[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 65 (Monday, April 23, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4825-S4837]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          AMERICA COMPETES ACT

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the 
Senate will resume consideration of S. 761, which the clerk will 
report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (S. 761) to invest in innovation and education to 
     improve the competitiveness of the United States in the 
     global economy.


                           Amendment No. 904

  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk on 
behalf of myself and Senator Alexander.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from New Mexico [Mr. Bingaman], for himself and 
     Mr. Alexander, proposes an amendment numbered 904.

  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading 
of the amendment be dispensed with.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

      (Purpose: To strike the NIST working capital fund provision)

       On page 44, beginning with line 16 strike through line 2 on 
     page 45.
       On page 45, line 3, strike ``(d)'' and insert ``(c)''.
       On page 47, line 8, strike ``(e)'' and insert ``(d)''.
       On page 47, line 21, strike ``(f)'' and insert ``(e)''.

  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, at this point I will yield the floor. I 
know my colleague from Tennessee wishes to speak about a variety of 
issues, and then there is another amendment which we also will be 
sending to the desk for Senator Inouye, who will be here fairly 
shortly, related to provisions that have come from the Commerce 
Committee.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, we have Senator Inouye here, who has 
played a major role in the development of this legislation, and I 
believe we will have a little later Senator Stevens, who is right 
behind me now, and Senator Domenici after that. So I am going to let 
the two distinguished chairs of the Commerce Committee speak.
  Mr. INOUYE. Mr. President, technological innovation is the lifeblood 
of U.S. economic growth and well-being. To achieve growth and success, 
the United States must continue to support the two critical components 
necessary during the early stages of the innovation ecosystem: 
education and basic research.
  A pipeline of well-educated secondary school students feeds into the 
college ranks, which in turn feeds into the graduate schools. Graduate 
students engage in challenging and cutting edge

[[Page S4826]]

research led by principal investigators that often are funded by 
Federal grants. Many times the students and scientists will make a 
breakthrough discovery of innovation and attempt to commercialize it. 
If successful, they will have created the next great generation, great 
American company that sells the next great product, employing thousands 
of people and driving this economy's economic growth further.
  The United States has the luxury of claiming many of the world's top 
scientific minds. These leading scientists either emigrate to the 
United States because we provide some of the best facilities and 
resources or they are home grown, having excelled through the U.S. 
educational system to reach the top echelons of their respective 
disciplines. However, this premier standing we have enjoyed in the past 
is in serious jeopardy. As a result, many believe our economic 
prosperity is at risk.
  Today the Senate has a unique opportunity to respond to the Nation's 
defining economic challenge in the 21st century, and that is how to 
remain strong and competitive in the face of the emerging challenges 
from India, China, and the rest of the world. We have examined the 
expert reports and today the Senate is considering S. 761, the America 
COMPETES Act.
  S. 761 is a bipartisan product of several committees including: the 
Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee; the Energy Committee; 
and the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee. As chairman of 
the Commerce Committee, which was instrumental in developing Divisions 
A and D of the bill, I encourage my colleagues to support S. 761.
  Many point out that the United States' declining scientific prowess 
is palpable. They cite, for example, the country's dismal proficiency 
scores: less than one-third of U.S. fourth-graders performed at or 
above a level deemed ``proficient'' and about one-fifth of eighth-
graders lacked the competency to perform basic math computations. U.S. 
15-year-olds ranked 22 out of 28 Organization for Economic Co-Operation 
Development, OECD, countries tested in mathematics. This is a troubling 
statistic. In math and science education our country is losing ground 
to the likes of Germany, China, and Japan. In the United States, only 
32 percent graduate with college degrees in science and engineering, 
while 36 percent of German undergraduates receive degrees in science 
and engineering. In China it is 59 percent, and in Japan, 66 percent of 
undergraduates receive science and engineering degrees.
  In 2004, China graduated over 600,000 engineers; India, 350,000; and 
the United States, less than 70,000. These statistics are alarming and 
will have dire consequences as the U.S. talent pipeline begins to dry 
up. To respond, the America COMPETES Act emphasizes science, education, 
and technology as the keystones of a comprehensive American 
competitiveness agenda.
  We considered programs in several agencies. Within the Department of 
Commerce, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIST, is 
charged with promoting U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness 
by advancing measurement science, standards, and technology. The bill 
would continue NIST on a 10-year doubling path and promote high-risk, 
high-reward research within the agency.
  Also within the Department of Commerce. the National Oceanic and 
Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, conducts significant basic 
atmospheric and oceanographic research, including climate change 
research. Its management decisions and operational programs rely on a 
strong scientific and technical underpinning. Some have argued that the 
ocean truly is the last frontier on Earth, and ocean research and 
technology may have broad impacts on improving health and understanding 
our environment. Toward this end, our committee included modest 
provisions on NOAA research and education, which we hope to strengthen 
during the course of debate on S. 761.
  The bill also includes the National Aeronautics and Space 
Administration in the administration's competitiveness agenda. Like the 
oceans, space captivates the minds of our young people and can help 
attract them into a lifelong study of science.
  America COMPETES continues the Senate's commitment to doubling the 
funding of the National Science Foundation. The Foundation is the 
Nation's premier investment in undirected, basic science. The bulk of 
its funding is distributed as competitive grants. The bill includes 
provisions to ensure all States, including small States like Hawaii, 
can share in important research funding. After all, good ideas know no 
boundaries. In order to be strong, we will need the ideas and 
leadership of researchers and entrepreneurs in every corner of the 
Nation.
  I was pleased to work with my colleagues on the HELP Committee to 
develop the NSF education provisions. I am proud to have included 
programs to encourage women to have careers in science, technology, 
mathematics, and engineering.
  In recent years, we have passed legislation affecting interagency 
research in nanotechnology, information technology, computer security, 
climate change, oceans and human health, earthquake research, wind 
research, and aeronautics research. The America COMPETES Act provides 
for a Science Summit to encourage interactivity and knowledge sharing 
between science, scientists, and industry.
  I would like to end by noting that technology and innovation pervade 
many policy problems that the Commerce Committee and the Congress face. 
Changes in telecommunications policy are being driven by innovation. In 
particular, low broadband penetration is cited as a factor in the loss 
of competitiveness in many U.S. regions. Also, our transportation 
infrastructure would benefit from increased investment and deployment 
of new technologies, such as investment in technologies that can 
increase energy independence.
  To succeed in a whole host of arenas, we need scientific discoveries 
and a technologically savvy workforce. If enacted, the America COMPETES 
Act can provide the first step for this country to get back into the 
global race. Many countries are looking to overtake us to claim 
technological and economic superiority. While we continue to lead, we 
cannot take this lead for granted. I fully support what we are trying 
to accomplish with the America COMPETES Act and I look forward to 
working with my colleagues towards its final passage.
  Mr. President, working with Senators Stevens, Hutchison, other 
committee members, and members of other committees, we have developed a 
small package of amendments to the Commerce Committee sections of the 
bill. We took an expansive view of American competitiveness and wanted 
to ensure that the research agencies in our Government and jurisdiction 
could fully participate in interagency programs to address innovation 
and competitiveness.
  This amendment is just the provisions regarding the National Oceanic 
and Atmospheric Administration, to align them with those addressing the 
National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I hope we can agree to 
even stronger provisions to promote ocean education. The oceans, like 
outer space, hold such a lure for young people and can draw them into a 
lifelong study in key fields of science, technology, engineering, and 
mathematics. These students may someday invent products that keep our 
Nation economically competitive.
  The amendment also strikes a provision related to the sale of 
standard reference materials by the National Institute of Standards and 
Technology that could have resulted in a million dollars of direct 
spending. With this amendment, the bill contains no direct spending.
  The amendment adjusts the authorization levels for the National 
Science Foundation, so that the increase will not fluctuate but will be 
a consistent 15 percent annually.
  As amended, the fiscal year 2008 level for NSF is $300 million over 
the President's requested level, reflecting the $302 million in new 
education programs authorized in the bill. In addition, the amendment 
changes the authorized funding level for NSF's education and human 
resources programs to $1.05 billion in fiscal year 2008, and for the 
experimental program for competitive research, to $125 million in 
fiscal year 2008. These programs would grow annually from fiscal year 
2009 to fiscal year 2011 at the same rate that NSF overall funding 
grows.

