[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 135 (Friday, December 8, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11588-S11591]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  NATIONAL COMPETITIVE INVESTMENT ACT

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I salute the Senators from Arkansas and 
Texas on their comments about the timber tax. That is not my subject 
today, although I intend to talk about competitiveness, jobs, but this 
is something we do need to pay attention to, not just for the jobs but 
for conservation in our country. That was mentioned eloquently by 
Senator Lincoln.
  I was in Waverly, TN, in Humphreys County the other day, and people 
are very upset because the timber company--I guess partly because of 
the Tax Code--has sold thousands of acres to an organization that 
doesn't care anything about the forest. That organization is cutting 
all the trees and going about their way. The people in that county, for 
a long time, have enjoyed having that forest properly managed--not just 
the jobs; they like the jobs, as well, but they like the trees.
  What we may be doing in an unanticipated way is having a tremendous 
negative impact upon the beauty and the forests of the United States by 
our tax policy even though we don't intend to do that. I am glad the 
Senators from Texas and Arkansas and others are interested in this 
issue. I would like to work with them in the new Congress to try to be 
of some help.
  I am here today to suggest, especially to my colleagues on the other 
side of the aisle who will be in the majority starting next month, that 
we, all of us together, have a remarkable opportunity to start the new 
year with a truly bipartisan piece of legislation critical to the 
future of the United States.
  Our new majority leader, who will be Senator Reid, has said he would 
like to foster a more bipartisan atmosphere as the Senate begins its 
work next year. So would I. So would most Members. The best bipartisan 
bill I know that is ready for action in the Senate is the bill that 
Senator Reid and Senator Frist are cosponsors of, the National 
Competitiveness Investment Act.
  At the end of September, our two leaders, Senator Frist and Senator 
Reid, the Republican and Democratic leaders, introduced this bipartisan 
competitiveness bill. It has the support of the chairmen and the 
ranking members of the Energy, Commerce, and HELP Committees and, in 
fact, was created by those three committees. It wasn't written by the 
Republicans and handed to the Democrats for approval. We wrote it 
together. We have worked on it for 18 months. The product is here

[[Page S11589]]

and ready for action. I had hoped we would be able to complete our work 
on this legislation before the end of the year. However, because of our 
current schedule, we can't.
  January is just around the corner, and it will be an opportune moment 
because the bill is so bipartisan there is no reason in the world that 
it can't be chalked up as an early victory for a new bipartisan Senate.
  Senator Bingaman has worked as hard on it as Senator Domenici. 
Senator Inouye has worked as hard on it as Senator Stevens. Senator 
Kennedy has worked as hard on it as Senator Enzi. So has Senator 
Mikulski, and so has Senator Hutchison. In other words, this is our 
product. It is ready for action.
  The prospects of passing a significant piece of legislation to 
protect America's brain power advantage in the world are also strong in 
the House of Representatives. My friend and colleague, Bart Gordon from 
Tennessee, is likely to become the new chairman of the House Science 
Committee. When Senator Domenici and Senator Bingaman and I and many 
others introduced the Augustine Report, the report of the National 
Academy of Sciences that detailed 20 steps we should take as a country 
in order to keep our brain power advantage, Congressman Bart Gordon in 
the House of Representatives put his legislation in at the same time. 
He is strongly committed to this agenda, has worked as hard as anyone 
in the Congress, and we have all been working together for some time.
  The incoming Speaker, Congresswoman Pelosi, laid out an agenda on 
this issue that drew heavily on the National Academies' ``Gathering 
Storm'' report, the Augustine Report I described. She even brought 
George Lucas to Washington to tout her agenda and told President Bush 
this is an area where the two parties can work together.
  President Bush himself has been a leader in this area, which is 
enormously helpful since the President is the Nation's agenda setter. 
In his State of the Union Address, President Bush talked importantly 
about our competitive position in the world. He has seen the need for 
it as a President. He saw it before that as a Governor. He followed up 
his action with money. He put his money where his mouth was and he put 
significant new dollars in the budget this year to fund his American 
Competitiveness Initiative.

