan, gaining back ground lost in the FY 2006 Defense Appropriations process when $55 million was cut from the agency’s Cognitive Computing program. DARPA’s two main computing research efforts, the Information and Communications Technology account and the Cognitive Computing Systems account are both slated for substantial gains in the President’s budget. ICT would grow $47 million to $243 million in FY 2007, an increase of 24 percent. Cognitive Computing Systems would grow $57 million to $220 million in FY 2007, an increase of 35 percent.
Overall, DARPA would see its budget increase by $400 million to $3.3 billion in FY 2007, a 14 percent increase. Basic research would grow to $151 million, which is more than the FY 2006 level of $133 million, but still under the $165 million spent in FY 2005. DARPA applied research would increase to $1.5 billion (vs. $1.4 billion in FY 2006), and advanced technology development would grow to $1.6 billion (vs. $1.4 billion in FY 2006).
ACM’s Cameron Wilson has the scoop on the USACMTechnology Policy Blog about some potentially troubling signs ahead for the President’s new American Competitiveness Initiative. Cameron focuses on the reaction of newly-elected House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) to a Democratic “innovation” event on the Hill today. Boehner disparaged the event and, more importantly, the Democratic innovation agenda — a fact that’s troubling because, well, it’s really quite similar to the President’s proposal. Cameron’s got all the details.
There are, of course, other hurdles/speedbumps/large potholes in the ACI’s road to enactment. There’s the fact that the life sciences community is upset that NIH’s budget would be held flat under the President’s plan. There’s also some tension with the NASA folks, which could prove tricky in the Senate as the Chair of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee for Commerce, Science and Justice, Richard Shelby (R-AL), is an avowed NASA supporter. Then there’s the congressional earmarking process, the annual fight about NIST’s ATP and MEP programs, and other fights over the rise in discretionary spending generally. In short, it’s still quite the battle ahead. We’ll try to keep you informed….
On the CRA Bulletin blog, Jay Vegso has the latest data from the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA on the continuing decline in interest in computer science and computer engineering among freshman. He’s even got a (not-so) pretty chart.
The President’s budget request for FY 2007 has just been released and we’ll be dissecting it and providing our analysis as we get through it. But I wanted to post a quick snapshot of the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development program, the federal government’s multi-agency IT research and development effort, because 1) it’s the number of greatest concern to the computing research community and 2) it highlights the near-fruitlessness of trying to track the federal investment in IT R&D on a year-to-year basis. For FY 07, the President is requesting $3.09 billion in aggregate funding for NITRD, an increase of $930 million over the FY 06 budget request — a huge increase. However, in that peculiar DC way, that’s only a 2 percent increase over FY 06 actual. That’s because the baseline budget has changed significantly since the Administration last calculated its IT R&D expenditures. The Department of Defense apparently discovered it was funding a lot more IT R&D than it previously thought — $851 million more in FY06 than it spent in FY05 an increase of more than 400 percent.
How can this happen? Well, each agency is responsible for determining what its own contribution to the NITRD program actually is. If the criteria that agency uses to determine whether a particular expense is IT R&D related or not changes, the department’s contribution can change dramatically. Does it mean that there actually will be $851 million more available to researchers in FY06 than there was in FY05? Not likely, but I’d sure like to get my hands on the spreadsheet used to produce that number. Perhaps we’ll get a better look when the NITRD coordinating office releases its annual “blue book” report for FY07.
Anyway, the good news is the NITRD program is slated for continued growth in FY07 (despite the widely fluctuating baseline numbers). Overall, the program will increase 2 percent, higher than any of the other government-wide “crosscutting” research programs (Nanotechnology will actually see a 2 percent decline, though that’s subject to some of the same odd DOD accounting changes; and the Climate Change program is flat). NSF would see a 12 percent increase in its NITRD funding, and DOE would see an increase of 23 percent. Update: (2/7/06 9:45pm) – I really should just trash this entry and start over, but it seems somehow more appropriate to leave the big strikethrough section for posterity.
After consulting with Simon Szykman, who heads the National Coordinating Office for NITRD, I’ve got a little better information on what is actually going on with the widely fluctuating budget numbers in the NITRD cross-cut. I can’t say I completely understand all the reasons, but I at least have some sense of what’s going on. Apologies to Simon if I screw this explanation up. This is likely uninteresting to all but the most hard-core federal funding geeks, but to me, it’s a great lesson in how tricky it is to rely on aggregate funding totals for any insight into federal policy.
In the early ’90s the decision was made — for reasons I don’t yet know — to exclude a number of programs in DOD from being counted as part of what would become the NITRD “cross-cut.” In particular, IT R&D investments at the DOD service labs — Air Force Research Lab, Army Research Lab, Naval Research Lab — weren’t included in the “Defense” line and weren’t calculated as part of the overall NITRD program.