[[Page S4827]]

  Finally, there are a series of technical changes to the bill that, 
first, add mathematics and engineering and technology in the Science 
Summit in section 1101; second, change the goal for increasing 
participation in two NSF fellowship and traineeship programs to a 4-
year goal, matching the pendency of the authorizations in the bill; and 
third, on behalf of Senator Hutchison, we make a clarifying change to 
section 4006 regarding NSF priorities.
  Mr. President, I appreciate all of my colleagues' help in improving 
the Commerce Committee section and look forward to adopting this modest 
agreement and amendment so that we can begin to debate S. 761 in 
earnest.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Tennessee is 
recognized.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, before the Senator from Alaska speaks 
and while the Senator from Hawaii will be here for a while longer, I 
wanted to call attention to their leadership on this bill and their 
sense of urgency about the importance of it in the Commerce Committee.
  I wanted to relate specifically an event a year ago, in August, in 
Beijing, China, which I related on the floor when the bill was 
introduced. I think it puts into perspective why so many Senators on 
both sides of the aisle have worked on that, why the bill is being 
introduced by both the Democratic and Republican leaders, and why it 
came directly to the floor and is ready for action.
  Senator Stevens and Senator Inouye took a group of Senators to China. 
They were especially well received--this Congressional Medal of Honor 
winner and this Flying Tiger pilot who flew the first cargo plane into 
Beijing toward the end of World War II. As a result, we spent an hour 
with President Hu and another hour with the No. 2 man, Vice Premier Wu. 
We talked about all of the things one would expect in that discussion: 
North Korea, Iran, and Iraq. But the subject, I recall, about which 
both of those leaders of China were most animated was the subject we 
are discussing on the floor today: How is China going to increase its 
brainpower advantage so it can create more jobs?
  President Hu told us that he had done what we are doing today but in 
the Chinese way. He had, a month earlier, gone to the Great Hall of the 
People in China and assembled their national academy of science and 
engineering of China and established a 15-year goal for innovation and 
declared they would spend a certain amount in research and investment. 
That was the way they were going to raise their standard of living to 
compete with the United States. We see that with the recruitment of 
Chinese-born scholars who were educated in the United States and are 
going back to China to create even better universities there. We saw, 
under the sponsorship of these two Senators, that the two top leaders 
of that country understand very well America's brainpower advantage, 
which has been the greatest source of this remarkably high standard of 
living we have, and the fact that we produce 30 percent of all of the 
money in the world for just 5 percent of the people. I wanted to 
acknowledge their leadership and put into perspective that visit just 
last year in China.
  Mr. INOUYE. Mr. President, I agree wholeheartedly with my friend. We 
should not take the Chinese goal lightly. They mean business.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Alaska is 
recognized.
  Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I strongly support S. 761, which Senator 
Inouye just discussed. This is the America COMPETES Act. Fifty-six 
Senators, including members of both parties' leadership and several 
committee chairmen, are cosponsors of this important legislation.
  When it was first brought to my attention last year, I tried to see 
if we could organize a joint committee of the Congress to act on this 
subject because I believe it is extremely important. Having read the 
Augustine report, I knew we had to move as quickly as possible. That 
was not possible last year, but I believe it is this year.
  Many reports have revealed the serious competitive challenges we 
face. In 2003, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and 
Development, OECD, compared 15-year-old students living in 40 
industrialized nations. For America, the results were very dire. Our 
students placed 16th in reading, 23rd in science, and 29th in math.
  Carl Sagan said it best when he wrote this:

       We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and 
     technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about 
     science and technology.

  Another report I mentioned before, the Augustine report, entitled 
``Rising Above the Gathering Storm,'' contains the findings of the 
Commission chaired by Norman Augustine, the retired chairman and CEO of 
Lockheed Martin. This study also paints an alarming picture of 
America's ability to compete in the 21st century.
  Economists informed Commission members that ``about half of the U.S. 
economic growth since World War II has been the result of technological 
innovation.'' But Commission members also discovered that our young 
people now spend more time watching television than they do in school 
or studying for school. They determined that hiring one engineer in 
America now carries the same cost as hiring eight engineers in India. 
They reported that 38 percent of the scientists and engineers with 
doctorates in our country were born abroad. If those young men and 
women choose to live and work in other countries, America will face a 
severe shortage of talented workers.
  If we are to maintain our competitive edge, we must improve the 
education our students receive in science, technology, engineering, and 
mathematics. We must equip our teachers with the tools and resources 
they need, and we must encourage those who study in America to stay in 
America.
  This legislation we are now considering is a tremendous step forward 
in these efforts. S. 761 seeks to ensure our Nation remains the global 
leader in innovation. It would increase Federal investment in basic 
research, improve educational opportunities for young students to 
become excited about these fields, and develop an innovation 
infrastructure appropriate for the 21st century.
  The America COMPETES Act is the result of bipartisan cooperation 
between three committees: Commerce, Energy, and HELP. Since last year, 
these committees have worked together to address key concerns and 
solutions identified by the Council on Competitiveness and the National 
Academies.
  A number of Senators also deserve recognition for their leadership on 
this matter: Senators Bingaman, Alexander, Ensign, Hutchison, Domenici, 
Inouye, Kennedy, Lieberman, Mikulski, and Nelson. They all deserve our 
deepest gratitude, and I am sure there are others. Without their hard 
work and dedication, our bill would not have reached the Senate floor.
  In closing, let me say that educating the next generation of American 
innovators must be a priority for this Congress. Our Nation is at the 
crossroads, and the decisions we make today will affect us for decades 
to come. This bill, when enacted, will reaffirm our commitment to 
America's economic future. I urge each of our colleagues to support its 
swift passage.
  I thank the Chair.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I wish to say to the Senator from 
Alaska that if he, who last year was President pro tempore of the 
Senate, and Senator Inouye, one of our leading Senators on the 
Democratic side, had not from the beginning placed such a priority on 
this legislation, it could never have made its way through the 
committees and reached this point. So I salute them for their 
willingness to look into our country's future and see the importance of 
this issue.
  Mr. President, if the Senator from Hawaii doesn't have further 
comments at the moment, I might use the time for the next few moments 
to talk about a couple of items. One is how we got here with this 
legislation and, two, more about what it does.
  First, let me say on behalf of the leadership, Senators Reid, 
McConnell, Bingaman, Inouye, and others, we hope that Senators will 
bring their amendments today, or early. Let us see them so that we can 
talk about them and, if necessary, vote on them.
  The Democratic leader and the Republican leader have created an 
environment in which we can deal with this bill in the way the Senate 
ought to be

[[Page S4828]]

