On May 16, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke testified before Congress that "a reasonable strategy [for government R&D] may be to continue to use a mix of policies to support R&D, while taking pains to encourage diverse and even competing approaches by the scientists and engineers receiving support." Earlier in the month, the U.S. Senate, in a failed cloture vote resulting from political wrangling on both sides of the aisle, basically let funding lapse for the Small Business Investment Research (SBIR), which was scheduled to expire at the end of May. On the same day that the Senate bill failed, the House introduced its own version of SBIR support; however, the House version contains terminology that a similar 2003 bill had that eliminates some firms (i.e., biotech) from participating in the program. The Senate doesn’t support the House version and the House doesn’t support the Senate version.
The SBIR program requires federal agencies to set aside 2.5 percent (or about $2 billion) of their research grants to outside researchers in small companies. SBIR-funded research is very cost-effective, efficient and beneficial for U.S. industries, creating technologies that are often ignored by large companies as being too trivial for them to be concerned with. SBIR recipients have been awarded more than 50,000 patents since the program started in 1982.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Laboratory Equipment - What Don't They Understand?
Author: Tim Studt