For the FY 07 budget, the White House Office of Management and Budget (the gatekeepers for the budget process in the executive branch) reviewed the program accounting and decided that the legacy way of reporting the NITRD cross-cut was no longer accurate. To describe the full breadth of the federal government’s NITRD investments, R&D spending in the DOD service labs had to be included. So OMB produced this chart — which ran in the original version of this post — and included it in the Analytical Perspectives (pdf) supplement to the FY 2007 Budget Request. (Though I added the first column, “FY 05 (est),” just for comparison’s sake.)
Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Program dollars in millions OMB version
FY05 (est)1
FY05 (actual)
FY06 (est)
FY07 (request)
$ change FY06-FY07
% change FY06-FY07
Defense
277
775
1128
1018
-110
-10%
NSF
795
811
810
904
94
12%
HHS
573
571
551
541
-10
-2
Energy
383
377
384
473
89
23%
NASA
192
163
78
82
4
5%
Commerce
58
60
60
65
5
8%
EPA
4
4
6
6
0
0%
Total
2282
2761
3017
3089
72
2%
1Estimated expenditures in the FY 06 Budget Request.
Obviously, we’ll have much more as we get a little more time to dive into the budget. Stay tuned…
Now, as we’ve figured out, this spread of numbers isn’t very useful for year-to-year comparisons. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy realized this, too, so they now keep a second set of numbers which uses — roughly — the same set of agencies and programs that had been the norm until FY 07. Here’s the OSTP version:
Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Program dollars in millions OSTP Version
FY01 (actual)
FY05 (actual)
FY 06 (est)
FY07 (request)
$ change FY06-FY07
% change FY06-FY07
Defense
310
775
743
790
47
6.3%
NSF
636
811
810
904
94
11.6%
HHS
277
571
563
548
-15
-2.7
Energy
326
377
291
387
96
33.0%
NASA
177
163
78
82
4
5.1%
Commerce
38
60
53
66
13
24.5%
EPA
4
4
6
6
0
0%
Total
1768
2761
2544
2783
239
9.4%
You’ll note that when the military services are pulled from the numbers, DOD actually appears to receive an increase in the request versus FY06, which seems to indicate that the service labs don’t fare particularly well in the President’s budget. Szykman indicated that the DOD numbers for FY06 and FY07 in this chart also include, for the first time, funding from the DOD High Performance Computing Modernization Office. This isn’t new money.
Finally, you’ll note that some of the non-DOD numbers have changed in the second chart. According to Szykman, that’s likely due to further refinement as the chart worked its way through OMB to final release. Apparently the OSTP version is the “newer” version, and therefore its numbers are likely to be more accurate.
Presumably, we’ll have the final word when the NITRD NCO releases its FY07 Budget Supplement (the “Blue book,” which is now — of course — red) sometime in the next few weeks. So what’s the take-away from all of this? I don’t really know, honestly. OSTP indicates that NITRD is up 9.4 percent in the President’s request over last year, but that includes additional funding in the calculation for FY07 that isn’t really new money. The OMB numbers indicate it’s more like 2.0 percent, but those numbers include a whole bunch of funding that’s apparently never been considered before. Update: (2/8/06 8:39 am) – Ok, final update to this post. After some additional clarification from Szykman, it does appear that the OSTP-indicated increase of 9.4 percent is an accurate estimate of the status of the NITRD “legacy” programs OSTP is tracking. We’ll have further details in future posts about what exactly that 9.4 percent increase includes. But for now, maybe what’s most important for computing researchers is the knowledge that the traditional three big supporters for fundamental computing research — NSF, DOE and DOD/DARPA — all would see increases in the coming year under the President’s plan.
From OSTP:
High-end computing (HEC) continues to be a major focus of NITRD. DoE’s Office os Science (DoE SC), NSF and NASA are all engaged in developing and/or operating leadership class computing systems as recommended in the 2004 Federal Plan for High-End Computing, with the goal of deploying petascale computing systems by the year 2010. The DoE SC 2007 investment of $103M in leadership class computing, coupled with NSF’s investment of $50M in their Office of Cyber Infrastructure, will ensure that U.S. scientists and researchers have access to the most powerful computational resources in the world. Similarly, NASA continues to emphasize high-end computing within its NITRD portfolio through the operation of the Project Columbia supercomputer. All three agencies have pledged to make a portion of their leadership class computing systems available to other Federal users and the larger research community.
A 9% increase in support for advanced networking research in 2007, primarily by NSF, DARPA and DoE SC, will ensure that large-scale networking technologies will keep pace with the rapid development of petascale computing systems, so that the results of petascale computations are immediately accessible for analysis.
The 2007 Budget also includes significant increases in long-term fundamental research in cyber security and information assurance, as recommended by the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee. Budget increases in cyber security and information assurance for NSF (+28%), DHS (+43%) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (+11%) will support substantial new research activities to help secure the Nation’s information infrastructure, including fundamental research, and support for large-scale cyber security test beds and data sets.
