[Full text and video are available at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/25/obama-state-of-the-union-_1_n_813478.html.]

Colleagues,

I don't know whether you watched President Obama's State of the Union speech last night.  From my perspective, there were several statements pertinent to research administrators, particularly university research administrators.

First was "an investment in research and development" in certain key areas--biomedical research, information technology, clean energy, etc.--all encapsulated within a focus on innovation.

Second was a focus on educational reform based on the premise that secondary and postsecondary education are both significant drivers of innovation.

Third was a promised review of government regulations in order to reduce and/or eliminate unnecessary burdens on businesses.  (A side note: One could argue that higher education should be relieved of certain kinds of unnecessary burdens as well, especially considering that immediately prior to this section of his speech, President Obama recognized our nation's colleges and universities as vitally important innovation engines.)

Fourth was a proposed five-year domestic spending freeze.  (President Obama's freeze would be at a different level from levels suggested by his political rivals on the Republican side of the aisle; no matter which level is selected, though, a domestic spending freeze would appear to result in effective stagnation of funding levels in many federal funding programs.)

Fifth was his promise that his administration "will develop a proposal to merge, consolidate, and reorganize the federal government" to develop a more efficient government (I'm paraphrasing the ideas around this quote).  His examples were of multiple federal agencies that have similar or identical mission components and/or areas of responsibility.  This has obvious implications for certain federal funding programs, especially when considered as relatively broad categories such as "health" or "education."

His sixth and final point that to my mind may affect research administrators is his promise to veto any bills that include earmarks.

Please keep in mind that this is just my personal opinion of the statements President Obama made in last night's State of the Union speech that I felt may affect us research administrators.  Still, I thought these statements were significant enough to be extracted and discussed on professional listservs like this one.

Best,

Paul Tuttle
xxxxxx@juno.com or (336) 692-3289 [cell]

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