As Congress moves closer to enacting President Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, focus on the elements of a broader recovery package is intensifying. While the relief package addresses the urgent, immediate challenges of the pandemic (including state and local fiscal relief) and accelerated vaccine distribution, the recovery package is intended to address the structural challenges that pre-date the public health crisis: geographically unbalanced economic growth, accelerating climate change, growing income inequities and a reckoning with systemic racism. The recovery package is the vehicle for achieving President Biden’s vision for “Building Back Better.”

President Joe Biden made investments in innovation a focal point of his Build Back Better agenda during the campaign. Biden’s proposals included calls for substantial investments in research & development through existing agencies like the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the Departments of Energy and Defense. He also called for diversifying growth through investments in technology hubs around the country, building on excellent work (The Case for Growth Centers (itif.org)) done by Mark Muro, Rob Atkinson and others. Biden’s calls have been echoed in important legislation introduced in the House and Senate, including the Endless Frontier Act and The Innovation Centers Acceleration Act. (US Senators Introduce Bill to Allot $80B to Bolster National Innovation; Sen. Chris Coons Quoted (executivegov.com))

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