Issue Position: Basic Research and Development

Issue Position

Basic Research and Development

Government support of basic research and development within government research centers or via government peer-vetted grants is particularly high on my agenda. This R&D has brought us the internet, GPS, the human genome project, heart monitors, solar panels, optical digital recording technology, fluorescent lights, communications and observation satellites, advanced batteries now used in electric cars, modern water-purification techniques, supercomputers, more resilient passenger jets, better cancer therapies, and the list, which includes some key technology used by Google, goes on.

What a spectacular record. Yet we've let federal R&D fall from 10 percent of GDP in the 1960s to less than 1 percent today. Funding of NASA, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense have all been reduced and continue to be reduced relative to the size of the economy. In the field of particle physics, our country seems to have simply left the field when it comes to constructing large-scale particle accelerators. The big breakthroughs these days are occurring at CERN in Switzerland -- the European Union's Organization for Nuclear Research.

As President, I would ramp this research back up. I think this is one of just two kinds of spending that can potentially pay for itself. The other is infrastructure investment.

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