dealing with a piece of legislation that is at least on a subject as 
important as any other subject that will be before us. In other words, 
the bill is on the floor. We are ready to receive amendments. We are 
ready to vote on amendments, if necessary. I am sure the Democratic 
leader, who will announce his schedule, would like to finish the bill 
by Wednesday sometime because we have other important legislation to 
consider this week. So I hope we make the most of today, tomorrow, and 
Wednesday.
  Just a word about how the Senate got here. I mentioned earlier that 
in China, President Hu could simply call a meeting in the Great Hall of 
the People and, with his national academies of science and engineering, 
declare that: This is where we are going for the next 15 years. In 
China, that works pretty well, and that is likely where they are going. 
They have very specific goals, for example, for the amount of gross 
domestic product they will be spending on research and development, 
what they will be doing with their universities, and how they hope to 
improve their schools.
  In the United States, we have to work in a little different way. The 
result we have here today with this legislation, which is 2,008 pages 
long--and I know that because I reread it over the weekend. It came in 
a different way.
  Senator Bingaman and I, with the encouragement and sponsorship of 
Senator Domenici, who was chairman of one of the affected committees 
here, literally asked the National Academy of Sciences this question a 
couple of years ago: What are the top 10 actions in priority order that 
Federal policymakers could take over the next 10 years to help the 
United States keep our advantage in science and technology?
  We figured that Members of Congress were not necessarily the best 
ones to make those recommendations. I am sure the Presiding Officer has 
some idea of some math or science program he thinks might be best or at 
least he has two or three friends who have an idea. I know the Senator 
from Hawaii has one. I have five or six myself. We thought perhaps we 
should ask the people who are supposed to know.
  We asked the National Academy of Sciences, the Academy of 
Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine exactly what should we in 
the Congress be doing. It is my view most ideas fail around here for 
the lack of an idea, so we asked them specifically for an idea.
  The academies took us seriously. They assembled an all-star panel of 
business, Government, and university leaders headed by Norman 
Augustine, as the Senator from Alaska said, the former chairman and CEO 
of Lockheed Martin, a member himself of the National Academy of 
Engineering. That panel included three Nobel Prize winners.
  Those very busy people, including university president Bob Gates, now 
Secretary of Defense, and the Nobel Prize winners, gave up their 
summer, and they took our question seriously. Exactly what does the 
United States need to do to keep our brain power advantage, is really 
the question. We asked for 10 and they gave us 20 recommendations.
  The recommendations are in this report, ``Rising Above the Gathering 
Storm,'' to which the two Senators have referred. To their credit, they 
put it in priority order. I will talk more in a minute about what the 
priorities are.
  They started with kindergarten through 12th grade, 10,000 teachers, 
10 million minds, K-12 science and math education: ``Sowing the Seeds 
through Science and Engineering Research,'' ``Best and Brightest in 
Science and Engineering Higher Education,'' ``Incentives for Innovation 
and the Investment Environment.'' They gave us 20 recommendations in 
priority order.
  That was not the only idea before the Senate at that time, nor were 
those of us in the Senate the only ones involved. Representatives 
Sherwood Boehlert and Mark Gordon of the House Committee on Science had 
joined us in asking this question. I know Representative Gordon, who is 
now chairman of the House Science Committee, moved forward quickly to 
introduce in the House of Representatives similar legislation.
  What did we do when we got these 20 recommendations? As I mentioned, 
they were not the only recommendations. Senator Bingaman and Senator 
Hutchison, for example, had been working for many years to increase the 
number of children, especially low-income children, who could take the 
advanced placement courses. Those are a ticket to college, and there 
are a lot of bright kids who don't have the money to pay for the tests 
or who go to schools where the teachers are not trained to teach the 
courses. They have been working on that for a long time. Senator Bond 
from Missouri and Senator Mikulski of Maryland have been speaking about 
this for a long time. Then there was an excellent piece of legislation 
by Senator Lieberman and Senator Ensign which had in it recommendations 
from the Council on Competitiveness. Many of those recommendations were 
then included in the Commerce Committee's hearings and deliberations.
  So the question is how to take all this information in the Senate 
where people have lots of different ideas and get it all together into 
one bill and get it passed. Senator Stevens said: Let's form a joint 
committee. That is a little harder to do than before. Senator Inouye 
once served on a joint committee--well, it was a special committee in 
the Watergate days, but there are not that many around here because we 
have our own committees.
  What happened was our senior Members of the Senate, such as Senator 
Stevens and Senator Inouye, Senator Enzi and Senator Kennedy, Senator 
Domenici and Senator Bingaman, just by the force of their own 
personalities worked together to create an environment with the help of 
a lot of staff members to say: Let's take all of these ideas and let's 
work in a genuinely bipartisan way.
  We then had a Republican Congress last year. Senator Domenici, who 
will be here a little later this afternoon, was chairman of the Energy 
Committee. He went to the White House to talk with the President about 
this issue. He invited me to go with him, but he didn't just invite me, 
he invited Senator Bingaman, his ranking Democrat, to go with him. So 
all the way we have worked together on this legislation.
  Then we sat down shortly after this report came out, which I suppose 
was in 2005 in the fall, and had a series of what we call homework 
sessions. We invited representatives from the National Science 
Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Department of 
Education, the President's science adviser, and a whole variety of 
other people within the administration who were already working on 
these subjects to get their advice about these ideas and other ideas as 
we formed legislation. That is the kind of input this legislation has 
had.
  Finally, Senator Domenici and Senator Bingaman introduced what we 
call the PACE Act, Protect America's Competitive Edge Act. 
Symbolically, it had 70 cosponsors in the Senate--34 Republicans and 35 
Democrats.
  So we have gotten to the beginning of 2006. I will say a little bit 
more in a moment about exactly what was in that legislation, but let me 
continue with the process because it is fairly remarkable and helped to 
produce this legislation which I found in rereading it over the weekend 
is remarkably coherent. It is in plain English. It is organized by 
sections. I could understand virtually every section. I have been 
reading it as we went along. Maybe this is a model for other complex 
legislation we have in the Senate.
  The President, in his State of the Union Address in 2006, and again 
this year, put the issue front and center with what he called his 
American competitiveness agenda. The President included $6 billion in 
his budget for just the first year. In March of last year, the Energy 
Committee reported eight provisions related to energy research and math 
and science education for students and teachers in association with the 
National Labs. So eight provisions of the Augustine report were 
reported out by the Energy Committee.

  Then in May the Commerce Committee reported a bill that included 
ideas from the Augustine report, as well as the President's Council on 
Competitiveness. We had it from two committees.
  Then the immigration bill passed the Senate. The immigration bill 
didn't finally become law, but it passed the Senate with pretty big 
numbers, and

[[Page S4829]]

included within it were three provisions that tackled some of the most 
archaic provisions in our immigration laws, those provisions which 
basically prevent our insourcing of brain power.
  We have more than 500,000 foreign students who come here every year 
to study. They include some of the brightest people in the world, and 
we make them swear before they come that they will go home when, in 
fact, we should want most of them to stay here and create jobs for us 
so we can keep our standard of living.
  So three provisions from the Augustine report were in that 
immigration bill that passed the Senate last year, and it is my hope 
that when the Senate takes up immigration legislation before Memorial 
Day, which the majority leader has said we are likely to do, that 
legislation will, again, have the provisions from the Augustine report 
and other recommendations that will make it easier to attract and keep 
in our country the brightest men and women from around the world. If 
they are going to create good jobs somewhere, let's create them in the 
United States for Americans to have.
  The Defense authorization bill included a provision related to 
support for early career researchers funded by the Pentagon. There are 
so many good applications from so many talented people in the United 
States for basic research or even applied research that the 
investigators, as they are called, are sometimes in their forties 
before they win their first grant. That is discouraging to many of the 
brightest young minds in the United States. These recommendations have 
sought to include changes, and the Defense authorization bill last year 
took a step in that direction.
  One of the major recommendations of both of the reports I just 
mentioned was making permanent the research and development tax credit 
so that our brightest manufacturing jobs can stay here rather than be 
created overseas.
  In the so-called tax extender last year, the tax credit was 
temporarily extended, and so that was dealt with last year. Last year, 
just before Senators went home for the elections in October, the two 
leaders, Senator Frist then the majority leader, and Senator Reid then 
the Democratic leader, introduced a package--it was numbered S. 3936--
that included the work of the Energy and Commerce Committees and added 
an education component to improve our children's knowledge of math, 
science, and critical foreign languages.
  That bipartisan product was the work of the chairman and ranking 
members of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee and the 
Commerce and Energy Committees.
  We tried to be good stewards of the public money as we went through 
this process. That working group last year trimmed $3 billion from what 
the committees passed in order to make it more affordable. We did our 
best to stay close to the President's budget number, although we 
slightly exceeded that number.
  This year, to bring us to where we are today, the majority leader, 
Senator Reid, and Senator McConnell, the Republican leader, took that 
bill, the one introduced last year by Senator Frist and Senator Reid, 
and reintroduced it by removing authorizations for 2007 since we have 
already finished work on 2007 and are looking ahead to 2008. That is 
the bill we are considering today, the America COMPETES Act.
  That is a long train ride. To those who may be outside the Senate, 
they may think that is unnecessarily complex. We didn't really need to 
know all that. I think it is important for the American people to know 
all that. It is especially important for Senators and their staffs to 
know all that because virtually every Member of the Senate has had 2 
years to get their say. I know on the Commerce Committee there have 
been long meetings of members of both sides. I know that is true with 
the staff meetings. Not all would write every provision of the bill the 
way it is, but that is the nature of work in the Senate. It is a very 
good piece of legislation. It may be improved on the Senate floor by 
amendment, but it has been a long and good process.
  Mr. INOUYE. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. ALEXANDER. I yield.
  Mr. INOUYE. Mr. President, I commend my colleague, Senator Alexander, 
for his broad and very intricate history of the bipartisanship. If all 
of us in this body followed this process on all major legislation, this 
would be a historic session, and I hope it is so. This will be one of 
the first I can look back to and say we tried and we succeeded. And I 
think we are going to succeed. I thank the Senator from Tennessee very 
much.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator. His example with 
Senator Stevens is a good example for all of us. I hope he is right. 
The American people know we all have our principles, and we have our 
politics. They know that. But I believe they also know there are some 
issues that are simply too big for one party to solve, whether it is 
Iraq, whether it is immigration, whether it is energy independence, 
whether it is affordable health care. And one of those issues is how do 
we keep our brain power advantage so we can keep our jobs from going 
overseas to India and China.
  It will take a comprehensive approach. We take for granted sometimes 
that we produce 30 percent of all the money in the world for 5 percent 
of the people. That is one of my favorite statistics. If I were a 
citizen of China or of India and I was looking at the United States and 
I saw that disproportionately our wealth comes from our brain power, I 
would be encouraged because many of the brightest people in the world 
are in China and in India, wonderful researchers, wonderful scientists. 
There is no reason in the world that they cannot use that great 
resource they have to improve their standard of living, and they are 
setting about to do it.
  If the Senator from Hawaii has no objection, I thought I might talk a 
little about what is in the bill, just to go over it.
  As I said, for those who like to read whole bills, it is 208 pages, 
but any contractor will tell you that it is cheaper to start from 
scratch in building a house sometimes than remodeling it. I think we 
may have found something here working together in a bipartisan way. In 
starting from scratch, we actually may have produced a better organized 
bill, more straightforward than trying to remodel a lot of existing 
laws. But here is what we sought to do.
  Based upon these recommendations, this legislation doubles funding 
for the National Science Foundation over 5 years. Now, this is the work 
of Senator Inouye and Senator Stevens and their committee. This is 
merely an authorization bill--it doesn't appropriate a penny, but it 
has to be within the budget. Senator Bingaman offered an amendment, 
which I joined in with during our budget discussion, and it created 
room in the budget, nearly $1 billion of room in the budget, for the 
first year appropriations of the America COMPETES Act. So these dollars 
are within the budget, and I will talk a little more about the dollars 
a little later.
  I might say one thing about the dollars. The dollars are an 
additional $16 billion in spending over the next 4 years. That is real 
money. But we might remember on what else we spend money. That is about 
2 months of the war in Iraq. We spend about $8 billion a month on the 
war in Iraq. We spent $237 billion on debt last year, $378 billion on 
Medicare, $545 on Social Security, and $100 billion or so on 
hurricanes. These are all very important priorities, but somehow we 
have to put gas in the engine, and the gas in the engine is our brain 
power advantage.
  We have to invest in research, education--K-12--in order to keep the 
advantage that creates the dollars that pay these bills for our most 
important programs. But we have worked hard. We have worked hard to 
have fiscal discipline. The $16 billion over the next 4 years that this 
bill would authorize to spend, and which is within the budget for this 
year, is a significant savings over the original legislation last year. 
More than $3 billion over the 4 years in authorized funding has been 
cut from last year's competitiveness bills passed by the Energy and 
Commerce Committees.
  We also worked hard to avoid duplicative undergraduate scholarship 
programs that were proposed in earlier legislation, and it reduced the 
cost of a number of other proposed and existing programs. For example, 
the Robert Noyse scholarship program of the National Science Foundation 
was very

