For the first time in American history, quantum computing was mentioned by a candidate during a presidential debate, on Sept. 10, 2024. After Vice President Kamala Harris brought up quantum technology, she and former President Donald Trump went on to have a heated back-and-forth about American chipmaking and China’s rise in semiconductor manufacturing. Science and technology policy usually takes a back seat to issues such as immigration, the economy and health care during election season.
What’s changed for 2024?
From COVID-19 to climate change, ChatGPT to, yes, quantum computers, science-related issues are on the minds of American policymakers and voters alike. The federal government spends nearly US$200 billion each year on scientific research and development to address these challenges and many others. Presidents and Congress, however, rarely agree on how – and how much – money should be spent on science.
With the increasing public focus on global competitiveness, the climate crisis and artificial intelligence, a closer look at Trump’s and Harris’ records on science and technology policy could provide a hint about how they’d approach these topics if elected this fall.
Two distinct visions for science funding
If politics can be described as “who gets what and when,” U.S. science and technology policy can be assessed through the annual budget process for R&D. By this measure, the differences between the Trump and Biden-Harris administrations couldn’t be starker.
In his first budget request to Congress, in 2017, Trump spurned decades of precedent, proposing historic cuts across nearly every federal science agency. In particular, Trump targeted climate-related programs at the Department of Energy, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Trump’s fiscal policy took a page from Reagan-era conservative orthodoxy, prioritizing military spending over social programs, including R&D. Unlike Reagan, however, Trump also took aim at basic research funding, an area with long-standing bipartisan support in Congress. His three subsequent budget proposals were no different: across-the-board reductions to federal research programs, while pushing for increases to defense technology development and demonstration projects.
Congress rebuked nearly all of Trump’s requests. Instead, it passed some of the largest increases to federal R&D programs in U.S. history, even before accounting for emergency spending packages funded as part of the government’s pandemic response.
In contrast, the Biden-Harris administration made science and innovation a centerpiece of its early policy agenda – with budgets to match. Leveraging the slim Democratic majority during the 117th Congress, Biden and Harris shepherded three landmark bills into law: the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act. These laws contain significant R&D…
