In the wake of the Bush administration’s fiscal year 2006 budget proposal that left federal support for most basic research flat or declining, a coalition of industry, academic, and science groups has developed a broad set of benchmarks to persuade policymakers that US leadership in technological innovation is slipping.
The Task Force on the Future of American Innovation, formed last year to cast in economic terms the political discussion of federal funding of basic research, released benchmarks in mid-February with the hope of influencing this year’s science funding debate on Capitol Hill. “The object of this is to try to get policymakers in Congress to understand how the competitive world economy has changed,” said Doug Comer, director of legal affairs and technology policy for Intel Corp, an industry member of the task force. “The US government is falling behind in its commitment to basic physical sciences research, which is...