We’ll have more on some of the agency-by-agency specifics as we get a chance to pour through the budget documents a little closer. As this episode points out, even a close reading of the documents isn’t always enough. And to think, if it’s this difficult to figure out the dollar amounts involved in this cross-agency program, imagine how difficult it is to coordinate research priorities and research activities….
Stay tuned.
We have so much to catch up on in the wake of the President’s State of the Union speech and his introduction of an American Competitiveness Initiative that I’m feeling a little overwhelmed. So let me start to wade through the torrent of new material.
First, the White House has posted the supporting documentation for ACI online. I’m still working my way through the document, but figured I should get the word out as soon as I could.
One interesting aspect of the document is that includes the FY07 budget numbers for NSF, NIST and DOEOffice of Science, so we don’t need to wait until Monday to see how each of the agencies fared. In it we learn that NSF will see a 7.8 percent bump to $6.02 billion, an increase of $440 million over FY 06.
DOE Office of Science actually does a little better, growing 14 percent to $4.10 billion in FY 07, an increase of $500 million.
NIST “Core” (Labs + Construction…not ATP or MEP) will decline $30 million from FY 06, but in twisted Washington DC logic, that’s actually an increase of 24 percent. The White House claims to have stripped $137 million in earmarks to the NIST budget from FY 06, so it’s actually an increase of $100 million in NIST core R&D.
Here’s a handy chart showing not only the proposed increases for next year, but the 10 year commitment the President is proposing (chart stolen from the President’s proposal).
I’d also like to include a lengthy quote from the President’s speech today at 3M in Minneapolis — the first of his “post-SOTU road show” speeches focused on competitiveness — that I found particularly, well, amazing. It would have been hard impossible to have imagined these words coming from the President even two months ago. (And apologies to History majors for the slight in the speech…hope it doesn’t apply to English majors, too):
I want to talk about another important issue, and I’ve come to 3M to highlight this issue. And the truth of the matter is, in order to stay competitive, we have got to lead the world in research and development, and got to lead the world in having people — scientists and engineers that are capable of helping America stay on the cutting edge of technology. And 3M is a perfect place to come. (Applause.)
There’s an economic reason why we need to do this. The economic reason why we got to stay on the leading edge of technology is to make sure that people’s standard of living here in America goes up — that’s what it is. And there’s a direct correlation by being the most innovative country in the world and how our citizens live.
Secondly, the second practical application to make sure we’ve got young scientists and engineers coming up, is that if we don’t have people that have got the skill set to fill the jobs of the 21st century, because we’re in a global world and a competitive world, they’re going to go somewhere else. And so I want to talk about an initiative to make sure America remains competitive.
The first element is, is that for the federal government to continue its role — oh, by the way, when we went on the tour, so I asked, how you doing? Fine. What do you do? This. Where did you get your education? We met engineers and chemists and physicists. I didn’t meet any history majors. (Laughter.) I met people who are incredibly capable, smart thinkers that are able to take their brainpower and come up with ways to make practical products that changes Americans’ lives. And so — and the federal government has a role in this, and our taxpayers have got to understand a good use of your taxpayers’ money is to promote research and development — research into the physical sciences.
Again, I’d repeat to you that if we can remain the most competitive nation in the world, it will benefit the worker here in America. People have got to understand, when we talk about spending your taxpayers’ money on research and development, there is a correlating benefit, particularly to your children. See, it takes a while for some of the investments that are being made with government dollars to come to market. I don’t know if people realize this, but the Internet began as the Defense Department project to improve military communications. In other words, we were trying to figure out how to better communicate, here was research money spent, and as a result of this sound investment, the Internet came to be.
The Internet has changed us. It’s changed the whole world. It’s an amazing example of what a commitment to research dollars can mean. The iPod — I’m a bike guy and I like to plug in music on my iPod when I’m riding along to hopefully help me forget how old I am. (Laughter.) But it was built — when it was launched, it was built on years of government-funded research and microdrive storage, or electrochemistry, or single compression — signal compression. See, the nanotechnology research that the government is helping sponsor is going to change the way people live.
And so what I said to the Congress was, let’s be wise with taxpayers’ money. Let’s stay on the leading edge of technology and change, and let’s reaffirm our commitment to scientific innovation. I think we ought to double the federal commitment to the most basic critical research programs in physical sciences over the next decade.
This year alone we’re proposing $6 billion go to the National Science Foundation to fund research in physics and chemistry and material science and nanotechnology. We’re proposing $4 billion goes to the Energy Department’s Office of Science to build the world’s most powerful civilian supercomputer. We’re proposing $535 million to the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology to research electronics information technologies and advanced computers.
I wouldn’t be proposing this if I didn’t believe that there will be tangible benefits for the American people. We may not see them tomorrow, but your children will see them. We’re staying on the leading edge of technology for a reason. If America doesn’t lead, if we try to kind of forget that we’re in a competitive world, generations of Americans won’t be able to realize the standard of living that we’ve been able to realize.
