I was pleased to be with the President earlier today when he announced that, as of today, we are announcing grants for the officers that will bring the total up to 100,000 officers on the streets, in the neighborhoods, in the schools as part of the community-oriented policing program. I think it has been a great success, and today is a fine day to pay tribute to our police officers. I would now like to turn to the subject of technology in our society and science and research and development. I am a scientist and a teacher, and before coming to Congress, I was Assistant Director at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. I hold a patent for a solar energy device.
Technology advances our society and opens up exciting new worlds of opportunity.
Yet our Nation is underinvesting in long-term, fundamental research. The fact is that, on the whole, Federal support and corporate support for research in technology and in science is seriously underfunded. Research programs intended to maintain the flow of new ideas and to train the next generation of researchers are funded at only a fraction of what is needed, turning away hundreds of excellent proposals. We need to invest in our future and in our citizens. For example, there are today more than 340,000 high-paying information technology jobs open.