"The GOP Plan to Crush Silicon Valley"

[applegrove]

The GOP Plan to Crush Silicon Valley

BY JOHN B. JUDIS at the New Republic

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114329/republican-budget-cut-would-crush-silicon-valley

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Even in the face of Republican intransigence, the White House has continued to press for its innovation strategy. In March 2012, Obama unveiled a plan for a National Network for Manufacturing Innovation, which would set up regional institutes that bring together scientists, engineers, and business and labor leaders to devise new manufacturing technologies. A pilot center, initiated in Youngstown, Ohio, last August, is focused on 3-D printing. This year, Obama requested a billion dollars for it in his 2014 budget, but he probably won’t get it. “The thought was there, but the will isn’t there because of Republican opposition,” says David Hart, a professor at George Mason who served as assistant director of innovation policy at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy for the last two years.

Some industries do support the administration’s innovation strategy, but two of the most influential business groups, the Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), have proved difficult to persuade, even though their members could end up benefiting hugely. The Chamber of Commerce backed Sematech and Small Business Innovation Research grants under Reagan, but since 1994, it has staked its clout on an alliance with Republican congressional leaders. The organization is unmovable. That’s why negotiations with NAM, which isn’t quite as hard-line conservative as the Chamber, have proved doubly frustrating. Hart remembers being faced with a catch-22: The White House needed NAM to get Republican congressmen on board, but “they said they needed the Republicans to support the policies” before they’d lobby for them in the first place. This April, NAM did come out for the “concept” of the White House plan but said it remained “concerned about where the money is found to fund it.”

Given all this, the prospects for Obama’s innovation strategy are dim. What is most likely to happen when Congress reconvenes is that Democrats and Republicans will agree on a continuing resolution that will fund the government at its current level, meaning that spending on research and development will continue to lag and could fall even further in 2014 when the next sequestration cuts kick in. Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown and Republican Roy Blunt have separately introduced the administration’s proposal for a manufacturing network, but there is little chance it’ll get through Congress.

America has always prided itself on its frontier spirit, but for the last 70 years, the country’s greatest economic successes have come from wedding that spirit to federally funded advances in science and technology. That formidable combination is now in jeopardy. And so is America’s place as the world leader in high technology.


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