Clinton to Push for Tech Funding

CLINTON TO PUSH FOR TECH FUNDING
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Jackie Calmes at jackie.calmes@wsj.com]
Presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) will call for a big boost in federal spending for research and technology in a campaign trip to California's Silicon Valley today. Sen Clinton's "innovation agenda," as her campaign calls it, packages familiar and new initiatives that are sure to be popular with her audience at Applied Global University in Santa Clara, as well as the broader high-tech community, which favors Democrats with its votes and money. The chief cost of the Clinton agenda would come from making permanent a longstanding 20% tax credit for corporations' research-and-development expenses. Presidents and Congresses have repeatedly extended the costly credit for a year or two at a time since its creation in 1981, mainly to make the government's five-year budget estimates look smaller. According to a campaign overview, Sen. Clinton will argue that repeated expirations and extensions wreak havoc with business research strategies -- echoing past campaign arguments of her own husband in the 1990s and George W. Bush in 2000. Presidential contender John McCain (R-AZ), also in California for campaigning and fund raising, indicated at the "D: All Things Digital" conference sponsored by The Wall Street Journal that he doesn't favor legislation to force an expansion of broadband access or protect so-called net neutrality, saying such moves usually have "unintended consequences."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118057187159619384.html?mod=todays_us_pa...
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