Pres. Barack Obama, in a speech today to the National Academy of Sciences, committed the United States to spend at least 3% of GDP on research and development, including a major commitment to energy projects.

The initiative includes doubling the budgets for the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, among other agencies, plus about $400 million to launch ARPA-E, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy.

A major administratio [...]