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Special Initiative - The American Competitiveness Initiative
During his 2006 State of the Union Address, President Bush outlined a decade-long $50 billion American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI) for R&D, education and entrepreneurship. The FY 2007 downpayment on ACI is $5.9 billion, which is accomplished by shuffling priorities within a shrinking federal discretionary budget environment to find $1.3 billion in new funding and $4.6 billion in R&D tax incentives. Specifically, ACI calls for:
- Doubling federal funding over 10 years for research in physical sciences and engineering within selected agencies: the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy Office of Science and the National Institute for Standards & Technology within the Department of Commerce. Combined funding for these specific offices is increased by $910 million in the FY07 request, up 9.3 percent from FY06 figures, although NIST Core funding decreased by 5.8 percent.
- Makes the Research & Experimentation tax credit permanent. The total 10-year impact is projected to be $86.4 billion.
- Creating new programs to support K-12 math and science education within the Department of Education (see the agency summary below).
- Reforming workforce training system, which at least initially would be accompanied by cuts in education and training programs in the Department of Education, Department of Labor and NSF (see individual agency summaries below).