NATIONAL MAQSTEM RESEARCH, INNOVATION & ADVANCEMENT
POSITION
The United States should invest public money in MAQSTEM: Medicine, Artificial Intelligence, Quantum science and computing, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. Public investment is justified when the likely benefit is national in scale and private investment alone is unlikely to produce the needed work soon enough. It should expand knowledge, protect life, strengthen national security, build American capability, and produce measurable public value. It should not become political favoritism, permanent corporate support, or a blank check.
OUR PHILOSOPHY
Some discoveries require years of uncertain work before a profitable product exists. The public sector can responsibly support that early work while private companies compete to turn successful discoveries into useful products. Government should fund the public need, not choose permanent winners. Researchers should have room to investigate difficult questions, taxpayers should be able to see what their money accomplished, and the public should receive a fair return when public money materially creates a valuable commercial product.
WHAT MAQSTEM INCLUDES
Medicine: medical and biomedical research, prevention, diagnostics, pharmaceuticals, treatments, medical devices, clinical science, rehabilitation, and public health.
Artificial Intelligence: machine learning, responsible automation, data science, advanced models, robotics, safety, security, and practical applications serving the public.
Quantum: quantum physics, materials, sensing, communications, encryption, simulation, and computing.
Science: biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, earth science, environmental science, materials science, and the other physical and life sciences.
Technology: computers, hardware, software, cybersecurity, communications, electronics, biotechnology, robotics, advanced manufacturing, and emerging technologies.
Engineering: aerospace, biomedical, chemical, civil, computer, electrical, environmental, industrial, materials, mechanical, nuclear, and other engineering disciplines.
Mathematics: pure and applied mathematics, statistics, modeling, operations research, algorithms, and quantitative analysis.
PUBLIC-INVESTMENT TEST
A major federal research or innovation award should satisfy a written public-investment test before money is committed. The responsible agency must identify:
the national problem, scientific question, or public capability the project addresses;
why private capital, ordinary procurement, or existing research is unlikely to meet the need adequately;
the expected public benefit and the people or systems expected to benefit;
the technical, ethical, financial, security, and commercialization risks;
specific milestones, decision points, responsible officials, and conditions for stopping or restructuring the project;
how duplication with other federal, state, university, nonprofit, or private programs was checked;
the intended public return, access conditions, intellectual-property treatment, and domestic-capability requirements.
PRIORITY AREAS
Priority may be given to work involving basic science, prevention and treatment of serious disease, medical diagnostics, public-health readiness, advanced manufacturing, semiconductors, energy production and storage, agriculture and food security, water, transportation, space, cybersecurity, quantum science, advanced computing, critical materials, environmental restoration, and technologies necessary for national defense or resilient infrastructure. This list establishes eligible national interests. It does not guarantee funding to a particular institution, company, technology, or theory.
USE THE RIGHT FUNDING TOOL
Basic research: Use competitively reviewed grants and cooperative agreements when the primary product is knowledge, data, methods, or early discovery.
Defined technical goals: Use milestone contracts, challenge prizes, and staged demonstrations when government can state the result it needs without dictating the only possible method.
Commercial development: Use cost sharing, repayable financing, royalties, warrants, equity, purchase commitments, or other enforceable public-return terms when the project is close to market and a private recipient may receive substantial commercial value.
Public infrastructure and laboratories: Preserve federal laboratories, shared facilities, datasets, test ranges, and research infrastructure when common access creates more value than a single private owner could provide.
OPEN COMPETITION, PEER REVIEW & QUICK DECISIONS
Major opportunities must use public eligibility rules, scored criteria, conflict disclosures, and reviewers with relevant scientific, technical, financial, ethical, and end-user expertise.
Agencies must acknowledge an application and identify missing material within 15 calendar days.
An initial award decision must be issued within 30 calendar days after a complete application.
Urgent national challenge programs may use a 30-day decision process if competition, technical review, conflicts screening, and written reasons are preserved.
Unsuccessful applicants must receive their scores and a meaningful explanation. Material process errors may be appealed to an independent review official. The appeal must be decided within the next 30 calendar days. A complaint or final independent review must conclude within the following 30 calendar days. On day 91, administrative remedies are exhausted and the applicant may seek judicial review.
