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08.07
Congress
Passes Landmark Legislation, America COMPETES
Act
By Bill Williams
On 2 August, Congress passed
landmark legislation designed to enhance U.S.
competitiveness and innovation by increasing
funding for basic research and improving
science, technology, engineering and math (STEM)
education. President Bush signed in the bill
into law on 9 August. Dubbed the Creating
Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence
in Technology, Education, and Science (or
the America COMPETES Act), the bipartisan
bill passed unanimously in the Senate, and by an
overwhelming 367-57 margin in the House.
The legislation is based on the
recommendations of the National Academies report
Rising Above the Gathering Storm.
Commissioned by Congress in 2004, the report
examines ways to prevent further erosion of the
U.S. competitive edge in the face of technology
advances by developing countries, such as China
and India. One of the legislators requesting the
National Academies study, House Science and
Technology Committee Chair Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.),
pointed out that, “Other countries will always
have cheaper labor, so we must be the source of
the world’s most highly skilled workforce if we
want to stay competitive.” One of the bill’s key
Senate champions, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.)
agreed, saying, "No other legislation we will
pass during this two-year session of Congress
will do more to keep our brainpower advantage —
so we grow new American jobs here, instead of
shipping them overseas."
The America COMPETES Act
aims to keep the United States competitive by
authorizing $43.3 billion in federal spending in
FY 2008, 2009 and 2010 in science, engineering,
mathematics and technology research, and also
education programs. It authorizes a doubling of
the budgets for the National Science Foundation
(NSF), the Department of Energy Office of
Science, and the National Institutes for
Standards and Technology (NIST) over a
seven-year period. The bill also calls for
additional funding for scholarships for training
future math and science teachers, and expands
NSF’s Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program, and its
Math and Science Partnerships.
Dr. Russell Lefevre, IEEE-USA
President-Elect, has a particular affinity for
the Noyce Scholarship program. During his tenure
as an IEEE-USA Congressional Fellow serving as
scientific advisor to Senator Jay Rockefeller of
West Virginia, Dr. Lefevre was assigned to be
the Senate staff person responsible for the
passage of legislation leading to the initial
authorization of the Noyce Scholarship. “This
scholarship is prominent in the America COMPETES
legislation,” according to Lefevre. “It offers
college scholarships to students who major in a
technical subject and commit to teach in a K-12
environment. This provision will lead to a
significant increase in the number of qualified
teachers in the K-12 environment.”
In addition, this legislation
will help fund a Technology Innovation Program
at the Department of Commerce to replace the
Advanced Technology Program. It also doubles
funding for the Department of Commerce’s
Manufacturing Extension Partnership. Further,
the bill will create an Advanced Research
Project Agency at the Department of Energy (ARPA-E),
which is modeled after the Department of
Defense’s highly successful Defense Advanced
Research Project Agency. ARPA-E is designed to
implement the Gathering Storm report's
recommendations to create a new agency that
sponsors “creative, out-of-the-box,
transformational, generic energy research” to
reduce U.S. dependence on foreign sources of
energy.
In a signing ceremony with
members of Congress, President Bush signed the
bill into law, despite reservations about the
size and cost of the legislation, and the
creation of new programs. Funding levels for
physical sciences research in the America
COMPETES Act are in line with President
Bush’s American Competitiveness Initiative,
which called for doubling the federal support
for physical sciences research over ten years at
the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, as
well as at NSF and NIST laboratories.
IEEE-USA President John
Meredith, who heartily endorsed the legislation,
wrote in a letter to all members of Congress,
“[We believe] it is especially important that
the United States recommit its resources to
continue developing the knowledge and research
base that have become the underpinnings of the
country’s economic health and public well-being.
Support for science and technology R&D is a
bipartisan initiative that offers Congress and
the Administration an opportunity for
establishing common ground.”
Innovation legislation is one of
IEEE-USA’s top legislative priorities. Over the
two years that it took to pass the America
COMPETES Act into law, IEEE-USA was an active
member of a large, concerted science and
technology effort consisting of prominent
members of the technology industry, colleges,
and science and engineering professional
organizations that pushed for this legislation
on Capitol Hill. According to Dr. Lefevre, who
worked extensively on promoting the legislation
on Capitol Hill, “The signing of the America
COMPETES Act by President Bush represents
the culmination of the efforts of a great many
organizations and people to enhance the ability
of the United States to compete in areas of
science and technology. This legislation is
particularly important for the future in this
age of globalization.” Speaker of the House
Nancy Pelosi’s Policy Advisor, Melissa Shannon,
also praised the science and technology
community for its support of the innovation
agenda: “None of this would have happened
without the outside mobilization that occurred
on this important issue.”
However, the work is far from
over for R&D and STEM education advocates. The
big challenge in the months ahead is getting
funding for the programs the legislation
authorizes. The America COMPETES Act is
an “authorization” bill that only gives funding
committees guidance. Congress still needs to
pass spending bills to fund these programs at
the authorized levels. As IEEE-USA’s Research
and Development Policy Committee Chair, James
Bielefeld pointed out, “This legislation
represents years of study and the collective
wisdom of the best advisors on the question of
how to ensure our nation's competitive position
in the world in the future. However, much still
needs to be done to secure funding for the
programs authorized to improve math and science
education, and re-affirm a strong commitment to
research.”
Bill Williams is IEEE-USA's legislative
representative for technology policy activities.
Comments may
be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org.
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