At Wednesday's hearing, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle expressed support for the federal government's role in supporting basic research and development (R&D) -- the sort that can take years or even decades to incubate a commercially viable product, if one even emerges, creating a risk-reward ratio that is too high for many companies to tolerate.

Committee chairman John Rockefeller (D-W.V.) pointed out that Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were working under NSF funding in 1994 at Stanford as they were developing the technology that would come to power the world's leading search engine. Google, Rockefeller pointed out, did not go public for another decade.

"These are inherently, obviously, all long-term investments," Rockefeller said. "Success takes time."

Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), the ranking member of Commerce Committee who is retiring at the end of her term in January, urged against taking an axe to the research programs provided for in the America COMPETES Act. Hutchison emphasized that current government-wide spending levels are unsustainable, but argued that support for basic R&D and STEM education programs are essential to the country's economic future and should be preserved even in a lean budget.