[[Page S4830]]

similar to a recommendation of the Augustine report. So after 
discussions with the National Science Foundation in our homework 
sessions, we thought, well, why create a new duplicative program when 
we already have a good one. So we simply sought to expand it.
  With regard to the education and energy portions of the bill, the 
total cost closely tracks the President's proposed American Competitive 
Initiative. Remember, he put in $6 billion in his budget last year. The 
President has proposed over 10 years doubling research funding at the 
National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Standards and 
Technology, and the Department of Energy's Office of Science. The cost 
of the commerce portion of this legislation is a bit higher, but that 
is because Chairman Inouye and Cochairman Stevens agreed last year that 
they wanted to double the National Science Foundation's funding at a 
faster rate, of about 5 years rather than 10. So I would argue that 
this is progrowth legislation and a small price to pay for that growth 
in our standard of living.
  Mr. President, I would say to the Senator from Hawaii that any time 
he would like to interrupt my presentation, I hope he will.
  Some of the specific provisions are the doubling of funding for the 
National Science Foundation, I just mentioned, from $5.6 billion in the 
current year to $11.2 billion in 2011. Before I arrived, the Congress 
doubled funding for the National Institutes of Health with a great 
payoff, most people felt, in terms of our health and research for cures 
for diseases. But we did not do as good a job during that period of 
time on the physical sciences, which are also important to the health 
sciences. This, hopefully, will begin to change that.
  Second, setting the Department of Energy's Office of Science on track 
to double in funding over 10 years, and increasing from $3.6 billion in 
the current year to $5.2 billion in fiscal year 2011; establishing the 
innovation acceleration research program, which will direct Federal 
agencies funding research and science and technology to set as a goal 
dedicating approximately 8 percent of their research and development 
budgets toward high-risk frontier research. This was a recommendation 
of both of the major organizations, the Augustine committee and the 
Council on Competitiveness.
  What this means is that there are so many good proposals before the 
peer review and merit review groups that give out basic research grants 
that they obviously tend to be a little more conservative when 
presented with so many good ideas. The disadvantage of that is that it 
reduces the impulse to take a few risks, to roll the dice, or to try 
some idea that has less of a chance of succeeding but might be the next 
Google or the next hybrid or the next Internet or the next stealth 
invention. So this legislation encourages all through the America 
COMPETES Act in virtually every section that we fund, the idea of 
setting as a goal--not a mandate but as a goal--8 percent of the 
research and development budget toward this high-risk frontier 
research.
  Next, it authorizes bringing the National Institute of Standards and 
Technology up from $703 million next year to $937 million in fiscal 
year 2011. It would direct NASA to increase funding for basic research. 
It will authorize coordinating ocean and atmospheric research and 
education at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and 
other agencies to promote U.S. leadership in these important fields. 
This has been a major priority of Senator Inouye, as well as others.
  The Augustine committee, at our request, was asked to give us some 
priorities and not just give us a random list. And I might say, when 
they gave us 20 recommendations instead of 10, and they gave them in 
priority, they didn't just go out and get the first 20 they heard 
about. Over the summer, the working group of 21 members--and I am sure 
the Council on Competitiveness did the same--considered hundreds of 
ideas. So our leading scientists and the people we asked to give us 
their best advice on science and their best advice on medicine and 
their best advice on engineering, they waded through dozens and dozens 
of operating programs and other ideas and gave us just a handful of the 
best ideas.

  This has been a tremendously important screening process. I believe 
one reason this has been so broadly accepted in the Senate and by those 
outside the Senate is that it is not just one Senator's idea of what is 
a great math program or another's best friend's idea of a good research 
program. This is, in effect, a merit-based, peer-reviewed set of 
recommendations and an answer to the question as to what are the most 
important things we can do to keep our brain power advantage.
  So, No. 1, authorizing competitive grants to States to better align 
elementary and secondary education with knowledge and skills needed for 
success in colleges and universities and the Armed Forces.
  Now, what that means in plain English is to make sure our elementary, 
middle, and high schools are teaching what students need in order to go 
to college, to go to work, and to go to the Armed Forces. That is the 
key.
  Next, strengthen the skills of thousands of math and science teachers 
by establishing training and educational programs at summer institutes 
hosted by the National Laboratories, and increasing support for the 
teacher institutes at the National Science Foundation's institutes.
  One Senator said to me the other day: This is new, isn't it, the idea 
of giving the National Laboratories such a specific role in training 
outstanding math and science teachers and inspiring math and science 
students to learn and achieve more in math and science? The answer is, 
yes, it is new. But the feeling of the Augustine commission and others 
is that we have a crisis in math and science. And that is not too 
strong a word.
  The former Governor of North Carolina, Jim Hunt, told me the 
University of North Carolina only graduated three physics teachers in a 
recent year from its college of education. So we are not going to learn 
much physics if we don't have anybody teaching much physics. So why not 
take advantage of these remarkable National Laboratories we have around 
the country. I guess there are about two dozen or so of them, like the 
Oak Ridge Laboratory in the State of Tennessee, but there is also Los 
Alamos and Lawrence Livermore. They are all around the country. If you 
are going to inspire a student or inspire a teacher to be active in 
math and science, why not place them in an environment for 4 weeks in 
the summer with some of the finest math and science researchers and 
individuals in the United States?
  It would be a choice for a young musician--give them a choice whether 
to be on the road with Johnny Cash or be in the business office at the 
Grand Ole Opry, and they will go on the road every time because that is 
how a singer learns to be a singer. And that is how a student learns 
what they can do with math and the joy of mathematics.
  When I was Governor of Tennessee we created summer academies--we 
called them the Governor's schools--for outstanding students and 
teachers of various subjects. About 20 States have done the same thing. 
We have found it is the best money we ever spent to offer 4 weeks at 
the University of Tennessee connected to the Oak Ridge National 
Laboratory for 200 of the most outstanding high school juniors 
interested in science and math. The teachers love to teach them, the 
students love to come. Instead of becoming a nerd in their rural 
school, suddenly they are with 200 peers, and they are all celebrated 
for their academic achievements. Why not use these National 
Laboratories to our advantage?
  No other country in the world has the National Laboratories that we 
have. One thing they can do is to help inspire the next generation of 
math and science students and improve this generation and the next 
generation of math and science teachers.
  So expanding the Robert Noyse teaching scholarship program at the 
National Science Foundation--this is a very fine program at the 
National Science Foundation which has had for a long time a role in 
education as well as research. This program trains individuals to 
become math and science teachers in high-need local education agencies.
  Assisting States in establishing or expanding statewide specialty 
schools in math and science. Now, I don't know whether the State of 
Virginia or the State of Hawaii has a full-time residential school in 
science and math. I know

