"elsewhere" is the university. Historically government funded a lot of primary research, especially after Sputnik. One example of primary research is the Intern

"elsewhere" is the university. Historically government funded a lot of primary research, especially after Sputnik. One example of primary research is the Internet, aka "Arpanet". Now all of the "ARPA" funding is "Defense-ARPA" so projects have to have a military justification. As to "getting more bang for your buck"... that's called externalization. Make a profit by shifting costs elsewhere, such as dumping toxic coal residue into streams, leaving mining tailings containing heavy metals in piles, using highways without paying road tax, etc. Letting someone else pay for the research and then "getting more bang for the buck" is what all companies are doing now. They used to support major research labs (Xerox PARC gave us windows, mice, ethernet, etc), (Bell Labs gave us digit recognizers, high speed modems, microwave background research), (IBM gave us force microscopes, disk drives, etc). (Google and Microsoft gave us the NSA). Unfortunately if everyone decides to let everyone else pay for the research then nobody does it. Universities are the last major resource for research. Cutting government funding by 6 billion dollars means that 6 billion x 3 researchers/year/million = 18000 fewer people doing things "elsewhere"... That's a lot of professors out of jobs. That's a lot more students who don't graduate. That's a lot of research that doesn't get done. If you eat seeds you get fed today but you don't get crops for tomorrow. Of course, since research takes 10 years to mature the effects of such cuts will take 10 years to create the disaster, which makes it someone else's problem. That's ok. 6 Billion dollars will buy 24 new fighter jets. Or one aircraft carrier. Or a lot of congress persons. Or 4 years of trips to a florida golf course on weekends. Sigh.