Bush proposes tech funding and defends wiretapping

In his annual State of the Union address Tuesday night, U.S. President George W. Bush proposed a multibillion dollar initiative to encourage research and development in the U.S. and strengthen education in math and the sciences. He also defended the government's controversial wire-tapping efforts.

The "American Competitiveness Initiative" seeks to commit US$136 billion to research and development and better education over the next 10 years, including $5.9 billion in 2007.

"We must continue to lead the world in human talent and creativity," Bush said during the televised speech. "Our greatest advantage in the world has always been our educated, hard-working, ambitious people -- and we are going to keep that edge."

The initiative covers three main areas. It would double the government's commitment to basic research in physical sciences and areas such as supercomputing and nanotechnology, make permanent a research tax credit to encourage private sector development, and strengthen education in maths and sciences. On this last issue, Bush proposed training 70,000 high-school teachers for maths and science subjects and bringing 30,000 professionals into classrooms to teach.

The plan was praised by several technology executives and lobby groups.

"Discovery, ingenuity and innovation have always been at the forefront of the U.S. economic and technological leadership," Craig Barrett, chairman of Intel Corp., said in a statement. "Unfortunately recent indicators show that we are at risk of losing our competitive edge. The business community commends the President for making American competitiveness a national goal."

The speech also touched on technology use in the healthcare industry. The President called for wider use of electronic records and other health information technology systems to help keep costs down and reduce errors.

The address, the fifth since the September 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S., led off with military and defense issues, and Bush addressed the controversial U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) program to intercept Internet and telephone communications of U.S. citizens. A civil liberties organization, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, filed a class-action lawsuit against AT&T Corp. earlier in the day for assisting with the program.

"Our country must also remain on the offensive against terrorism here at home," Bush said. "It is said that prior to the attacks of September 11th, our government failed to connect the dots of the conspiracy. We now know that two of the hijackers in the U.S. placed telephone calls to al-Qaeda operatives overseas. But we did not know about their plans until it was too late."

The program has been widely criticized and Bush used Tuesday night's speech to repeat his assertion that the program lies within the law and under powers granted to him in the U.S. Constitution.

"This terrorist surveillance program has helped prevent terrorist attacks," he said. "It remains essential to the security of America. If there are people inside our country who are talking with al-Qaeda, we want to know about it -- because we will not sit back and wait to be hit again."