Today, Republicans on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology sent a letter to Chairman John Yarmuth of the House Committee on the Budget calling for protecting the Science Committee’s history of bipartisanship and support for strategic investments in America’s research and development enterprise.
Submitting their Budget Views and Estimates, Republican Members called for doubling funding for basic federal research over the next decade, and noted broad bipartisan support for investing in science and technology:
“There is momentum on both sides of the aisle in the House and Senate for legislation to secure our global science and technology leadership,” they wrote. “But our investments should be comprehensive, strategic, and sustainable. Unfortunately, the Biden-Harris Administration has proposed a $50 billion fund for a top-down approach to developing technologies at the National Science Foundation, and the Senate is considering a proposal to create a $100 billion slush fund for technology development. These proposals are not responsible or sustainable.
“America’s continued scientific leadership requires a comprehensive and strategic approach to research and development that provides long-term increased investment and stability across the research ecosystem. It also requires national collaboration and public-private partnerships with a focus on evolving technologies that are crucial to our national and economic security, like quantum information science, artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing, and high-performance computing.
“The Republican Members of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology will continue to build on the Committee’s past work to ensure that the United States remains the world’s leader in Research and Development. Committee Republicans believe that the only way to reach consensus and produce meaningful legislation on these matters is to engage in robust debate and dialogue, to proceed through regular legislative order, and to leave the partisan provisions for partisan measures.”
The full text of the letter follows, and a signed copy is available here.