SCIENTIFIC INDEPENDENCE & RESEARCH INTEGRITY
Awards may not use party loyalty, lawful political belief, personal relationships, race, religion, sex, or ideological conformity as a substitute for scientific merit and lawful program needs. Review panels must disclose conflicts. Research misconduct, fabricated results, hidden financial interests, and deliberate suppression of material safety findings must be investigated promptly. Honest disagreement, negative results, failed hypotheses, and good-faith scientific error are not fraud.
A FAIR RETURN FOR TAXPAYERS
Every award must state in advance what the public receives. Basic-research awards should ordinarily require timely publication and public access to results and data after a reasonable period for patent filing, privacy protection, and national-security review. Commercial-development awards should include one or more enforceable return mechanisms proportionate to the public contribution, such as repayment, royalties, equity, price or access commitments, domestic production, supply guarantees, open licensing after nonuse, or a government-use license.
A recipient may earn a reasonable profit for taking risk, adding private capital, completing development, manufacturing, and bringing a useful product to market. It may not accept public financing, conceal the public contribution, move the resulting capability abroad without review, and charge the public as though taxpayers contributed nothing.
MILESTONES, AUDITS & FAILURE
Funding should be released by defined stage rather than committed automatically for the full project.
Recipients must maintain records linking public money to personnel, equipment, subawards, milestones, deliverables, intellectual property, and conflicts of interest.
A missed milestone triggers technical review, not automatic punishment. Government may revise, pause, compete, transfer, or end a project when the evidence no longer supports continued investment.
Unused funds and money obtained through material misrepresentation must be recovered. Knowing fraud, kickbacks, fabricated data, or concealed conflicts trigger restitution, civil penalties, debarment, termination, and criminal referral where the legal elements are proven.
MAQSTEM FUNDING CEILING
Congress may authorize up to $300 billion annually for MAQSTEM. The amount is a maximum inside the total federal spending ceiling, not additional spending outside it and not an automatic annual entitlement.
Existing qualifying federal research, laboratory, medical, defense-research, technology, commercialization, and scientific-infrastructure spending must be consolidated and counted once inside the ceiling. This includes direct appropriations, grants, subsidies, cooperative agreements, loans and loan subsidies, loan guarantees, tax expenditures, insurance support, purchase commitments, public-private financing, and other federal financial assistance when the primary purpose qualifies under MAQSTEM. A qualifying cost may not remain outside the ceiling merely because it is administered by another agency or delivered through a university, nonprofit, laboratory, state, locality, Tribal Nation, territory, cooperative, farmer, rancher, or business. Funding is released only for qualified work that satisfies the public-investment test, competition, peer review, milestone, audit, public-return, security, and domestic-capability requirements of this policy.
MAQSTEM appropriations are deposited into a protected account. Unused money carries forward for up to five fiscal years and is not subject to a use-it-or-lose-it incentive. Money contractually committed to an approved multi-year project follows its published schedule. Uncommitted money remaining after five fiscal years is transferred to federal debt repayment while gross federal debt remains and follows the post-debt taxpayer-refund rules after debt reaches zero. Funding may be suspended, recovered, or transferred earlier when a project is fraudulent, abandoned, materially fails independent review, or repeatedly misses published milestones without an approved corrective plan. Agencies and employees may not receive a reward or penalty based on the amount spent or left unspent. Royalties, repayments, recoveries, equity proceeds, and other public returns are credited to MAQSTEM within its ceiling or to federal debt repayment.
Core MPA standard: Up to $300 billion is available for proven national research and innovation needs. The ceiling is not a spending quota. Existing programs count, failed work stops, and taxpayers receive a measurable public return.
WHAT WE WILL MEASURE
Public reporting should track application and decision time, competition, independent review, milestones reached, failed projects, publications, validated discoveries, patents and licenses, products reaching use, lives or costs affected where measurable, private investment attracted, domestic production created, taxpayer returns, access commitments, safety findings, recoveries, and unresolved conflicts. Patent count or money spent alone does not prove success.
Core MPA standard: America should lead in MAQSTEM and invest in discoveries and capabilities that serve the public, especially where the benefit is large and the path is too uncertain or too long for private capital alone. Fund the mission. Test the work. Stop failed spending. Share the public benefit.
Related policies: Healthcare; Public Health & Emergency Powers; Education; Energy; National Cybersecurity Standards & Trusted Personnel; Infrastructure Modernization & Disaster Response; Public Money, Audits & Proof of Spending.
Status: Proposed / Draft, not yet formally adopted.
Originally published: September 27, 2026.
Last updated: October 5, 2026.
Version: Draft 0.5.