[[Page S4831]]

the State of North Carolina does, and I went to see it. Governor Jim 
Hunt set it up. I went to see it when I was Governor. We didn't believe 
we had enough money to create one in Tennessee, so we created those 
summer academies about which I just spoke. But Governor Bredesen, our 
current Democratic Governor of Tennessee, wants to start, and has made 
a very small start, of what we call in the legislation a specialty 
school in math and science, and several other States have followed 
North Carolina's example. This would help States up to about a 50-
percent level. All the rest of the money would have to be private, 
State, or local.
  Establish schools like the North Carolina residential high school for 
math and science. Not only will it give gifted students a greater 
knowledge, but it helps us compete with the world. North Carolina has 
felt as though over the last 20 years it has helped keep many of those 
bright students in North Carolina because if they go there to school, 
they may go there to college, or at least they may come back if they go 
somewhere else, and then they create more jobs and build up that 
economy.
  Facilitating the expansion of advanced placement in international 
baccalaureate programs by increasing the number of teachers prepared to 
teach those courses and foreign language courses. The AP courses, 
advanced placement courses, are a ticket to success. College entrance 
examiners read them carefully. If you get a 4 or a 5--those are the 
highest grades in math or science--or if you take several of them, your 
chances of being admitted to a variety of institutions are increased. 
But they are offered to a very limited number of the students--not 
limited by their brains but limited by their money. They either do not 
have the money to pay for the tests or they do not go to the schools 
where there are enough teachers who are trained to teach in the 
preparation for their tests.

  This builds on a program in Houston, TX, which has been very 
successful in the last 10 years, of expanding the opportunities for 
low-income students to take more advanced placement courses to prepare 
for college and also to train teachers to meet that demand.
  Senator Hutchison and Senator Bingaman have been two of the leaders 
in this for 10 years in the Senate.
  There are a variety of other proposals. Adopting another program from 
Texas, the You Teach program--this wasn't sent over from the White 
House although this is two straight Texas programs; this is from the 
National Academy of Sciences, because they have a terrific program at 
the University of Texas at Austin, where they take students who are 
enrolled in chemistry and recruit them into the College of Education 
with an attractive scholarship and then the idea was to pay them 
$10,000 a year to teach at a high-needs school for 5 years after they 
leave. In other words, they get the people into teaching and they will 
put them in the schools where they are needed the most. That is called 
the You Teach program. It would expand that.
  There was a program from the University of Pennsylvania which would 
take teachers who are now teaching and give them intensive summer 
training and improve their ability to teach math and science, all 
toward the same objectives.
  Then the President proposed Math Now grants, improving the teaching 
of mathematics in the elementary and middle schools. That is in here as 
well, after it went through the process. Then we expand the programs to 
increase the number of students who study critical foreign languages 
and become proficient. That was recognized here for a variety of 
reasons as a part of keeping our brain power advantage.
  Finally, there are a number of proposals that would identify 
continuing organizations within the White House and Cabinet councils 
and other studies to try to keep a spotlight on this subject.
  This is not the whole answer to the book ``The World Is Flat.'' It is 
on the same subject. It is part of the answer. It is a good start. In 
fact, it is a very good beginning. But we need to continue this 
attention to our position in competitiveness.
  What I have tried to review here is how this legislation came to the 
floor, why it has attracted this unusual leadership from the majority 
leader and Republican leader, why it has had such a sense of urgency 
from senior leaders such as Senator Inouye, Senator Stevens, and 
others, why today it has 56 sponsors, why the House of Representatives 
is considering legislation on a parallel track, and why I believe there 
is no more important piece of legislation that will come before us in 
this session of Congress.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. INOUYE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the 
quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                      Amendment No. 904, withdrawn

  Mr. INOUYE. Mr. President, on behalf of the distinguished chairman of 
the Energy Committee, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw the pending 
amendment.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                           Amendment No. 906

  Mr. INOUYE. Mr. President, I am pleased to send to the desk a 
managers' package, which I described earlier, from the Commerce 
Committee.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Hawaii [Mr. Inouye], for himself and Mr. 
     Stevens, proposes an amendment numbered 906.

  Mr. INOUYE. I ask unanimous consent the reading of the amendment be 
dispensed with.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

 (Purpose: To strike the provisions regarding the working capital fund 
    and to amend certain provisions regarding the National Science 
                              Foundation)

       On page 5, beginning on line 13, strike ``science and 
     technology'' and insert ``science, technology, engineering, 
     and mathematics''.
       On page 25, line 5, strike ``education'' and insert 
     ``education, consistent with the agency mission, including 
     authorized activities''.
       Strike from line 16 on page 44 through line 2 on page 45.
       On page 45, line 3, strike ``(d)'' and insert ``(c)''.
       On page 47, line 8, strike through the end of line 20.
       On page 47, line 21, strike ``(f)'' and insert ``(d)''.
       On page 49, between lines 17 and 18, insert the following:

     SEC. 1503. NOAA'S CONTRIBUTION TO INNOVATION.

       (a) Participation in Interagency Activities.--The National 
     Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shall be a full 
     participant in any interagency effort to promote innovation 
     and economic competitiveness through near-term and long-term 
     basic scientific research and development and the promotion 
     of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics 
     education, consistent with the agency mission, including 
     authorized activities.
       (b) Historic Foundation.--In order to carry out the 
     participation described in subsection (a), the Administrator 
     of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shall 
     build on the historic role of the National Oceanic and 
     Atmospheric Administration in stimulating excellence in the 
     advancement of ocean and atmospheric science and engineering 
     disciplines and in providing opportunities and incentives for 
     the pursuit of academic studies in science, technology, 
     engineering, and mathematics.
       On page 170, strike lines 20 through 23 and insert the 
     following:
       (1) $6,729,000,000 for fiscal year 2008;
       (2) $7,738,000,000 for fiscal year 2009;
       (3) $8,899,000,000 for fiscal year 2010; and
       (4) $10,234,000,000 for fiscal year 2011.
       On page 172, line 19, strike ``Foundation, for each of the 
     fiscal years 2008'' and insert the following: ``Foundation, 
     for fiscal year 2008, $1,050,000,000, and, for each of the 
     fiscal years 2009''.
       On page 172, line 25, strike ``2007'' and insert ``2008''.
       On page 173, line 5, strike ``5-year'' and insert ``4-
     year''.
       On page 173, line 21, strike ``an additional 250'' and 
     insert ``additional''.
       On page 174, line 5, strike ``5-year'' and insert ``4-
     year''.
       On page 174, line 17, strike ``an additional 250'' and 
     insert ``additional''.
       On page 183, line 4, strike ``restrict or bias'' and insert 
     ``inhibit''.
       On page 183, line 5, strike ``against'' and insert ``for''.
       On page 184, beginning on line 2, strike ``1862g), for each 
     of fiscal years 2008'' and insert the following: ``1862g), 
     for fiscal year 2008, $125,000,000, and, for each of fiscal 
     years 2009''.
       On page 184, line 8, strike ``2007'' and insert ``2008''.

