Carolyn Maloney: “Last year, when I was chair of the Joint Economic Committee, we held a hearing on the pivotal role of government…”

“Last year, when I was chair of the Joint Economic Committee, we held a hearing on the pivotal role of government investment in basic research. We found that basic research spurs exactly the kind of innovations that business leaders, academics and policymakers have all identified as critical for our Nation's economic growth. But we also found that the private sector tends to underfund basic research because it is undertaken with no specific commercial applications in mind. Businesses, understandably, concentrate their research and development spending on the development of products and processes that may have direct commercial value. A report produced by the Joint Economic Committee showed that the Federal Government funds almost 60 percent of basic research in the U.S. and highlighted one study that estimated that actual R&D expenditures in the United States may be less than half of what the optimal levels would be. We are now engaged in an important national debate about how much and where to cut Federal spending. And I wish to make the case for how reckless and shortsighted it would be to cut into the budget lines that fund the kind of vital, basic research that led to discovery, innovation, and economic growth, because doing so would be, as that bit of old folk wisdom goes, like cutting off our nose to spite our face. Take the budget for the National Institutes of Health, for example.…”