Virtually every smartphone on the planet runs on a chip paid for by American taxpayers — a chip that I helped invent. Now Congress is moving to cut funding for the National Science Foundation that could lead to future breakthroughs.

Investing in innovation is not wasteful spending. It is one of the smartest investments Washington makes, creating new jobs, stronger businesses and higher tax revenue in every corner of the country. Cutting the level of government funding for scientific research now would rip those future returns out of American hands and deliver them to our global competitors.

I built my career in public universities. Over four decades, I helped lead a dozen federally funded research labs. Five of them produced breakthrough technologies that became part of the backbone of modern life.

In the 1980s, we developed a much more efficient style of microprocessor (the RISC chip) in a university lab with graduate students funded by the government. At the time, few imagined that breakthrough would one day power 300 billion chips. The National Science Foundation also funded research that made digital storage much more reliable and affordable (called RAID storage), enhancing everything from cloud computing to online banking. These innovations helped launch entire industries and are used daily by billions of people.

These breakthroughs did not come from corporate boardrooms or billionaire-backed........

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