The GOP Plan to Crush Silicon Valley

When Congress returns from its summer recess in early September, it will have exactly nine legislative days to agree on a budget or the government will shut down

House Republicans are seeking far greater cuts in non-defense spending than Senate Democrats, and some members of the GOP are threatening to hold up any budget agreement until the Obama administration abandons the Affordable Care Act. It’s going to be a slog, with all sorts of unseemly compromises

But let me suggest an area where Democrats should allow exactly zero more dollars to be excised from the federal budget: government research for science and technology. We’ve already seen a 13% drop in this area over the last two years, and it’s hard to overstate just how damaging to the country’s future further reductions would be. Read more...