  Mr. INOUYE. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

[[Page S4832]]

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I wish to speak to the amendment, the 
managers' package the Senator from Hawaii has proposed. I wish to make 
two points about it.
  The first is it reduces the cost of the bill by $280 million over 4 
years. That is important to all of us and it is especially important to 
some of us. We are trying to spend money wisely.
  At the same time, there are significant increases in the National 
Science Foundation education programs--about $300 million, in fact, 
over the President's requested level. But it is important that we know 
what these are. They are directly in line with the recommendations of 
the Augustine report and the Council on Competitiveness. Remember, we 
asked them to put these recommendations in priority order. The first 
thing is not the R&D tax credit, it is not bringing in more foreign 
students--it is not. The first thing was kindergarten through 12th 
grade math and science education. That is where our academies believed 
we had the biggest problem. So this new money for education programs in 
the National Science Foundation goes to graduate research fellows, to 
graduate education, research traineeships for a program called 
Professional Science Masters. This is a program where colleges are 
helping students earn master's degrees, not necessarily with the goal 
of going on to a Ph.D., but a master's degree that might take you on 
into a highly technical field in business; in other words, making us 
more competitive. It includes the Robert Noyce scholarships, which were 
expanded to help train more math and science teachers, and the teachers 
institutes in the summer.
  These programs are education programs of the National Science 
Foundation, but we save $280 million over 4 years, and we have directed 
those toward nonduplicative programs that are consistent with the 
commission reports.
  I wonder if, before Senator Domenici speaks, I could say a word. 
Senator Domenici is here. He is going to speak now. I am going to step 
to the side while he does. But I wish to say a word about Senator 
Domenici's crucial role.
  I have already spoken to the fact that without the sense of urgency 
of Senators Inouye and Stevens, we would never have gotten to this 
point. But Senator Domenici was there at the beginning of this work. 
Even though, in our caucus, only one Senator is more senior, he stepped 
back and created an environment so Senator Bingaman and I and many 
other Senators could work on this. He watched it very carefully, he 
supervised it, he chaired it, but he left room for us, many of us, to 
work on this.
  When it came time to go to the White House, it was Senator Domenici 
who asked the President if we could come see him. It was Senator 
Domenici who, rather than go down by himself as a Senator might have 
done, invited his junior colleague, me, to go with him. But more 
important than that, he invited his senior colleague, the Democratic 
Senator from New Mexico, Senator Bingaman, to go. It was Senator 
Domenici who insisted in the Energy and Commerce Committee he chaired 
that all this work be done in a bipartisan way. So because of that and 
the way Senators Stevens and Inouye work, we were able to do this.
  It was a Domenici-Bingaman piece of legislation called the Protect 
America's Competitiveness Act that was introduced last year with 70 
sponsors, 35 Democrats and 35 Republicans.
  So before, Senator Domenici came, I thanked and saluted other 
Senators whose leadership has made a difference. But no one has been 
more responsible for this piece of legislation coming through.
  Now that the assistant Democratic leader is here, I want to use this 
occasion to say how much I, and many of us, appreciate the way he and 
the majority leader have handled this piece of legislation; created an 
environment in which we have it on the floor in a way it can succeed. 
Senator Durbin, the Presiding Officer, has been a strong supporter of 
this legislation and a cosponsor of it from the beginning. I also 
wanted to recognize that.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Durbin). The Senator from New Mexico is 
recognized.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, it is now over 60 years ago that a 
brilliant, charismatic man arrived on the scene in my home State of New 
Mexico. He cut an odd figure and began a strange recruiting effort for 
a secret project at an undisclosed location for an undetermined period 
of time.
  Who was this man and what was the upshot? His name was J. Robert 
Oppenheimer, a brilliant and charismatic American physicist. We all 
know something of him, and we might have different views, one from 
another. But he was collecting the best scientific minds of his time 
worldwide, not just Americans, for he had the Fermis from Italy, 
husband and wife. Some say, as they assessed the brilliance of the 
team, Enrico Fermi led the pack. I don't know which; it was 60 years 
ago. But I do know they were asked and recruited by Mr. J. Robert 
Oppenheimer. He was collecting the minds and taking them on a 
mysterious journey to a remote mesa in New Mexico. The task was to 
develop the first atomic bomb. The collective scientific brain power of 
the Manhattan Project, and the awesome power it produced, would change 
the world forever. The scientists at Los Alamos ushered in a new era. 
Their sacrifice and their ingenuity created a story for the ages.
  More specifically, their legacy for us is to consider today, and is 
to find out that there is great value in an awesome power of science 
and mathematics education. That is what brings me to the Senate floor, 
and that is why I rise in strong support of this bill under 
consideration.
  Today is a great day. Today the Senate begins a process of rising 
above the gathering storm. Let's hope. Let's hope. Those words, 
``Rising Above The Gathering Storm,'' are part of the title of the 
National Academy of Science report released in 2005 on American future 
competitiveness and standard of living of our people. The report was 
written by a distinguished group chaired by a former Lockheed chairman, 
chief executive officer Norm Augustine. Mr. Augustine's committee 
included three Nobel laureates, presidents of leading American 
universities, including then Texas A&M president and current Secretary 
of Defense, Robert Gates, and the chief executive officers of 
corporations with global reach.
  After an intensive 10 weeks, the committee presented a significant 
challenge to our Nation. The findings of the ``Gathering Storm'' report 
and the 20 communications within tell us one thing above all else: 
America is not doing enough to harness and develop its national brain 
power. Yes, that is a strange thing to say. We are not doing enough to 
harness and develop our national brain power. Today we are here to 
begin to remedy this problem and to meet the challenge set forth in the 
report.
  I am so grateful that even after 34 years in the Senate I can find an 
issue such as this to get excited about. I can find an issue such as 
this that Senators from both sides of the aisle can get excited about. 
They do not talk about their parties when we have these meetings. Most 
interesting. Maybe they go back to their rooms and talk about the 
Democratic party, how it can use this report, or the Republican party. 
They talk about America's brain power is on the wane, meaning that, 
believe it or not, we can do something about it. That is a nice 
observation. We can do something about the waning brain power of 
America; meaning these young kids, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18 
years of age, have within them the same collective brain power that was 
present when Oppenheimer went looking for the best. It was not just 
assumed that there were smart people; they knew there were people with 
brain power. Right? They just didn't have them in place. They were 
scattered about. Fermi was over here, some guys were over in Eastern 
Europe, and a bunch of them were over on the West Coast. But somebody 
had to put them together. They collected brain power that unlocked the 
atomic bomb.

[[Page S4833]]

  Now, we are not going to do that. What we are trying to do is look 
back and say, how do we do the things that experts tell us will, in 
fact, increase the brain power of our people. It is there the same as 
it is in China. They are just producing more. Does it mean they have 
more? No, it does not. It means they have decided it is the greatest 
thing for them, so they are educating more and more and more. So is 
India. We are sitting over here with all of the greatest institutions 
to do the educating, but we do not have--it has not been coalesced even 
around the essence of a plan that has, as its goal, brain power 
collection, brain power enhancement; brain power is on the wane. Let's 
build it back.
  That is what we are trying to do. Today, we begin to remedy the 
problem and meet the challenges set forth in the report called the 
``Gathering Storm.'' It tells us in a few pages why it is a storm. It 
tells us in a few pages why it is a gathering storm. It tells us in a 
few pages that we are actually selling ourselves short. It tells us if 
we do not decide to build this brain power back, we are going to lose. 
We are going to lose a war which some of us do not even know we are 
fighting. We are going to lose the war for brain power equality and we 
do not even know we are fighting.

