Chief among fiscal matters addressed by President Obama was his announcement that R&D spending will increase to over 3 percent of the GDP, ranking the United States at or near the top of all nations in terms of expenditures. This includes doubling the budgets of the National Science Foundation (the number of graduate research fellowships will be tripled), NIST and the DOE’s Office of Science for a figure that will top $420 billion altogether.

President Obama is also making a significant investment in the National Institutes of Health — $6 billion — to double cancer research in the coming years. The main thrust of his plan for the healthcare industry is convert the nation’s medical records system to an electronic format in order to reduce billions of dollars worth of errors and waste, as well as facilitate data research.

The majority of these research dollars, however, will be put towards readying workers for “a 21st century economy” and the issues of energy efficiency and independence that he believes will define it. In addition to a multi-year, $150 billion renewable energy initiative that includes NASA efforts towards space-based climate monitoring, President Obama also introduced plans to create the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E) which will engage in “high-risk, high-reward” research in the same vein as DARPA, the advanced research wing of the Defense Department.

In a nod to the private sector, President Obama made permanent the research and experimentation tax credit which he claims “returns two dollars to the economy for every dollar we spend, by helping companies afford the often high costs of developing new ideas, new technologies, and new products.” He also made a pledge to introduce comprehensive legislation that will create a cap-and-trade system to limit carbon emissions.

Another major incentive-based program is the Secretary of Education’s Race to the Top program, a $5 billion fund for which states demonstrating “strong commitments and progress in math and science education” can compete in order to modernize laboratories and “improve the use of science and technology in the classroom.” This dovetails with an initiative by the National Governor’s Association that seeks to “increase the number of states that are making science, technology, engineering and mathematics education a top priority” in order to draw top quality educators and jobs.

Finally, in the most politically-charged message of his address, President Obama announced the creation of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), an effort towards improving evidenced-based decision-making and transparency, and a sharp rebuke of the perceived politicization of scientific data and research by the administration of President Bush.

PCAST will be led by members of the scientific community and will initially comprise the President’s top science advisor John Holdren; Eric Lander, one of the principal leaders of the Human Genome Project; and Harold Varmus, former head of the National Institutes of Health.