[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 155 (Tuesday, December 6, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2443-E2444]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   INTRODUCTION OF H.R. 4434, ``10,000 TEACHERS, 10 MILLION MINDS'' 
   SCIENCE AND MATH SCHOLARSHIP ACT AND H.R. 4435, ADVANCED RESEARCH 
                      PROJECTS AGENCY--ENERGY ACT

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. BART GORDON

                              of tennessee

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, December 6, 2005

  Mr. GORDON. Mr. Speaker, today I am introducing two pieces of 
legislation: H.R. 4434, the ``10,000 Teachers, 10 Million Minds'' 
Science and Math Scholarship Act and H.R. 4435, the Advanced Research 
Projects Agency-Energy, ARPA-E, Act. These two bills authorize a set of 
recommendations from a committee of the National Academy of Sciences 
chaired by Mr. Norman Augustine. The recommendations of the committee's 
report, Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing 
America for a Brighter Economic Future, reflect the consensus forged 
among nationally-recognized industry, academic and government experts.
  The Augustine Committee's highest priority is to improve K-12 math 
and science education by enhancing the skills and qualifications of 
math and science teachers. The ``10,000 Teachers, 10 Million Minds'' 
Act establishes a National Science Foundation, NSF, program to award 
scholarships to science, math, and engineering students if they obtain 
their teaching certification and commit to becoming math and science 
teachers upon completing their degrees. The bill also authorizes NSF to 
establish a master's degree program for in-service science and math 
teachers and establish training programs for preparing science and math 
teachers to teach Advanced Placement, AP, and International 
Baccalaureate, IB, courses in science and math. In addition, 
legislation also authorizes summer teacher training institutes at NSF 
and the Department of Energy.
  The Augustine Committee stressed the need to ``sustain and strengthen 
the nation's traditional commitment to the long-term basic research 
that has the potential to be transformational to maintain the flow of 
new ideas that fuel the economy, provide security, and enhance the 
quality of life.'' One specific action recommended by the Augustine 
Committee is to create in the Department of Energy, DOE, an 
organization like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA, 
at the Department of Defense. My second piece of legislation, the 
Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, ARPA-E, Act implements this 
key recommendation. It establishes within the DOE a new agency modeled 
after DoD's successful DARPA program. By supporting high-risk, 
potentially high-payoff research, ARPA-E will turn cutting-edge science 
and engineering into technologies for energy and environmental 
application with the goal of reducing the Nation's reliance of foreign 
energy sources by 20 percent during the next 10 years.
  These two bills are a response to a serious challenge to our Nation's 
future economic prosperity. From the Augustine report, ``This Nation 
must prepare with great urgency to preserve its strategic and economic 
security. Because other Nation's have, and probably will continue to 
have, the competitive advantage of a low-wage structure, the United 
States must compete by optimizing its knowledge-based resources, 
particularly in science and technology, and by sustaining the most 
fertile environment for new and revitalized industries and the well-
paying jobs they bring. We have already seen that capital, factories, 
and laboratories readily move wherever they are thought to have the 
greatest return.'' I fully acknowledge that these two bills together 
would require a sizable amount of funds to implement fully. Given the 
stakes, I believe we must find a way to make this investment in our 
Nation's future. The authorization levels are based upon the National 
Academy of Sciences estimates of the funding levels required to 
implement the recommendations in its report.

  The Augustine Report correctly identifies the challenges we face as a 
nation and has developed a series of specific recommendations to 
address these challenges. Today's Washington Post, includes the op-ed 
Learning to Lose? Our Education System Isn't Ready for a World of 
Competition by Mr. Norman Augustine which highlights the urgency of 
taking immediate actions and the consequences if we don't. I have 
included Mr. Augustine's op-ed in this statement.
  My intent in introducing these two bills is to issue a call for 
action by the Congress and the administration. The conclusions and 
recommendations in this report are not new. The problem is that neither 
the administration nor Congress has made any real efforts to act. I 
hope the introduction of these two bills will begin a substantive 
discussion on the commitment and resources required to ensure our 
Nation's future economic competitiveness and that our children have 
access to well-paid, challenging jobs.
  I am committed to working with the private-sector, Members of 
Congress and the administration in turning this legislation into funded 
programs.