  This ``Gathering Storm'' report identifies the two challenges linked 
to scientific and engineering excellence: first, creating high quality 
jobs for the American people, and, secondly, responding to America's 
need for clean, affordable, and reliable energy.
  The report was aimed at enhancing our Nation's human financial 
knowledge and capital to ensure our prosperity. It addressed increasing 
America's talent pool by vastly improving science and mathematics 
education in kindergarten through grade 12. The report, ``Gathering 
Storm,'' called for significant advances in science and engineering 
programs in our Nation's higher education, improving our economic 
policy, from intellectual property protection to research and 
development tax credits and tax incentives for U.S.-based innovation.
  The report also provides us with some worrisome indicators. The 
following few facts should sound alarm bells throughout this Chamber 
and this Nation. I trust people will listen. Senators have participated 
from both sides of the aisle, from all vintages. Some are young, some 
have just come, they are excited, some have been here a long time. I am 
not going to say such as the Senator from New Mexico, I am going to say 
such as the Senator from Hawaii, and he is enthused. Some have been 
even here as long as the Senator from Alaska, and that is a long time, 
longer than me, and he is excited. Right? What it means is if you put 
the right plate in front of us, we can get excited about doing 
something for our great country.
  This report provided us with some worrisome indicators. I am going to 
tell you about them in a minute. In 2001, U.S. industries spent more on 
tort litigation than research and development. Look at that. That is 
not happening to our competitors, I tell you.
  If we want people over here to say, well, there is some good to that, 
we are gaining something on that, well, we will have an awfully long 
dialog on the floor on that one fact. Are we gaining that much benefit 
for the American people out of our tort system, as we are when we say 
that costs us as much in dollars? It says here: Industry spent more on 
litigation than it did on research and development.
  Chemical companies closed 70 facilities around the United States in 
2004. I might say to my friend, of the 120 chemical companies being 
built at the time of the release of the Augustine report with a price 
tag of $1 billion or more, 1 was in the United States and 50 were in 
China. Got it? Those are chemical plants. People say: Oh, chemical 
plants; bad stuff. We are not talking about chemical plants, bad stuff. 
We are talking about chemical plants where you use the chemical product 
for all kinds of things that make you a strong nation, that make things 
for people to use in their house, that make things you can use 
outdoors. The chemical plants are an evidence of basic industry, and 
America built 1, China built 50. That is pretty startling, is it not?
  Of the nearly 1.1 million U.S. high school seniors who took the 
college entrance exam in 2002, less than 6 percent had plans to study 
engineering. That is a 33-percent decrease from 10 years earlier. 
Pretty big stuff. Meanwhile, more than 50 percent of the U.S. science 
and engineering workforce is approaching retirement. Startling.
  Now, Senators, these statistics show that the challenge to our 
Nation's standard of living is before us and the Senate must act. I am 
proud to join this bipartisan group of Senators introducing the America 
COMPETES Act of 2007, commonly referred to as the competitiveness bill.
  Through this legislation, we are addressing nearly every one of the 
recommendations made by this significant report. Enacting this bill 
will be a culmination of a remarkable cooperative effort, with work 
cutting across three Senate committees, and with valuable contributions 
from a large number of colleagues in the Senate. This bill has the 
support of both leaders in the Senate and the collective support of our 
Nation's boardrooms, classrooms, and laboratories.

  I will speak briefly about the area of the bill over which the Energy 
and Natural Resources Committee has jurisdiction. We know that 
following through on recommendations of the Augustine Commission will 
require new commitments and participation from several Federal 
agencies. The Department of Energy has a major role to play in meeting 
this challenge. This legislation doubles funding for the Office of 
Science over the next decade--that is healthy and hearty, and many will 
look forward to it with great enthusiasm--the largest source of Federal 
support for basic science in the physical sciences. The President 
called for the increase in announcing his American Competitiveness 
Initiative last year.
  The Augustine report stressed the importance of increasing our 
national commitment to basic research in the physical sciences. The 
America COMPETES Act responds by putting the Department of Energy 
Office of Science on a path to double in funding over the next decade. 
As the largest Federal funder of basic research in the physical 
sciences, the Office of Science is of critical importance.
  More than 58 Nobel Prize winners since 1936 have been supported by 
the Department of Energy at some time in their careers. Eighteen Nobel 
Prizes have been awarded to Department of Energy laboratory employees 
and another 13 to researchers who employed the National Laboratory 
facilities in their award-winning discoveries. Most of the 40 winners 
of the prestigious Enrico Fermi Presidential awards have done research 
supported by the Department.
  A few years ago, we made a commitment to double funding in the 
National Institutes of Health to support the biological sciences. We 
made good on that commitment. We said it, and we did it. It is now time 
that we address the role physical sciences play and stand together to 
support such growth of key agencies such as the DOE Office of Science. 
By doing so, we will not be taking away from other Department functions 
or laboratory resources.
  In fact, I was cosponsors with Senators Bingaman and Alexander to an 
amendment in this year's budget resolution. We have a few people who 
know something about that, too. It is rather tricky, and sometimes you 
have to do some things you don't quite understand. Then you catch on. 
But we did put in a billion dollars for new authorizations provided in 
that budget, so that the legislation we are going to enact will not 
take money from Peter to pay Paul. We won't be taking money out of the 
Department of Energy to pay for the new items in the Department of 
Energy. We would be called down here on the floor, and we would lose. I 
hope we have done it right so we can prove our point.
  This bill leverages the tremendous talent and technological 
investment of our laboratories and its system. These new provisions 
will build on education and outreach work the labs have undertaken for 
years. Through this legislation, the national labs will provide 
opportunities for high school students from across the Nation to gain 
hands-on experience in science and engineering fields; assist States in 
establishing specialty schools in math and science; strengthen the 
skills of thousands of

[[Page S4834]]

math and science teachers by establishing training and education 
programs at summer institutes hosted at National Laboratories; 
establish partnerships between the National Laboratories and local high 
schools and centers of excellence in math and science.
  I have spoken quite a bit recently about the importance of engaging 
China in the challenge of energy security and global climate change. I 
have written to the President about this important issue. It should be 
clear to all of us that our energy, environmental, and educational 
challenges cannot be considered in a bubble; rather, they must be 
considered in light of global competitiveness, challenges that face us 
all. To maintain our technological edge, we must improve our 
educational systems and the research and development we do in 
corporations, universities, and Government laboratories throughout our 
Nation. This must lead us to higher brainpower for our people.
  The challenge is great, like others this Nation has faced. The 
challenge was great 60 years ago in New Mexico. They were busy trying 
to put a team together to build the first atomic bomb--can you 
imagine--from scratch. The idea alone is all they had. They put it 
together and built it. They found the manpower to do it. We have the 
manpower. We are just not using it. We are not letting it build itself 
as required.
  I commend the authors of the Augustine report. I commend my 
colleagues for their hard work on this legislation. I am hopeful we 
will rise above the gathering storm. If we do, people will say: You had 
a lot to do, maybe more than you thought, but you sought out and found 
what was most important; that is, taking the gathering storm and making 
sure it did not end up hurting our great Nation but, rather, was the 
stimulus for us to increase the collective brainpower of our young 
people.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. INOUYE. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. President, I rise today in strong support of a 
bill that addresses many of the challenges facing Georgia and our 
Nation during this time of increasing global competitiveness. I am a 
cosponsor of the America COMPETES Act because it will ensure that the 
United States will be able to sustain a vigorous economy, an unrivaled 
national defense, a first-rate health care and education system, a 
healthy environment, and a hopeful and prosperous future for 
generations to come.
  Although the United States has the strongest scientific and 
technological enterprise in the world, we are now experiencing the slow 
but steady effects of globalization. These effects, led most notably by 
modern advances in communications, have made the world a smaller place 
and have dramatically increased worldwide competition.
  The leadership in science and technology that the United States has 
enjoyed since World War II is being seriously threatened by the 
burgeoning and thriving economies and workforces in countries such as 
China and India. I believe in order to keep our competitive edge and to 
maintain our dominance in the fields of science, technology, 
engineering, and mathematics, it is imperative we make a long-term 
investment in our future scientists, professors, and engineers. We can 
do so by improving science and mathematics education, and by providing 
schools, universities, and research centers throughout the country with 
necessary funding.
  Recently, Microsoft Corporation founder Bill Gates testified before 
Congress, and he said:

       The U.S. cannot maintain its economic leadership unless our 
     workforce consists of people who have the knowledge and 
     skills needed to drive innovation.

