White House budget invests in innovation, looks to wireless for deficit reduction

The budget proposal to be released by the White House on Feb 14 attempts to make meaningful investments in innovation, as President Barack Obama promised in his State of the Union address last month.

The plan devotes $148 billion to research and development overall and proposes to simplify, expand, and make permanent the R&D tax credit, a prospect the tech sector has strongly supported. The White House also proposes to continue an effort to double the money devoted to key basic research. The plan looks to the airwaves as a mechanism for deficit reduction, as Obama outlined in a speech last week. The proposal says it will bring down the deficit by $10 billion dollars by auctioning off TV airwaves. That's because the White House says spectrum auctions can raise almost $28 billion. Of the money raised, the White House proposes to use $10 billion to build a nationwide mobile broadband network to connect public safety agencies. An additional $5 billion will serve as a one-time investment in the Federal Communications Commission's fund for telecom subsidies. The investment is supposed to go toward spreading mobile broadband to 98 percent of the population, funding networks in rural areas.