So that’s just the first speech on the topic. He plans to deliver a few more. Also, I wouldn’t get too hung up on the examples of research he mentions for the agencies — it’s not a comprehensive list. I’m far more interested in the overall message of the speech.
Anyway, we sort of need to enjoy this moment while we can. As one congressional staffer put it this morning, “Today is the best it’s going to get.” There are some tactical issues that will make realizing the full extent of the President’s plan problematic. Come Monday and the actual release of the President’s budget, some constituencies will feel slighted and there will be some hurdles to clear in Congress. But that’s a post for tomorrow or Monday.
Today I’m still reveling in what has to be considered one of the bigger wins for the science community, and more importantly, for the nation, in quite some years. Update: (5:02 pm 2/2/06) — The House Democratic response is great — very positive:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 02, 2006
Pelosi Statement on Presidents Competitiveness Speech
Washington, D.C. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi released the following statement this afternoon in response to President Bushs speech on American competitiveness in Minnesota today:
In September, House Democrats launched the Innovation Agenda: A Commitment to Competitiveness to Keep America Number One. With this Innovation Agenda, House Democrats laid down a challenge to the President and to Congress to renew our commitment to the public-private partnerships that will secure America’s continued leadership in innovation and unleash the next generation of discovery, invention, and growth.
I am glad that the President addressed this vital issue in his State of the Union Address, and in Minnesota today. House Democrats are ready to work with the President to move our country forward and keep America competitive nothing could be more important.
We must now go beyond words and speeches and make the commitment in next years budget to a sustained investment in technological innovation and educational excellence to ensure that our country remains competitive against formidable international competition and generates high quality jobs throughout the 21st century. Nothing less is at stake than Americas economic leadership.
Got a “pre-brief” this afternoon from the White House. We’ll like it.
It’ll be webcast live.
We’ll have CRA’s reaction here, right after the speech. Update (1/31/06 9:20 pm) — Here’s the key passage:
And to keep America competitive, one commitment is necessary above all: We must continue to lead the world in human talent and creativity. Our greatest advantage in the world has always been our educated, hard-working, ambitious people and we are going to keep that edge. Tonight I announce the American Competitiveness Initiative, to encourage innovation throughout our economy, and to give our Nations children a firm grounding in math and science.
First: I propose to double the Federal commitment to the most critical basic research programs in the physical sciences over the next ten years. This funding will support the work of Americas most creative minds as they explore promising areas such as nanotechnology, supercomputing, and alternative energy sources.
Second: I propose to make permanent the research and development tax credit, to encourage bolder private-sector investment in technology. With more research in both the public and private sectors, we will improve our quality of life and ensure that America will lead the world in opportunity and innovation for decades to come.
Third: We need to encourage children to take more math and science, and make sure those courses are rigorous enough to compete with other nations. We have made a good start in the early grades with the No Child Left Behind Act, which is raising standards and lifting test scores across our country. Tonight I propose to train 70,000 high school teachers, to lead advanced-placement courses in math and science bring 30,000 math and science professionals to teach in classrooms and give early help to students who struggle with math, so they have a better chance at good, high-wage jobs. If we ensure that Americas children succeed in life, they will ensure that America succeeds in the world.
Preparing our Nation to compete in the world is a goal that all of us can share. I urge you to support the American Competitiveness Initiative and together we will show the world what the American people can achieve.
Update (1/26/06 9:21 pm) — CRA’s response:
January 31, 2006
COMPUTING RESEARCHERS APPLAUD PRESIDENT’S INNOVATION PLANS
WASHINGTON, DC – The Computing Research Association commends President Bush for announcing in his State of the Union address a new focus on U.S. competitiveness and innovation in a plan that would include healthy increases for U.S. science agencies.
The President’s plan, called the American Competitiveness Initiative, would double the federal investment in research sponsored by the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science over then next ten years, reversing a trend that has deemphasized fundamental research, which is typically performed in U.S. universities and long-acknowledged as the fuel for American innovation. The plan would also bolster math and science education, make permanent the research and experimentation tax credit, provide worker training opportunities, and reform immigration policies to ensure the U.S. can continue to attract and retain the world’s best and brightest.
“The President’s proposal is an important step in ensuring the U.S. will have the resources — the people, the ideas, the infrastructure — the country needs to continue to lead in an increasingly competitive world,” said Professor Daniel A. Reed, Chair of the Computing Research Association and Director of the Renaissance Computing Institute at the University of North Carolina.
In the last decade, innovations spawned by fundamental research, particularly research in information technology, have driven U.S. productivity increases and fired the new economy. “But the increasing trend toward short–term efforts puts this innovation cycle at risk at exactly the time when our global competitors are expanding and accelerating their own efforts,” Reed said. “I am very pleased the President is committed to doubling the investment in long–term research to reverse the trend.”
Computing researchers have grown increasingly concerned that while information technology remains central to the nation’s economy, national security, health and the conduct of the sciences, the federal investment in fundamental IT research has been stagnant since 2001, and in fact, declined 4.5 percent in the President’s most recent budget submission.
