President Barrack Obama has released the executive budget of the American government for the year 2013. The executive budget is the budget of the President that is submitted to Congress for deliberation and enactment into law. Since the executive budget is submitted to Congress, the same is considered merely a proposal of the sitting President to Congress on how public funds should be spent.
A quick view of the Obama budget will reveal that the President places substantial importance to technology. In fact, there are six (6) budgetary thrust in the proposal that focuses on technology. The six budgetary thrusts are; overall research and development, wireless broadband, intellectual property rights, cybersecurity, science and technology education and technology in government.
Under the overall research and development, President Obama intends to put $140.8 billion for the creation of transformational technology to create business and jobs. The transformation technology will cover clean energy, advanced manufacturing, wireless internet and cybersecurity. The recipient government agencies are the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. NASA will also get funds for the aerospace industry.
The budget for wireless broadband is a significant step for technological advancement in case the proposal is approved by Congress. This budgetary thrust will allocate $10 billion for a nationwide wifi high speed access for smartphones and tablet devices. This is something that other tech savvy countries have done, such as South Korea and Japan, albeit the said countries approach, not national in scope.
President Obama proposes to give an additional $2.9 billion for the US Patent and Trademark Office for enhancing the protection of Intellectual property rights (IPR). It may be noted that IPR is a very sensitive issue in the US today due to the pending bills of SOPA and PIPA. However, it seems that the Obama is not favoring the two bills, which makes these budgetary items worth monitoring.
The US government under Obama considers that cybersecurity plays a vital role in protecting US soil against terrorism. For this purpose, the Obama budget allocated $769 million for the Homeland Security agency and to the Department of Defense for the enhancement of all existing government programs on cybersecurity.
Education on Science and Technology will also get a boost from the government for an additional 100,000 teachers in the said subjects. Another $80 million will be set aside for a state grant-base program.
Finally, the technological part of the budget will not be complete without budgets for making the US government IT updated. In this case, Obama is proposing to give $3 to $5 billion to develop the IT component of government operations.
The proposals of Obama are indeed notable, however, it is Congress who will scrutinize the wisdom of these proposals if the same should enacted into law. See full details below.
President Obama’s Proposed 2013 Budget
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Tags: 2013 us budget, fiscal 2013 budget, obama, obama budget 2013
