According to analysis done by the
American Association for the Advancement of Science, appropriations bills passed by Congress for fiscal 2008 fiscal year, contained nearly $4.5 billion in Congressional earmarked projects for research and development. $3.5 billion of these earmarks, nearly 80%, were contained in the defense bill. All told, roughly one quarter of all Congressional go to r&d projects.
This is a big number and presents unique opportunities for companies with new technology.
However, it would be a mistake to view this amount of Congressional funding as disruptive to our national technology efforts, since it represents only a little over 3 percent of the total federal spending on research and development.
And when you take into account, the fact that Congress added $2.5 billion more for research and development than the President had originally requested, that means that less than 1.5% of the President’s budget request for r&d had to be cut to make room for these earmarks.
It’s entirely possible that Congressional appropriators were able to find 1.5% of waste in the President’s budget request to pay for these earmarks – unless, of course, you believe that federal agencies and the Bush Administration are the font of all wisdom in determining how funding for technology should be spent.
There are a number of other fascinating items in the AAAS analysis, that I’ll be digging out in later posts.