Does Obama budget 'win the future'? Six ways he wants to boost innovation.

Here are President Barack Obama's top innovation-related budget priorities. With these proposals, Obama is putting a clear emphasis on scientific research, which many economists welcome as a building block for future growth.

• Funding scientific research. The 2012 budget includes $148 billion for R&D overall, with new money targeted at sectors (including clean energy, advanced manufacturing, and cyber-security) which are "most likely to directly contribute" to job creation.
• Promoting private-sector research. Obama calls for making the research and experimentation (R&E) tax credit for business permanent, to simplify it, and to expand the credit by 20 percent. The up-front cost of this boost for business: an estimated $4.6 billion in lost tax revenue in 2012, or $106 billion over the next decade.
• Improving the patent system. President Obama proposes boosting the speed and quality of patent examinations, with a fee surcharge to better align application fees with processing costs.
• Boosting education. In addition to broader proposals regarding schools and universities, the budget allocates $100 million toward an Obama goal of preparing 100,000 new teachers in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) over the next decade.
• Ramping up clean energy. Obama seeks to move on several fronts here. He would transform an existing $7,500 tax credit for electric vehicles into a rebate that will be available to all consumers immediately at the point of sale. He would lure manufacturing for renewable energy by extending tax credits and adding $5 billion in new ones. And he would add three "Energy Innovation Hubs" – which bring together top scientists to work on an important issue – to the three his administration has already created, with the new ones focusing on critical materials, batteries and energy storage, and new power-grid systems.
• Bringing wireless broadband nationwide. Obama calls wireless broadband connections an increasingly important part of the nation's economic infrastructure. He seeks to make such networks available nationwide, and to create a new public-safety network to improve first-responder communications during emergencies. Key funding would come from auctions to reallocate airwave spectrum.