“That’s why it’s crucial that any reinvestment in fundamental research include a revitalization of the federal Networking and Information Technology R&D program,” said Edward Lazowska, Bill & Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington and former co–Chair of the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee. “While the payoffs of past research have been dramatic, the field remains in relative infancy. Tremendous opportunities remain — far more can happen in the next ten years than has happened in the last thirty, and it is crucial that America lead the way.”
CRA is also supportive of the effort to increase the participation of American students in science and math education, as called for in the President’s plan and featured in bipartisan proposals in Congress. As part of that effort, computing researchers urge policymakers to focus particular attention on reaching out to members of underrepresented groups.
“The pace of innovation is constrained when significant portions of the population aren’t represented in the research and development process,” said John King, Dean of the School of Information at the University of Michigan. “Building a diverse workforce not only encourages a diversity of ideas that breed real innovation, but it may be the only way to meet the Nation’s workforce needs in the face of the projected growth in the field.”
“The President’s innovation agenda creates an important opportunity,” Reed said. “We’re optimistic that these good ideas are shared by a large and growing number of Members of Congress on a bipartisan basis and look forward to working with policymakers to see them implemented in the coming year. Our nation’s future depends critically on increased investments in advanced education and research in information technology and other fields.”
CRA is an organization of 200 of the Nation’s leading industrial computing research labs and university computer science departments. For more information, visit the CRA website at: http://www.cra.org
Update: (1/31/06 9:51pm) — Standing ovations for:
“Tonight I announce the American Competitiveness Initiative, to encourage innovation throughout our economy, and to give our Nations children a firm grounding in math and science.”
“With more research in both the public and private sectors, we will improve our quality of life and ensure that America will lead the world in opportunity and innovation for decades to come.”
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CRA Chair Named to PCAST
/In: CRA, Policy /by Peter HarshaToday President Bush announced he is planning to appoint CRA Board Chair Dan Reed, to the newly-expanded membership of the President’s Council of Advisors for Science and Technology. Reed, who is Vice-Chancellor of IT and CIO for the University of North Carolina, and Director of the Renaissance Computing Institute, joins 13 other members named as the committee prepares to take on the former functions of the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee, which was rolled into PCAST by presidential order on September 30, 2005.
Here’s the list of those named by the President today [and affiliation, if known]:
Quite an august group. Hopefully this will give the PCAST sufficient depth in IT to make good progress on the broad review of the NITRD program they seemed to be headed towards at the last meeting.
ACM Job Study: Despite Offshoring, IT Job Growth Should be Strong
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaCRA affiliate organization, the Association for Computing Machinery, today released the results of its year-long, comprehensive study on the globalization and offshoring of software. The study contains six key findings:
The report is pretty weighty, but the executive summary (pdf) does a good job of laying out the central findings in more detail. This issue of job migration is a huge concern within the discipline and there’s lots of FUD spread around on both sides of the debate, so having a report from a respected professional organization like ACM, generated by a Task Force with representatives from academia, industry, government, economics and labor should go a long way towards putting both sides on some firmer ground.
There’s been pretty good coverage of the report already. First, ACM’s U.S. Public Policy Committee has its press release and blog post. The New York Times’ Steve Lohr had the first coverage of the report this morning. Lohr’s piece highlights one of the key messages to come out of the study:
The report also saw coverage in CNN’s Money which was subsequently Slashdotted. I’m sure there will be additional coverage of the report in the coming days.
I’m pleased that a number of CRA volunteers were able to serve on the Task Force, including CRA board members Bill Aspray (who served as the Task Force’s Executive Consultant), Moshe Vardi (the TF Co-Chair), Bobby Schnabel, and Dick Waters, as well as Vijay Gurbaxani, who serves on my Government Affairs Committee, and Stu Zweben, who is instrumental in putting together CRA’s Taulbee Survey. The study was an enormous undertaking, so kudos to ACM for making the effort to advance the debate. The study deserves to be read.
Visa Issues: Still a long way to go
/In: People, Policy, R&D in the Press /by Peter HarshaWhile there has been some progress in straightening out the mess that is the visa process post-9/11, as this Washington Post story indicates, the situation is still pretty bad for those who have research interests in high-tech areas.
As Bill Wulf of the National Academy of Engineering points out later in the article, these consular officials overseas are under tremendous pressure to not make mistakes in deciding who to allow in the country. Still, if the process leads to the summary denial of entry for someone like Mehta, the process clearly needs some work.
You can read the whole thing here.
ACI: Details of the NSF, DARPA and DOE Office of Science FY07 Requests
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Funding, FY07 Appropriations /by Peter HarshaAs promised, we’ve got some further detail on the individual agency budget requests for FY 2007 and what those requests might mean for computing research.
