Today, Secretary Geithner appeared before the Senate Finance Committee. Lots of news reports on this obviously, but the bit I listened to intently on CSPAN was the portion when the Treasury Secretary linked future economic growth to funding for basic research. He spoke for a bit regarding the administration’s push of this fundamental idea. Last year as you all know, the Obama administration provided the largest investment in basic research funding in history.
I eagerly await to see what Congress has to say about the basic science funding portion of the executive branch’s budget proposal.
Here is a portion of Geithner’s written testimony:
“At the very core of the Administration’s efforts to build a new foundation for growth are our efforts to encourage American innovation. We already made the largest investment in basic research funding in history last year, and we propose to build on that. Even with our tight fiscal constraints for discretionary spending, our Budget for the next fiscal year will increase civilian research and development (R&D) by 6.4 percent.”
