Randall Parker over at FuturePundit has this excellent post that analyzes the Bush Administration’s proposed funding of research in the 2005 budget, to which he concludes:

The Bush Administation’s plans for research and development spending are short-sighted. Scientific advances can solve problems in ways that pay back orders of magnitude more than the original research will cost to fund. Budget deficits and huge unfunded liabilities for those who are going to become elderly in the coming decades combined with the threat of terrorism and the greater global competition for a limited supply of oil call for mammoth attempts to research and innovate our way to solutions.