  The President says: Let's do it. The House of Representatives says: 
Let's do it. We in the Senate have worked 18 months. At one point, we 
had 70 cosponsors of our competitiveness legislation: 35 Democrats, 35 
Republicans. A good way to welcome the new year would be to pass the 
bill. We ought to be able to do it before the February recess.
  This bill is about growing our economy. It is about creating the 
largest number of good new jobs we possibly can. It is about 
recognizing we are very fortunate as a country to have just 4 to 5 
percent of the people in the world, nearly 25, 26, 27 percent of all 
the money in the world, and that the principal factor in that has been 
our creative brain power advantage.
  But China and India and maybe other parts of the world have realized 
that their brains work just like ours--sometimes they are even smarter 
than ours--and they are working hard to make sure that they get their 
share of the wealth.
  This legislation is a progrowth investment that we must make if 
America is to set the pace in science and technology for the next 
generation.
  In August, a group of Senators met with a number of Chinese leaders 
in Beijing, including the President of China, Hu Jintao, and the 
Chairman of the National People's Congress in China, Wu Bangguo. Just 2 
months earlier, President Hu had gone to the Chinese Academy of 
Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering to outline a 15-year 
plan to make China a technology leader.
  In his speech, President Hu said China must ``promote a huge leap 
forward of science and technology; we shall put strengthening 
independent innovation capability at the core of economic structure 
adjustment.''
  We all know that when a Chinese leader talks about a great ``leap 
forward'' it is a pretty big deal in China. This was the center of 
their economic policy. In our conversations with the top two leaders in 
China, we found when we talked about North Korea or Iran or Iraq, the 
area in which they were most animated was this whole idea of innovation 
and technology.
  The Science section in the New York Times this Tuesday has a column 
entitled ``With An Improved Particle Accelerator China Sees Golden 
Opportunity For Collaborative Research.'' China knows if it wants a 
larger share of the world's wealth, it needs to have a brain power 
advantage. That should remind us of the importance of keeping ours.
  We have seen the same thing in India, in a trip by Senators to 
Bangalore last year, their version of our Silicon Valley, we saw that 
their research is cutting edge. They are creating new jobs. They 
understand how to improve the standard of living in the people of that 
great country.
  The challenge facing America is about brain power and jobs. We are 
not about to fall over the cliff. Actually, in the last 10 years our 
share of the world's wealth has grown, according to the International 
Monetary Fund. Ten years ago we had 25 percent of all the gross 
domestic product in the world. Last year it was 28 percent. Yet we know 
we need to keep on our toes to keep our jobs.
  Most of this good fortune comes from that brain power advantage an 
educated workforce and technological innovation. We have the finest 
system of colleges and universities. That system attracts 500,000 
foreign students today. Many of them are the brightest young people in 
the world. They are here creating good new jobs that improves our 
standard of living.
  No country has the national research laboratories we have. We have 
won the most Nobel Prizes in science. We have registered the most 
patents. Such innovation has been responsible for as much as half of 
the Nation's growth in productivity--in plain English, the reason we 
have such a disproportionate share of the world's best paying jobs.
  Yet we see what is happening--not just in China and India, but also 
in Finland, Singapore, Ireland, and more. They understand this, too, 
and are working hard to catch up, get ahead, and get their share.
  That is why last year Senator Bingaman and I, with Senator Domenici's 
encouragement, walked down to the National Academy of Sciences not far 
from here and asked: What are the top 10 actions, in priority order, 
that Federal policymakers could take over the next decade to help the 
United States keep our advantage in science and technology? We figured 
Members of Congress probably weren't the right ones to make that list. 
So we asked the people who should know.
  They, in turn, assembled an all-star panel of business, government, 
and university leaders, headed by Norm Augustine, former chairman and 
CEO of Lockheed Martin. The group included three Nobel Prize winners. 
It happened to include the President of Texas A&M who is now about to 
be the Secretary of Defense. We asked for 10 recommendations. They gave 
us 20, in priority order.
  Then a bipartisan group of Senators, led by Senators Bingaman and 
Domenici, introduced what we call the Protecting America's Competitive 
Edge Act, or PACE, to implement those recommendations.
  This included increasing Federal funding for basic research in the 
physical sciences by 10 percent a year for 10 years; doubling our 
investment in basic research as we recently did for medical research; 
providing 25,000 undergraduate scholarships and 5,000 graduate 
fellowships for future scientists; allowing foreign students who come 
here to earn a Ph.D. in the sciences to stay 1 year after graduation, 
and, if they find employment, to become automatically eligible for a 
green card; recruiting 10,000 new science and math teachers with 4-year 
scholarships; training 50,000 current teachers in summer institutes at 
national labs and universities; creating a new coordinating office to 
manage a centralized research infrastructure fund of at least $500 
million per year; giving American companies a bigger research and 
development tax credit so they will keep more good jobs here instead of 
moving them overseas.
  As I mentioned earlier, our bill, the PACE bill, attracted 70 
cosponsors: 35

