Pew finds partisanship growing in American support for science
In the 30 years SSTI has been in existence and the 85 years of concerted federal focus on scientific discover and innovation, the priority of public-private R&D investment has been overwhelmingly nonpartisan. A recent report from the Pew Research Center confirms the cold-war, global competitiveness arguments for U.S science and technology still hold sway across political parties, but fissures in who should pay and who should work on science and tech efforts are beginning to grow.
House budgets limit TBED funding, restructure NIH
Editor's Note: This article was updated on July 1 to reflect an amendment during the full House's consideration of the FY 2025 defense appropriations bill that restored the APEX accelerators program to its FY 2024 funding level.
The U.S. House Committee on Appropriations' decision to cut non-defense spending by six percent in its initial FY 2025 spending bills is yielding predictably mixed results for programs relevant to tech-based economic development (TBED). Amidst the overall cuts, flat funding for the Economic Development Administration’s Build to Scale ($50 million) and Tech Hubs ($41 million) might be viewed as positive news. Programs bearing the brunt of budget cuts include the rest of EDA (30% reduction), the Minority Business Development Agency (20% reduction), and the Small Business Administration’s accelerators competition ($0). Meanwhile, the committee is proposing to maintain level funding for the National Institutes of Health but condensing from 27 centers into 15.
MEP national network FY 2022 impacts include more than 116,000 retained or created jobs, $18.8B in new or retained sales
The NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP), a national public-private partnership initiative within the US.
DOE encourages 33 groups to proceed on hydrogen hubs
This past December, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) sent out letters of encouragement, or discouragement, to applicants in the competition for up to $7 billion in federal funding to support the development of regional hydrogen hubs. Of the 79 original applicants, 33 were advised to move forward with writing a full application.
NASBO reports a 9.3% increase in state fund higher education spending between fiscal 2021 and 2022
In addition to last week’s Digest story on all state expenditures, the National Association of State Budget Officers’ (NASBO) 2022 State Expenditures Report detailed information on higher education expenditures, finding a 9.4% increase (from $225 to $247 billion) in total higher education expenditures ov
NASBO 2022 State Expenditures Report shows an 18.1% surge in general fund spending
The National Association of State Budget Officers’ (NASBO) 2022 State Expenditures Report found total state spending to have grown an estimated 7.3% between fiscal years (FY) 2021 and 2022 ($2.66 to $2.86 trillion), 1.5 percentage points higher than the 36-year average growth of 5.8% per annum.
2020 BERD data shows an increase of over $45 billion in domestic R&D spending
Despite COVID-induced setbacks continuing to keep some people out of offices and laboratories, new Business Enterprise Research and Development Survey (BERD) data reveals that domestic research and development (R&D) spending, although slowing, is still on an uptrend.
TBED-related projects benefit from congressional earmarks’ return
With the return of congressionally-directed spending — more commonly known as “earmarks” — for the FY 2022 budget, nearly 5,000 projects received more than $9.6 billion in such funding. The return of the earmarks followed a 10-year absence after the practice was banned in 2011. SSTI’s review of the spending data, which was collected by the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) from the congressional appropriations committees, showed that projects related to technology-based economic development (TBED) were included in the funding.
Innovation and new opportunity front and center in the American Jobs Plan
As noted in our separate overview, the 25-page American Jobs Plan provides goals, highlights and proposals, but also raises questions about how proposals would be implemented and even exactly how much money would be spent.
Federal R&D lost over $200 billion due to Budget Control Act, AAAS finds
In the wake of the Great Recession, Congress enacted the Budget Control Act (BCA) of 2011 to curb federal discretionary spending as the nation approached the statutory debt limit. Originally intended to reduce spending by nearly $2 trillion over the period from FY 2012 through FY 2021, the BCA spending caps were periodically raised by Congress.
In the wake of the Great Recession, Congress enacted the Budget Control Act (BCA) of 2011 to curb federal discretionary spending as the nation approached the statutory debt limit. Originally intended to reduce spending by nearly $2 trillion over the period from FY 2012 through FY 2021, the BCA spending caps were periodically raised by Congress. While these negotiations reduced the overall impact of the BCA, new analysis from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) estimates that more than $200 billion in federal R&D spending were nonetheless “lost” to these spending cuts, impacting several key elements of innovation economies — higher education R&D, private R&D investment, and STEM workforce development.
DoD releases FY 2019 Defense Spending by State report
Each year more than half of the discretionary portion of the federal budget is spent by the Department of Defense (DOD). In FY 2019, the DOD figure is estimated to be $712.5 billion and 77 percent of it was spent in the 50 states and District of Columbus, based on a new report from the Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation (OLDCC) — formerly the Office of Economic Adjustment. The report outlines those DoD personnel and contractual expenditures in each state for the year.
Each year more than half of the discretionary portion of the federal budget is spent by the Department of Defense (DOD). In FY 2019, the DOD figure is estimated to be $712.5 billion and 77 percent of it was spent in the 50 states and District of Columbus, based on a new report from the Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation (OLDCC) — formerly the Office of Economic Adjustment. The report outlines those DoD personnel and contractual expenditures in each state for the year. The nature and importance of defense spending varies widely by state, as the following SSTI chart and the original DOD report reveal.