"Obviously we're in a budgetary crisis and we all understand that," she said, calling for a "top line" for spending, measured as a percentage of gross domestic product. "When we set that cap, we need to ensure that we're investing in areas that are seed corn for the future."

Peter Lee, corporate vice president of Microsoft Research, likewise appealed to the lawmakers to preserve funding for the research and education provisions of the COMPETES Act, framing his pitch in terms of the United States' competitive standing in the global economy.

"While the U.S. has demonstrated time and again the robustness of its IT innovation ecosystem, its current strength is not a guaranteed right, but the result of [an] American vision of sustained investment. The COMPETES Act is a key element of this," Lee said, stressing the value of the long-term research that often draws funding from federal programs.

"Decades of basic research in coding theory ultimately enabled today's smartphones, streaming video and an array of communications technologies," he said. "And at Microsoft, our products and services today build on a pipeline of research advances in areas such as machine learning, distributed systems and computer graphics."