But before diving into that, I thought I’d point out that the FY 2007 NITRD Budget Supplement produced by the NITRD National Coordinating Office is now available in a pre-print version (pdf). We’ll have more details on that when we get a chance to tear through it a bit. I’ll just note for now that it indicates NITRD will increase 7.7 percent in FY 07 (versus the 2.0 percent indicated in the President’s budget and the 9.4 percent indicated in the OSTP documentation…see the whole sordid story here). But, the supplement is the most comprehensive look at the actual contributions of the participating agencies, so we’ll consider that the “number of record.”
Anyway, the descriptions below come from my forthcoming Computing Research News article on the budget submission. Previous issues are available online.
National Science Foundation
NSF would continue to be the lead agency in the NITRD program in the President’s plan, making the largest contribution at $904 million in FY 2007. NSF’s Computer and Information Science and Engineering directorate (CISE) would continue to be home of the largest share of that investment with a budget of request of $527 million, an increase of 6.1 percent over CISE’s FY 2006 current plan. The CISE investment is spread relatively equally between its Computing and Communication Foundations activity ($123 million in the request, an increase of 16.5 percent over FY 2006), Computer and Network Systems ($163 million, an increase of 15.2 percent), and Information and Intelligent Systems ($119 million, an increase of 15.1 percent). The double-digit increases to these programs are made possible by both the 6.1 percent overall increase for the directorate and funding freed up as grants under the old Information Technology Research (ITR) program – which officially ended in FY 2004 – continue to expire. ITR expenditures in FY 2007 would decline by 17 percent to $122 million under the current plan.
Also included in the CISE budget request in FY 2007 is $10 million for the agency’s new Global Environment for Networking Innovations program (detailed by Peter Freeman, NSF Assistant Director for CISE, elsewhere in this issue). The GENI proposal – a plan for a $300 million computer science facility and $40 million research program — faces an internal NSF design review on February 22, 2006. The results of that review will determine whether the project stays on track for presentation to the National Science Board in the coming year, with the aim of securing approval for consideration for inclusion in FY 2009 budget request.
The overall NSF contribution to Cybersecurity and Information Assurance would also grow significantly under the President plan. The budget request boost NSF’s Cyber Trust program $10 million to $35 million in FY 2007, bringing NSF’s total contribution to information assurance research to $97 million (an increase of 26 percent).
Proposed investments in NSF’s Office of Cyber Infrastructure (to be headed by University of Michigan professor and computer scientist Daniel Atkins) account for $182 million of NSF’s NITRD share in FY 2007, an increase of $55 million, or 44 percent, over FY 2006. The great bulk of that increase — $50 million – would begin the acquisition of a new petascale computing system.
The remainder of NSF’s investments in NITRD programs would come from the other research directorates, which on average received about the same level of overall increase as did CISE (about 6 percent vs. FY 2006). One notable exception is the Engineering directorate, which would grow 8.0 percent in the President’s request, largely due to the establishment of a new $20 million Improvised Explosive Device Detection research program. Freeman said that program should provide opportunities for computer science researchers, especially those in artificial intelligence and sensors, to compete for funding.
Department of Energy, Office of Science
The Department of Energy’s contribution to the NITRD effort would grow to $387 million in FY 2007 in the President’s plan, an increase of nearly 33 percent over FY 2006. The focus of much of the DOE SC investment will be on leadership-class computing efforts. The President’s budget calls for $103 million in DOE SC towards the goal of deploying petascale computing systems by the year 2010. The Advanced Scientific Computing Research Program would be funded at $319 million in FY 2007, an increase of $84 million, or 36 percent, over FY 2006.
DARPA
Computing research at DARPA would grow significantly under the President’s plan, gaining back ground lost in the FY 2006 Defense Appropriations process when $55 million was cut from the agency’s Cognitive Computing program. DARPA’s two main computing research efforts, the Information and Communications Technology account and the Cognitive Computing Systems account are both slated for substantial gains in the President’s budget. ICT would grow $47 million to $243 million in FY 2007, an increase of 24 percent. Cognitive Computing Systems would grow $57 million to $220 million in FY 2007, an increase of 35 percent.
Overall, DARPA would see its budget increase by $400 million to $3.3 billion in FY 2007, a 14 percent increase. Basic research would grow to $151 million, which is more than the FY 2006 level of $133 million, but still under the $165 million spent in FY 2005. DARPA applied research would increase to $1.5 billion (vs. $1.4 billion in FY 2006), and advanced technology development would grow to $1.6 billion (vs. $1.4 billion in FY 2006).
First Speedbumps for President’s Competitiveness Initiative?
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative /by Peter HarshaACM’s Cameron Wilson has the scoop on the USACM Technology Policy Blog about some potentially troubling signs ahead for the President’s new American Competitiveness Initiative. Cameron focuses on the reaction of newly-elected House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) to a Democratic “innovation” event on the Hill today. Boehner disparaged the event and, more importantly, the Democratic innovation agenda — a fact that’s troubling because, well, it’s really quite similar to the President’s proposal. Cameron’s got all the details.