[[Page S11590]]

Republicans, 35 Democrats. There was no other piece of legislation 
quite so popular that was that important in this session of Congress. 
We made a lot of progress since we introduced that legislation.
  I mention the President's State of the Union Address and the $5.9 
billion in his budget for fiscal year 2007 for his American 
Competitiveness Initiative. In March, the Energy and Natural Resources 
Committee reported a bill with eight provisions related to energy 
research, as well as math and science education for students and 
teachers in association with the national labs. In May, the Commerce 
Committee reported a bill that included ideas not just from the 
Augustine Report but also from the excellent Council on Competitiveness 
and from the President's own proposals. Then the immigration bill that 
passed the Senate in May included three provisions to attract the 
brightest minds in our country. They drew from the Augustine Report. 
Then the Defense authorization bill that passed the Senate in June 
included a provision related to support for early career researchers 
funded by the Pentagon. The so-called tax extender bill, which has been 
held up, includes the research and development tax credit that was the 
cornerstone of both the Augustine Report and the President's 
initiative. It appears likely to pass before the end of this week.

  Then, at the end of September, just before the Congress left town for 
the election, a bipartisan group of 14 Senators, led by Senator Frist 
and Senator Reid, our Republican and Democratic leaders, introduced the 
National Competitiveness Investment Act, a bill that will help America 
keep its brainpower advantage so we can succeed in a more competitive 
global economy.
  The bill includes provisions from the bills that passed the Energy 
and Commerce Committees and adds an important education component that 
Senator Enzi and Senator Kennedy took the lead on. It focuses on the 
areas that are important to maintaining and improving U.S. innovation 
in the 21st century. One, it increases research investment; two, it 
strengthens educational opportunities in science, technology 
engineering, and mathematics from elementary through graduate school.
  Several sections in the bill are derived from proposals in the PACE 
Act, which I introduced earlier this year with Senators Domenici, 
Bingaman, and Mikulski. This is a critical effort. We face what has 
been called a new ``flat'' world where more and more countries can 
compete with us, and we must rise to the challenge.
  That is why this bill would double funding for the National Science 
Foundation from approximately $5.6 billion in fiscal year 2006 to $11.2 
billion in 2011. It sets the Department of Energy's Office of Science 
on a track to double its funding over 10 years, increasing from $3.6 
billion in fiscal year 2006 to over $5.2 billion in fiscal year 2011.
  It would strengthen the skills of thousands of math and science 
teachers by establishing training and education programs at summer 
institutes hosted at the national laboratories and by increasing 
support for the Teacher Institutes for the 21st Century program at the 
National Science Foundation.
  It would expand the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program at the 
National Science Foundation to recruit and train individuals to become 
math and science teachers.
  It would assist States in establishing or expanding statewide 
specialty schools in math and science that students from across the 
States would be eligible to attend. Tennessee wants to do that, as they 
already do in North Carolina and in other States.
  It would expand advanced placement and international baccalaureate 
programs by increasing the number of teachers who are prepared to teach 
these math, science, and foreign language programs. This would allow 
thousands of new students, who are bright enough but may come from 
families with low incomes, to take these outstanding college prep 
classes.
  The Frist-Reid bill would provide grants to universities to establish 
programs modeled on the successful UTeach program at the University of 
Texas--which the current Presiding Officer knows a great deal about--
where students getting a bachelor's degree in math or science can 
concurrently earn teaching credentials and become the new generation of 
math and science teachers.
  And finally, it creates partnerships between national laboratories 
