Eh, this only means that there is no public funding for it. Private funding for this research in the US is, and has been, legal.
This.
Also, I've never heard of anything beneficial coming from Embryonic lines, unless you count cancers and such as beneficial.
All this really does is prevent a government that is operating a trillion dollars in the hole from burning more money they don't have.
This just goes to show public ignorance. By far the majority of game-changing research is publicly, not privately, funded. This is because private research dollars go to projects with practical end results (drugs, primarily) while public money is frequently allocated to long-term methodological studies that often as not change how we even look at the field. PCR and microarrays, two of the biggest game-changers in genetics, were both invented by researchers who were publicly funded. Bush, in imposing the ban, knew this - which is why that no regulations were drafted to ban ES research in the USA entirely, simply because the field could be basically shut down by turning off the public-funding valve.
Stem cell research is still in its infancy - ES cells are truly totipotent cells, unlike adult iPS cells, and are much more suitable for growing complex and diverse tissues. iPS have a whole series of problems (not the least of which is stability due to the induction process) that make them less than ideal. It also happens that as the bulk of research dollars in the US are focused on iPS, more labs are focussed on them. Funny how that works.
The failure to fund ES cell research with public dollars is the biggest tragedy in modern science in the United States, and is solely because of religious ideology. Absolute shame.
I find it ironic that many conservative-minded people like yourself love to trumpet the medical technology and R&D in the United States, while simultaneously criticizing public expenditure of funds on it. Private corporations only fund research which will make them money in the short term, which is why public research dollars are an absolute necessity.