There are, of course, other hurdles/speedbumps/large potholes in the ACI’s road to enactment. There’s the fact that the life sciences community is upset that NIH’s budget would be held flat under the President’s plan. There’s also some tension with the NASA folks, which could prove tricky in the Senate as the Chair of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee for Commerce, Science and Justice, Richard Shelby (R-AL), is an avowed NASA supporter. Then there’s the congressional earmarking process, the annual fight about NIST’s ATP and MEP programs, and other fights over the rise in discretionary spending generally. In short, it’s still quite the battle ahead. We’ll try to keep you informed….
Interest in CS/CE Continues to Drop
/In: People /by Peter HarshaOn the CRA Bulletin blog, Jay Vegso has the latest data from the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA on the continuing decline in interest in computer science and computer engineering among freshman. He’s even got a (not-so) pretty chart.
President’s Budget: NSF
/In: FY07 Appropriations /by Peter HarshaNSF has released its budget as well. Rather than reproduce it, here’s the NSF-produced summary table (pdf).
Key points:
I’ll have more detail after I return from NSF’s budget rollout briefing at 3 pm.
President’s Budget: NITRD Numbers for FY07
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Funding, FY06 Appropriations, FY07 Appropriations /by Peter HarshaThe President’s budget request for FY 2007 has just been released and we’ll be dissecting it and providing our analysis as we get through it. But I wanted to post a quick snapshot of the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development program, the federal government’s multi-agency IT research and development effort, because 1) it’s the number of greatest concern to the computing research community and 2) it highlights the near-fruitlessness of trying to track the federal investment in IT R&D on a year-to-year basis.
For FY 07, the President is requesting $3.09 billion in aggregate funding for NITRD, an increase of $930 million over the FY 06 budget request — a huge increase. However, in that peculiar DC way, that’s only a 2 percent increase over FY 06 actual. That’s because the baseline budget has changed significantly since the Administration last calculated its IT R&D expenditures. The Department of Defense apparently discovered it was funding a lot more IT R&D than it previously thought — $851 million more in FY06 than it spent in FY05 an increase of more than 400 percent.How can this happen? Well, each agency is responsible for determining what its own contribution to the NITRD program actually is. If the criteria that agency uses to determine whether a particular expense is IT R&D related or not changes, the department’s contribution can change dramatically. Does it mean that there actually will be $851 million more available to researchers in FY06 than there was in FY05? Not likely, but I’d sure like to get my hands on the spreadsheet used to produce that number. Perhaps we’ll get a better look when the NITRD coordinating office releases its annual “blue book” report for FY07.
Anyway, the good news is the NITRD program is slated for continued growth in FY07 (despite the widely fluctuating baseline numbers). Overall, the program will increase 2 percent, higher than any of the other government-wide “crosscutting” research programs (Nanotechnology will actually see a 2 percent decline, though that’s subject to some of the same odd DOD accounting changes; and the Climate Change program is flat). NSF would see a 12 percent increase in its NITRD funding, and DOE would see an increase of 23 percent.
Update: (2/7/06 9:45pm) – I really should just trash this entry and start over, but it seems somehow more appropriate to leave the big strikethrough section for posterity.
After consulting with Simon Szykman, who heads the National Coordinating Office for NITRD, I’ve got a little better information on what is actually going on with the widely fluctuating budget numbers in the NITRD cross-cut. I can’t say I completely understand all the reasons, but I at least have some sense of what’s going on. Apologies to Simon if I screw this explanation up. This is likely uninteresting to all but the most hard-core federal funding geeks, but to me, it’s a great lesson in how tricky it is to rely on aggregate funding totals for any insight into federal policy.
In the early ’90s the decision was made — for reasons I don’t yet know — to exclude a number of programs in DOD from being counted as part of what would become the NITRD “cross-cut.” In particular, IT R&D investments at the DOD service labs — Air Force Research Lab, Army Research Lab, Naval Research Lab — weren’t included in the “Defense” line and weren’t calculated as part of the overall NITRD program.
For the FY 07 budget, the White House Office of Management and Budget (the gatekeepers for the budget process in the executive branch) reviewed the program accounting and decided that the legacy way of reporting the NITRD cross-cut was no longer accurate. To describe the full breadth of the federal government’s NITRD investments, R&D spending in the DOD service labs had to be included. So OMB produced this chart — which ran in the original version of this post — and included it in the Analytical Perspectives (pdf) supplement to the FY 2007 Budget Request. (Though I added the first column, “FY 05 (est),” just for comparison’s sake.)
dollars in millions
OMB version
(est)1
(actual)
(est)
(request)
FY06-FY07
FY06-FY07
Obviously, we’ll have much more as we get a little more time to dive into the budget. Stay tuned…Now, as we’ve figured out, this spread of numbers isn’t very useful for year-to-year comparisons. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy realized this, too, so they now keep a second set of numbers which uses — roughly — the same set of agencies and programs that had been the norm until FY 07. Here’s the OSTP version:
dollars in millions
OSTP Version
(actual)
(actual)
(est)
(request)
FY06-FY07
FY06-FY07
You’ll note that when the military services are pulled from the numbers, DOD actually appears to receive an increase in the request versus FY06, which seems to indicate that the service labs don’t fare particularly well in the President’s budget. Szykman indicated that the DOD numbers for FY06 and FY07 in this chart also include, for the first time, funding from the DOD High Performance Computing Modernization Office. This isn’t new money.
