If you haven't read this post by Matthew Nisbet at Framing Science, you really, really should. It shows how framing scientific issues in terms of jobs and economic competitiveness is much more likely to pass funding bills:
As I've noted here many times, major funding initiatives for science are mostly likely to be successful in winning support from policymakers under conditions where they can be exclusively defined in terms of economic competitiveness and growth. If opponents are unable to recast elements of the proposal in terms of public accountability (funding in the public vs private interest) or elements of the funding bill in terms of morality (specific to stem cell, reproductive research etc) then a bill is most likely to pass.
Read the whole thing.