Reading the tea leaves, one can only hope that in the future we have the luxury of worrying about how to effectively spend federal R&D funds. We just passed $1TRILLION deficit spending with 3 more months to go in the fiscal year. Growing entitlement obligations will do much more damage than create competition for federal research dollars... it will consume entire federal agencies and create an atmosphere so toxic to doing business that private capital will dry up as well. The federal budget is a mess and getting worse. Social security, medicare, medicaid and interest on the debt are projected to exceed federal revenue by 2020. That means all money spent on national defense, homeland security, temporary assistance, transportation infrastructure and all other spending, or as the GAO calls it "what many think of as 'government'" will be unfunded. Check out the GAOs fiscal outlook: Web Link

not rocket science here... we're on a trajectory for fiscal catastrophe and the sooner our representatives in both parties start taking it seriously the better. we can't tax our way out of this... we need strong job creation. We can't cut our way out of it without violating the trust of the greatest generation. Someone help me out here, how are we not totally screwed???

Let's remember we're recovering from a horrendous downturn that has left no corner in our country unblemished. Things are naturally going to look and feel quite bleak for a while, and funding all around is going to be scarce.

I'm supportive of the idea of merit based funding, as we should be encouraging and supporting those that have shown the greatest chance of success by their commitment and their achievements.

That said, I think you point out one of the solutions to this problem, when mentioning that both parties need to seriously address the country's problems, and not get distracted with "taking care of their own".

I hate the word, because it gets used so much but never modeled, but bipartisanship in government would help us focus on the problems we are having as a nation, and provide the necessary momentum and leadership to work on solving issues, rather than trying to one up the other party. There are valuable ideas that both parties have, and other ideas that serve only to distract or cater to a select interest group.

I'm too young to know what it was like "back then", but one thing I've noticed from the greatest generation and before is that they seemed to have a singular vision for America, that helped them to bear with one another, knowing they were working towards the same goals. We need to regain a shared vision, one that stands to help everyone.

America's diversity is our strength, but it can also be our weakness, if we allow ourselves to be defined only by how we are different, and not by how we are similar.

US$ has always been floating as long as I remember. Mao Tse Tung's successors Communist Red China Yuan is the only fixed rate currency. All its neighbors- Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, India, Russia, Australia, Europe etc have floating currencies and they are all hurt by industries being killed by MTTCRChinese exports to those countries. Another thing is - thanks to Tibet, MTTCRChina is today the largest producer of GOLD in the world. Its production exceeds South Africa's. As we all know, in the last few years the price of Gold has quadrupled. MTTCRChina doesn't need the added benefit of a low exchange rate. Hit the delete button on free trade privileges of MTTCRChina!

"Under siege"?! Isn't that a bit loaded? We have a huge fiscal crisis in this country and that means budget cuts, but you'd describe that as "under siege"?

The current fiscal crisis is the worst we have seen in a generation. Let's just hope it doesn't make us kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Ah, the glorious benefits of socialism! So the braniacs of Silicon Valley are completely dependent on government handouts, eh? No free health care for me, no free start-up for you, just $10,000 per second for a war that cannot possibly be won...

"Growing entitlement obligations will do much more damage than create competition for federal research dollars... it will consume entire federal agencies and create an atmosphere so toxic to doing business that private capital will dry up as well. The federal budget is a mess and getting worse. Social security, medicare, medicaid and interest on the debt are projected to exceed federal revenue by 2020."

Funny we never read in such rhetoric anything about corporate welfare, the billions and billions paid to politically connected corporations like big Agribusiness. We don't read that medical insurance alone is taking over 4% US GDP and nearly a quarter of US medical expense overall. We don't read that finance, medical care, and the growing again US trade deficit are taking just below 30% and growing US GDP. Given the wars and the watching-the-sparrows-fall-world-wide military budget in addition, even the recovery we have is a tribute to both the enterprise of our economy as well as our ability to borrow ourselves into indenture. Given the hundreds of millions of dollars being poured on Washington by special interests, a tsunami of dollars, the recent medical care and financial bills may have been the last chance.

We aren't hearing that our medical care system increasingly shortens people's working lifetimes, making their medical expenses transfer payments and losing their productivity. The age of peak earnings is dropping along with the velocity of money, yet no economy envisioned can support people who work only half their adult lifetimes. We have older people who think their lifespans are a zero-sum game with uninsured people and have taken on a generational and ethnic struggle they can't win.

The real vitality and added jobs in the US for decades has come from our entrepreneurial Main Street, say businesses employing 1-500 or so, which is being frozen out. A block on our Supreme Court has now made official our pay-to-play political way of life. We had no Jefferson's Wall between politician's and money and have always paid dearly for that Constitutional defect. Now we are reaching for the end stage and are rapidly becoming a Banana Republic. When corporations and financial institutions can buy their environment we no longer have capitalism/markets, we will have increasingly dysfunctional large corporations/finance and corrupt politics intertwined in ways that have been historically recipes for disaster. Countries like Argentina or Indonesia were reformed and bailed out by the IMF, bankrolled then by the US. There's no way to force reforms and bailouts on the US in the same circumstances and perhaps no one would.

There is no continuity nor community in interest nor goals between Main Street - us - and Wall Street and most large corporations these days. Washington, in reality, is now post ideology except that the right party seems more susceptible and unscrupulous, being quite willing to risk national disaster to achieve a power that would prove illusory. Both Sacramento and Washington have run aground on a supermajority to govern concept as well. Be careful of what you wish for...

By the way, just what does the right want to do with older people? What is the cutoff age? Will they just ration them or be more proactive? The program seems to be that people should die in net worth order. Perhaps we need a referendum on that. After all, the CIA handbook,
Web Link says the US is 50th in life expectancy in spite of our expenditures.