A new report from Science Progress finds that the state of research funding in the United States leaves much to be desired:

[F]unding for NIH has experienced little fiscal growth over the last eight years, in spite of the American public’s strong support of biomedical research. The lack of a coherent government strategy for evaluating the impact of federal programs and setting R&D funding priorities across the federal government, combined with sometimes dramatic “feast to famine” swings in funding, particularly for NIH, should raise the question of whether the American people are getting their money’s worth from federally funded R&D. Many programs and projects start and stop—sometimes abruptly—with the availability of government-funded grants. Such inconsistencies waste money and interrupt careers.

Also from the report, which you can download here, a chart showing that the US lags behind Israel, Sweden, Japan, and South Korea in terms of R&D funding as a percentage of GDP: