How phony is the Paul Ryan’s austerity plan for America? Well for starters, he shamelessly lies when he says the Patent office is part of deficit reduction, because the office is self funding. It doesn’t receive one penny of taxpayer money.
But it is a piggy bank for congress to dip into and raid, at the expense of America's next generation of inventions. Now that’s fiscal brilliance.
jsonline: Inventors and entrepreneurs … would like to see the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office keep the fees it collects - rather than have the agency further decimated by congressional raids on its funds … U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan has signed a strongly worded letter objecting to … the patent office retain(ing) those fees and spend them on rebuilding itself after years of underfunding.
Ryan is desperate for the congressional patent office slush fund:
Giving the agency autonomy over its own fees "is a move in exactly the wrong direction, given the new Republican majority's commitment to … reducing the nation's unparalleled deficits and debt," the letter said.
While the country touts its cutting edge innovation and entrepreneurship, Ryan would stop everything:
The congressional raids have been disastrous for the patent office, according to a two-year Journal Sentinel examination, which illustrated how delays and massive backlogs at the understaffed and inadequately equipped agency have impeded U.S. competitiveness and innovation. Garage entrepreneurs and start-ups often suffer the greatest setbacks … The agency is swamped with a backlog of over 1.2 million applications still awaiting a final decision - technologies that cover almost every niche of the economy, areas as diverse as online commerce, medical scanners … many applications wait so long to be considered, the technologies they cover become obsolete. As a result, venture capitalists walk away, start-ups are stunted, and infringers freely steal ideas for lack of protection.
Despite Ryan’s claim oversight is ‘necessary "to ensure American citizens are getting the most from every dollar," he’s flat out lying:
Former patent office director Q. Todd Dickinson … "This masquerades as oversight when it's really about fee diversion," Dickinson said.
"If America wants more innovation, why on earth is it cutting the budget of its patent office," the British newsweekly The Economist wrote in an editorial last month.
Fox guarding the hen house of innovation:
U.S. Rep. Harold Rogers, a Republican from Kentucky who chairs the House Committee on Appropriations … From 1995 to 2000, chaired the subcommittee that directly handled appropriations for the patent office. During those years, Congress helped itself to the largest annual share of patent office funds, which coincided with the period when the backlog began to increase.
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