and local high-need schools to establish centers of excellence in math 
and science education.
  The bill authorizes $20.3 billion in new spending over 5 years. This 
is a significant savings over what was originally reported by the 
committee and what was originally included in the PACE bill.
  About $4.6 billion over 5 years in authorized funding has been cut 
from competitiveness bills passed by the Energy and Commerce 
Committees. Our friends in the White House should appreciate that, and 
the taxpayers will as well.
  The bill avoided duplicative undergraduate scholarship programs that 
were proposed in earlier legislation. That was a priority of many 
Members of the House of Representatives. It reduced the cost of a 
number of other proposed and existing programs.
  In the end, this is a small price to pay to secure our competitive 
edge. I would emphasize, this is a pro-growth investment. This creates 
jobs. This puts money in our pockets. That is what we are talking about 
when we are talking about keeping our brainpower advantage.
  The potential for what this legislation could do for our country was 
illustrated in the community of Oak Ridge, TN, just this week. Oak 
Ridge is the home of one of the Department of Energy's national 
laboratories--the most important energy laboratory in the world, as a 
matter of fact.
  Three students from Oak Ridge High School--Scott Molony, Steven 
Arcangeli, and Scott Horton this Monday won the team prize in the 
National Siemens Competition, which recognizes and rewards students 
willing to challenge themselves through scientific research. This is 
not a small honor. The winners will share a $100,000 scholarship as 
encouragement to continue in math and science careers in the future. 
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings was on hand to present the 
award.
  The students used supercomputers to analyze tens of thousands of 
genes so they could figure out how to engineer biofuel production by 
micro-organisms.
  Because of the hard work and ingenuity of these three students, their 
project may one day provide a tool that could enable scientists to 
genetically engineer bacteria that would cost-effectively turn plant 
matter into bioethanol used to fuel automobiles. Their project has 
contributed to a growing body of research on creating micro-organisms 
that can produce alternative fuels. In fact, the Oak Ridge National 
Laboratory received a major grant to continue the research that this 
student project began.
  Part of the reason these three students succeeded is they were able 
to connect with the work and expertise at the Oak Ridge National 
Laboratory. Their lead adviser, Dr. Nagiza F. Samatova, is a senior 
research scientist in the Computational Biology Institute, Computer 
Science and Mathematics Division, at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
  The National Competitiveness Investment Act will give more young 
Americans across our country the opportunity these bright students have 
had. The bill provides for student internships and summer programs at 
national laboratories such as Oak Ridge across this country. The bill 
would allow more scientists such as Dr. Samatova to spend more of their 
time working with such bright students.
  The Senate should act quickly, in January, on the National 
Competitiveness Investment Act. It should be a Reid-McConnell piece of 
legislation. It should have the support of every Member of the Senate. 
It would, I hope, be passed before the February recess and sent to the 
House of Representatives, where I know Congressman Gordon and Speaker 
Pelosi and Republicans and Democrats who care about this as much as we 
do will be coming up with their own version of competitiveness 
legislation.
  This legislation would invest in basic scientific research and help 
educate the next generation of scientists. It would help us keep pace 
with other nations that are moving swiftly to overtake our scientific 
leadership. More

[[Page S11591]]

young people would have the opportunities these three students at Oak 
Ridge High School have had. There is broad bipartisan support.
  I hope the new majority leader will make this one of his first 
initiatives in the Senate next year, just as he made it an important 
initiative toward the end of this session.
  If America is to continue to be the global economic leader, we cannot 
afford to let this wait.
  Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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