Question 1:
What role should the federal government play in advancing research and development in both businesses and institutions of higher education?
Sen. George Allen's Response-"We need a positive pro-growth economic climate in which to invest and prosper. As Governor, we recruited a record $14 billion in new investments and helped create more than 312,000 net new private sector jobs to make Virginia the Silicon Dominion.
In the Senate, I have worked to make America the World Capital of Innovation.I have taken the lead on important research and development, technology and competitiveness initiatives, including expanding the federal investment in nanotechnology research, upgrading technology at minority serving universities, encouraging rapid deployment of broadband, and keeping access to the Internet free of taxes and regulations. I established the Senate Competitiveness Caucus to focus on these and other important competitiveness issues.
I sponsored legislation to increase funding for federal science programs and to encourage more women and minorities in science and engineering fields.
I support making the Research and Development Tax Credit permanent. I am an original sponsor of the "Protecting America’s Competitive Edge Through Tax Incentives Act," which doubles the R&D tax credit and makes it permanent.
Earlier this year, I helped lead a bipartisan effort in support of a groundbreaking initiative for investment in medical, bioscience, and clinical research at Virginia’s universities; funding for this was included in the most recent State budget. "
Jim Webb's Response-"The driving force of the most important technological advances in the last century has been government investment in research. This is especially true in areas that relate to national defense, where many private-sector spin-offs have benefited the nation’s economy.
I support investment in business and research at institutions of higher education. The use of tax and fiscal policies can assist businesses in achieving their goals and forwarding scientific and technological development. That is why I support the extension of tax cuts, including the Research and Development Tax Credit and others that benefit small business."
*Please note that the Chamber asked 5 questions and limited the responses of both candidates to 600 words for all 5 questions. Because we limited the overall word count, their responses vary in length. Additionally, their responses have not been edited by Chamber staff in any way.
3 comments:
Thanks, Jason -- looking forward to the remainder of the questions/answers.
Count so far:
Allen: 207
Webb: 94
Any reason why you limited them to so few words? I didn't think Allen's response was too long here, but it used up over 1/3 of the total words available. I would have thought to give the candidates at least 200 words per question, unless some of the questions are really easy to answer.
Charles,
The "In their own words" interviews were conducted in late August for the Chamber's September issue of our newsletter Doing Business.
We allowed each candidate to give us a 100 word (approximate) bio. Additionally, we posed 5 questions that we generated and limited their responses to a total of 600 words.
Although we discussed limiting their responses to each question, we decided to afford them the ability to answer the questions how they saw fit.
We limited their overall words, because each candidate had only 1 page to share their bios and their answers to our questions.
Oh and I said approximate for the bio, because Jim Webb gave us a bio slightly over 100 words, but answered his 5 questions with less than 600 words.
Conversely, Sen. Allen gave us right at a 100 word bio and 600 word response to questions.
Neither candidate went over the overall word count of 700 words.
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