                [From the Washington Post, Dec. 6, 2005]

   Learning to Lose? Our Education System Isn't Ready for a World of 
                              Competition

                        (By Norman R. Augustine)

       In the five decades since I began working in the aerospace 
     industry, I have never seen American business and academic 
     leaders as concerned about this nation's future prosperity as 
     they are today.
       On the surface, these concerns may seem unwarranted. Two 
     million jobs were created in the United States in the past 
     year. Citizens of other nations continue to invest their 
     savings in this country at a remarkable rate. Our nation 
     still has the strongest scientific and technological 
     enterprise--and the best research universities--in the world.
       But deeper trends in this country and abroad are signs of a 
     gathering storm. After the Cold War, nearly 3 billion 
     potential new capitalists entered the job market. A 
     substantial portion of our workforce now finds itself in 
     direct competition for jobs with highly motivated and often 
     well-educated people from around the world. Workers in 
     virtually every economic sector now face competitors who live 
     just a mouse click away in Ireland, Finland, India, China, 
     Australia and dozens of other nations.
       Soon the only jobs that will not be open to worldwide 
     competition are those that require near physical contact 
     between the parties to a transaction. Visitors to an office 
     not far from the White House are greeted by a receptionist on 
     a flat-screen display that controls access to the building 
     and arranges contacts; she is in Pakistan. U.S. companies 
     each morning receive software that was written in India 
     overnight in time to be tested in the United States and 
     returned to India for further refinement that same evening. 
     Drawings for American architectural firms are produced in 
     Brazil. Call-center employees in India are being taught to 
     speak with a Midwestern accent.
       This movement of U.S. jobs to other countries has few 
     natural limits. Manufacturing jobs were the first to go, but 
     jobs developing software and conducting various design 
     activities soon followed. Administrative and support jobs are 
     starting to move overseas, and even ``high-end'' jobs such as 
     professional services, research and management are 
     threatened.
       Other nations will continue to have the advantage of lower 
     wages, so the United States

[[Page E2444]]

     must compete on the basis of its strengths. Throughout the 
     20th century, one of these strengths was our knowledge-based 
     resources--particularly science and technology. But the 
     scientific and technological foundations of our economic 
     leadership are eroding at a time when many other nations are 
     building their innovative capacity.
       This nation's trade balance in high-technology goods swung 
     from a positive flow of $33 billion in 1990 to a negative 
     flow of $24 billion in 2003. Two years from now, for the 
     first time ever, the most capable high-energy particle 
     accelerator in the world will be outside the United States. 
     Low-wage employers in this country, such as McDonald's and 
     Wal-Mart, create many more jobs than do high-wage employers. 
     In 2001 U.S. industry spent more on tort litigation and 
     related costs than on research and development.
       Today, high-technology firms have to be on the leading edge 
     of scientific and technological progress to survive. Intel 
     Corp. Chairman Craig Barrett has said that 90 percent of the 
     products his company delivers on the final day of each year 
     did not exist on the first day of the same year. To succeed 
     in that kind of marketplace, U.S. firms need employees who 
     are flexible, knowledgeable, and scientifically and 
     mathematically literate.
       But the U.S. educational system is failing in precisely 
     those areas that underpin our competitiveness: science, 
     engineering and mathematics. In a recent international test 
     involving mathematical understanding, U.S. students finished 
     27th among the participating nations. In China and Japan, 59 
     percent and 66 percent, respectively, of undergraduates 
     receive their degrees in science and engineering, compared 
     with 32 percent in the United States.
       I've recently had an opportunity to review these trends as 
     chairman of a 20-member committee created by the National 
     Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and 
     the Institute of Medicine. Congress asked the committee to 
     examine the threats to America's future prosperity. The panel 
     was a diverse group that included university presidents, 
     Nobel laureates, heads of companies and former government 
     officials. We agreed unanimously that the United States faces 
     a serious and intensifying economic challenge from abroad--
     and that we appear to be on a losing path.
       Our committee emphasized that the United States needs to 
     focus on fundamentals. We recommended the recruitment of 
     10,000 new science and math teachers each year through the 
     awarding of competitive scholarships. The skills of a 
     quarter-million current teachers should be improved through 
     enhanced training and education. We recommended establishing 
     25,000 competitive science, mathematics, engineering and 
     technology undergraduate scholarships and 5,000 graduate 
     fellowships.
       To boost scientific and technological innovation, we 
     recommended that the U.S. government increase research 
     funding by 10 percent annually over the next several years, 
     with primary attention devoted to the physical sciences, 
     engineering, mathematics and information sciences. We urged 
     the federal government to create an Advanced Research 
     Projects Agency--Energy (ARPA-E), modeled after the Defense 
     Advanced Research Projects Agency, which would support out-
     of-the-box, transformative research aimed at ending our 
     crippling dependence on foreign sources of energy. We asked 
     the government to provide permanent tax incentives for U.S.-
     based innovation.
       The United States wants other nations to do well 
     economically. Broadly based prosperity can make the world 
     more stable and safer for all. What worries business leaders 
     is that the United States could easily fall behind as the 
     rest of the world prospers.

                          ____________________