Finally, you’ll note that some of the non-DOD numbers have changed in the second chart. According to Szykman, that’s likely due to further refinement as the chart worked its way through OMB to final release. Apparently the OSTP version is the “newer” version, and therefore its numbers are likely to be more accurate.
Presumably, we’ll have the final word when the NITRD NCO releases its FY07 Budget Supplement (the “Blue book,” which is now — of course — red) sometime in the next few weeks.
So what’s the take-away from all of this? I don’t really know, honestly. OSTP indicates that NITRD is up 9.4 percent in the President’s request over last year, but that includes additional funding in the calculation for FY07 that isn’t really new money. The OMB numbers indicate it’s more like 2.0 percent, but those numbers include a whole bunch of funding that’s apparently never been considered before.Update: (2/8/06 8:39 am) – Ok, final update to this post. After some additional clarification from Szykman, it does appear that the OSTP-indicated increase of 9.4 percent is an accurate estimate of the status of the NITRD “legacy” programs OSTP is tracking. We’ll have further details in future posts about what exactly that 9.4 percent increase includes. But for now, maybe what’s most important for computing researchers is the knowledge that the traditional three big supporters for fundamental computing research — NSF, DOE and DOD/DARPA — all would see increases in the coming year under the President’s plan.
From OSTP:
We’ll have more on some of the agency-by-agency specifics as we get a chance to pour through the budget documents a little closer. As this episode points out, even a close reading of the documents isn’t always enough. And to think, if it’s this difficult to figure out the dollar amounts involved in this cross-agency program, imagine how difficult it is to coordinate research priorities and research activities….
Stay tuned.
American Competitiveness Initiative: First Numbers Posted
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Funding, FY07 Appropriations /by Peter HarshaWe have so much to catch up on in the wake of the President’s State of the Union speech and his introduction of an American Competitiveness Initiative that I’m feeling a little overwhelmed. So let me start to wade through the torrent of new material.
First, the White House has posted the supporting documentation for ACI online. I’m still working my way through the document, but figured I should get the word out as soon as I could.
One interesting aspect of the document is that includes the FY07 budget numbers for NSF, NIST and DOE Office of Science, so we don’t need to wait until Monday to see how each of the agencies fared. In it we learn that NSF will see a 7.8 percent bump to $6.02 billion, an increase of $440 million over FY 06.
DOE Office of Science actually does a little better, growing 14 percent to $4.10 billion in FY 07, an increase of $500 million.
NIST “Core” (Labs + Construction…not ATP or MEP) will decline $30 million from FY 06, but in twisted Washington DC logic, that’s actually an increase of 24 percent. The White House claims to have stripped $137 million in earmarks to the NIST budget from FY 06, so it’s actually an increase of $100 million in NIST core R&D.
Here’s a handy chart showing not only the proposed increases for next year, but the 10 year commitment the President is proposing (chart stolen from the President’s proposal).
I’d also like to include a lengthy quote from the President’s speech today at 3M in Minneapolis — the first of his “post-SOTU road show” speeches focused on competitiveness — that I found particularly, well, amazing. It would have been
hardimpossible to have imagined these words coming from the President even two months ago. (And apologies to History majors for the slight in the speech…hope it doesn’t apply to English majors, too):So that’s just the first speech on the topic. He plans to deliver a few more. Also, I wouldn’t get too hung up on the examples of research he mentions for the agencies — it’s not a comprehensive list. I’m far more interested in the overall message of the speech.
Anyway, we sort of need to enjoy this moment while we can. As one congressional staffer put it this morning, “Today is the best it’s going to get.” There are some tactical issues that will make realizing the full extent of the President’s plan problematic. Come Monday and the actual release of the President’s budget, some constituencies will feel slighted and there will be some hurdles to clear in Congress. But that’s a post for tomorrow or Monday.
Today I’m still reveling in what has to be considered one of the bigger wins for the science community, and more importantly, for the nation, in quite some years.
Update: (5:02 pm 2/2/06) — The House Democratic response is great — very positive:
State of the Union
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaGot a “pre-brief” this afternoon from the White House. We’ll like it.
It’ll be webcast live.
We’ll have CRA’s reaction here, right after the speech.
Update (1/31/06 9:20 pm) — Here’s the key passage:
Update (1/26/06 9:21 pm) — CRA’s response:
Update: (1/31/06 9:51pm) — Standing ovations for: