SSTI Digest

BioFlorida President Diana Robinson is leaving to join a private venture capital company once her replacement is selected.

Tim Rubald, interim executive director of the Nevada Commission on Economic Development, was appointed to the position on a permanent basis.

Harvard University President Lawrence Summers announced his resignation this afternoon. Former Harvard president Derek Bok is to serve as interim president for the university.

Over the last year, there has been increased public and government attention on issues involving tech-based economic development. For much of the year, Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat has dominated the New York Times bestseller list. A series of reports from the AeA, Council on Competitiveness, and the National Academy of Sciences call for increased action by the federal government. To help address a flattening world, Congress is now considering significant bi-partisan legislation addressing those report's recommendations. And just in the last month, a series of governors have unveiled plans for dramatic new investments in innovation, science, and technology. It is fitting, then, that President Bush made competitiveness a major theme of his State of the Union and, in his budget proposal, unveiled his American Competitiveness Initiative (see below for details).

During his 2006 State of the Union Address, President Bush outlined a decade-long $50 billion American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI) for R&D, education and entrepreneurship. The FY 2007 downpayment on ACI is $5.9 billion, which is accomplished by shuffling priorities within a shrinking federal discretionary budget environment to find $1.3 billion in new funding and $4.6 billion in R&D tax incentives. Specifically, ACI calls for:

Perennially a favorite target for Congressional earmarks, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) budget, at $92.8 billion, is nearly $3 billion below the FY 2006 level of anticipated expenditures. More than three-fourths of the USDA budget outlays for FY 2007 are dedicated to mandatory spending programs such as nutrition assistance, conservation, export promotion and farm commodity programs. The remaining balance of $21.5 billion, $1.7 billion or 7.3 percent less than the FY06 outlay level, is for discretionary programs. All USDA research and TBED-related programs fall within the discretionary section of the budget.

The Administration's FY 2007 $6.138 billion discretionary budget request for the Department of Commerce reflects a 4.23 percent decrease from the FY06 appropriation of $6.410 billion. However, the Economic Development Administration (EDA) would receive a $46.7 million increase to support programs within the Administration's new American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI), announced in the president's State-of-the-Union Address. The NIST Hollings Manufacturing Extension Program, on the other hand, is slated for a cut of $58.3 million in the FY07 request.

The Administration's FY07 budget request for the Department of Defense (DoD) totals $439.3 billion, an increase of 7 percent from FY 2006. However, funding for DoD science and technology decreased 15.9 percent, to a total of $11.1 billion for FY07. All stages of DoD R&D are anticipating cuts: budget category 6.1 basic research (3.3 percent decrease), budget category 6.2 applied research (13.4 percent decrease), and budget category 6.3 advanced technology development (21.5 percent decrease).

Discussion on competitiveness and innovation take very different tacts between the statehouses and Washington, D.C. Education is the fundamental building block for a skilled workforce and for creating future scientists and engineers. While most states are investing more in education, the Administration's FY07 budget request for the U.S. Department of Education totals $54.41 billion, a 5.5 percent decrease from FY06 total spending of $57.55 billion. The 2007 request, proposes to eliminate 42 programs that totalled $3.5 billion in FY06. Many also were proposed for elimination in 2006, but Congress disagreed with the Administration's plans. Some of the proposed program cuts include:

The Administration's FY 2007 budget request for the Department of Energy (DOE) is $23.6 billion, a $5 million decrease from the FY 2006 appropriation. While overall funding for the DOE is virtually flat, the FY07 request includes significant shifts for many offices to reflect the Administration's realignment of energy priorities. Real decreases will be absorbed largely by DOE's $6.6 billion Environment and $2.6 billion Energy budgets, with decreases of $589.6 million (8.2 percent) and $130 million (4.8 percent), respectively. The National Nuclear Security Administration budget request is $9.3 billion, a 2.3 percent increase over the FY06 appropriation.

The $698 billion FY 2007 budget request for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) reflects an increase of $58 billion over FY 2006, most of which occurs in mandatory spending programs such as Medicare. Total discretionary spending drops by $1.5  billion. Funding levels for discretionary programs such as the Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are diverse. For example, FDA would receive a $71 million increase over its FY 2006 level, while CDC would experience a $367 million decrease.

With the FEMA fiasco related to last summer's hurricanes, it should not be too surprising that much of the agency's discussion of its FY 2007 budget involves ways to improve the nation's preparedness and responsiveness to catastrophic events and natural disasters. Overall, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) budget request for FY07 is $42.7 billion, reflecting a 5.8 percent increase above FY 2006 appropriations. The FY07 budget request for the Science and Technology Directorate, which oversees the agency's research, development, testing and evaluation (RDT&E) activities, is $1.002 billion. The figure reflects a 33 percent decrease from the FY06 appropriation level. However, nearly all of that cut stems from a departmental reorganization which spun out the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office with its own appropriation request of $536.8 million for FY07.