Vernon Ehlers: “I rise to raise an issue about Small Business Innovation Research funding and also Small Business Technology Transfer…”

“I rise to raise an issue about Small Business Innovation Research funding and also Small Business Technology Transfer Research funding. This bill which is coming up before us increases SBIR by 20 percent and increases STTR by 100 percent. These increases seem totally out of line to me, particularly since that money comes out of the research budgets of the other agencies of the Federal Government. I have offered an amendment, which I am very grateful to the Rules Committee for making in order, which would remove those increases. Let me explain why it is important to remove those increases. It is because the money for those is taken away from the current fundamental research programs of the Federal Government. In fact, these increases will remove $650 million from the other research funds at various agencies. Just to give an example that we are talking about real money here, note that just for NIH alone, at a time when agency funding increases are below inflation level and we are simply not putting enough money into health research, this particular change in SBIR and STTR will reduce the NIH budget by $185 million.”