  Mr. President, that is a very accurate statement, and that is why we 
need to pass this bill. With the funding and programs provided for in 
this bill, it will be easier to educate and grow an innovative 
workforce that is highly skilled and highly trained. The America 
COMPETES Act recognizes that better educated students make a smarter, 
more efficient workforce. And that is an important investment for this 
Nation.
  As an example of what funding for science and mathematics education 
can do, let me tell you about a program that is doing great things in 
my home State of Georgia. The Georgia Academy of Mathematics, 
Engineering, and Science, or GAMES, was established at Middle Georgia 
College in Cochran, GA, during the fall of 1997. GAMES is a 
residential, joint enrollment program for top-performing high school 
juniors and seniors. The program allows students to obtain high school 
and college credits simultaneously while enrolled in full-time college 
courses. Most students in the GAMES program major in mathematics, 
science, or engineering.
  The GAMES program enrollment continues to grow each year and has 
earned the reputation of an academic alternative for gifted students 
all across Georgia. Over the 10 years this program has been in 
existence, students who have been accepted into GAMES have averaged a 
3.85 GPA and an SAT score of 1246. After completing the GAMES program, 
48 percent of the students enrolled in the program have transferred to 
the Georgia Institute of Technology. The GAMES program allows these 
students to earn a firm foundation in science, technology, and physics 
before entering Georgia Tech.
  Many GAMES graduates are pursuing and/or have received their Ph.D. in 
mathematics, science, or engineering. I commend Dr. Richard Federinko, 
president of Middle Georgia College, and the entire faculty and staff 
for their hard work in making the GAMES program a major success.
  GAMES is just one program in one State, and we need more like it 
throughout the country. This legislation will open the door and perhaps 
expand these types of programs into other States and allow more bright 
young people to enter the fields of science, math, and technology.
  My fellow colleagues, time is of the essence. We can no longer afford 
to be complacent and just assume the United States will continue to be 
the world's leading innovator. Without action, our grandchildren face 
the genuine possibility of living in an America that is not the 
preeminent leader in scientific and technological advancements. I urge 
each of you to join me in support of this critical piece of 
legislation.
  I want to particularly commend my long-time dear friend, Senator 
Lamar Alexander from Tennessee, for playing a leading roll in the 
drafting of this legislation and for working so hard to make sure the 
policy in this legislation is the right kind of policy to promote 
science, math, and technology in our schools, not just from the eighth 
grade forward, from the ninth grade forward, but from kindergarten 
forward.
  I say to Senator Alexander, I know he has been ably assisted by 
Senator Bingaman, as well as others, in a bipartisan way to make sure 
America's educational system continues to be the preeminent system in 
the world and that we give these bright minds the opportunity to 
develop, and that we make sure--from the standpoint of developing 
engineers in the future, from the standpoint of developing medical 
researchers in the future, from the standpoint of developing doctors 
and other types of engineers in that field--we continue to lead the 
world not just in the production of individuals from a numbers 
standpoint but in the production of quality individuals to develop 
technology, to develop our research capability, as well as to make sure 
from a professional standpoint we have the engineers and the physicians 
who will continue to lead the world.
  With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Georgia for 
his comments but, more importantly, for his leadership. We usually 
think of Senator Chambliss in terms of leadership on intelligence 
matters, Armed Services matters, on agricultural matters, where he is 
the ranking member. But from the very beginning on this legislation, he 
has been out front.
  I can remember when Norm Augustine, chairman of the Augustine 
committee, came to the Senate and had a dinner with us right around the 
corner. Senator Chambliss was one of the first

[[Page S4835]]

Senators there. He has been one of the major leaders in this endeavor 
for the last 2 years. His comments about the Georgia residential high 
school for math and science illustrates a good way to help take this 
legislation from the abstract and put it in concrete terms. Section 
3171 of this legislation, specialty schools for math and science, will 
assist States in establishing or expanding such residential high 
schools for math and science.

  I spoke a little earlier on the floor about North Carolina's math and 
science program which they have had for 25 years. Tennessee is a little 
behind. We haven't had one yet; we have summer governor schools for 
math and science. This legislation would authorize the Congress to 
appropriate funds which could pay for up to 50 percent of the cost of 
operating that school in Georgia which would permit Georgia, if it 
wished, to expand that school. The Senator cited in his remarks one 
good reason to do it in addition to the Nation's competitiveness. I 
think I heard him say 48 percent of the students went to Georgia Tech. 
So if our goal is to keep bright students at home to create jobs for us 
in the United States, a more specific goal is to keep bright Georgia 
students at home so they can create jobs for Georgians.
  Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. President, if the Senator will yield for a 
question through the Chair.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Certainly.
  Mr. CHAMBLISS. I simply say the Senator is exactly correct; 47 
percent of our students do go on to Georgia Tech. I wish we could get 
more of them at the University of Georgia where they happened to let me 
go, but at Georgia Tech we are doing a terrific job of taking these 
bright young minds that are being developed, as we said earlier, not 
just at the eighth and ninth grade level, but thanks to you and the 
leadership of folks like you, at a much earlier age. Our GAMES program, 
incidentally, was put into effect and implemented by our former 
colleague Senator Zell Miller, when he was the Governor of our State, 
and somebody whom I know you worked very closely with over the years. 
It is a great concept. It is forward thinking, as this legislation is 
very forward thinking from the standpoint of making sure that these 
great minds are developed at a very early age.
  Again, I thank the Senator from Tennessee for his great work on this 
and I commend this legislation to all of our colleagues.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Senator.
  Mr. President, our former colleague Zell Miller was Lieutenant 
Governor of Georgia when I was a Governor. He was a professor by 
profession and he was always interested in education and very skillful 
in education policy. Every Governor I know spends a lot of time trying 
to think of how we are going to recruit jobs. Well, if you study it, 
you learn after a while you don't recruit nearly as many as you grow. 
The way you grow them is with brain power. So the single best thing any 
State can do to create the largest number of good new jobs in that 
State is to keep the brightest kids at home. Governor Miller, when he 
was there, initiated the HOPE scholarship, which played a major role in 
attracting many of the brightest Georgia students, and I would say many 
of the brightest Tennessee students to come across the border to go to 
the University of Georgia, and then the residential school for math and 
science did the same. This legislation would permit every other State 
to do the same, and it is just one of the things it would do.
  If I may, if the Senator from Georgia is finished with his remarks, 
he has highlighted an area I wish to enlarge on. Sometimes our 
legislation, particularly when we talk about big phrases such as 
competitiveness and globalization, takes us off into the stratosphere 
and one might say: Well, what does that have to do with me? We have 
just talked about one example. If you are the Governor of Georgia or 
Tennessee or Illinois and you are thinking: What can I do over the next 
10 years to grow the largest number of good new jobs, a residential 
school for math and science is a very good start.
  I remember as Governor, after we recruited the Nissan plant and the 
Saturn plant, I was feeling pretty good. Then I counted up the number 
of jobs, and it was 10,000 or 12,000 jobs in a State that employs 2.5 
million people. We were losing 200,000 or 250,000 jobs per year, so we 
had to be creating that many more. In our country, in the United States 
of America, we are losing jobs all the time. We don't want that to 
happen, but that is happening. So the real test of our society is: Can 
we create a lot more good new jobs than we are losing, a constant 
supply of good new jobs. Most of that comes from the subject of this 
legislation: from brain power, better schools, better colleges, better 
universities, more research, and especially technological innovation.
  Illinois, I am told, already has such an academy: the Illinois Math 
and Science Academy, a residential high school. I am sure the Presiding 
Officer is very familiar with it. He may have helped start it, given 
his long tenure in the Congress. This legislation would give it an 
opportunity as well to expand.
  On the subject of creating new jobs, the chief State school officers 
are in town. That means the superintendent of education of Illinois and 
Tennessee's commissioner of education are here in town. I am meeting 
with them tomorrow at about noon for a while, and what I can tell 
them--even though they probably heard all about math and science they 
want to hear through No Child Left Behind--is we are doing a number of 
things to help them at least authorize funding to help them succeed. 
For example, we are authorizing grants to States to promote alignment 
of elementary and secondary education with knowledge and skills. That 
means in plain English helping States line up the math and science they 
are teaching with what you need to know to go into the Armed Forces, 
what you need to know to go to college, what you need to know to go to 
work. Sometimes there is not a good fit there. This would help schools 
and education systems, those chief State school officers, do that.
  The second thing we would be doing is strengthening the skills of 
thousands of math and science teachers by using our national 
laboratories in Illinois, New Mexico, Tennessee, and around our 
country, and a host of summer institutions and academies for 
outstanding teachers of math and science, as well as for students, but 
especially for teachers.
  I found in my experience as Governor, one of the most successful and 
productive things we did were Governors' schools, where we would take 
the Governors' schools for teachers of mathematics or teachers of 
reading, or students of international affairs, and the students would 
come for 2 to 4 weeks--sometimes it would only be teachers, but the 
students would come, you would bring in a core of faculty members from 
around the State, too. It would inspire those students so much, and 
what could be more inspiring for math and science teachers than to have 
a chance to be at the National Labs with Nobel Prize winners and some 
of the outstanding scientists in the world. It would refresh them, 
excite them, improve their skills, and help them carry a sense of 
mission back to their classrooms to inspire a new generation of math 
students and hopefully math and science teachers.

  I can say to the chief State school officers of our various States, 
we are expanding the Robert Noyce teacher scholarship program at the 
National Science Foundation to recruit and train individuals to become 
math and science teachers in high-need, local education agencies. We 
are finding as we review No Child Left Behind in elementary and 
secondary education that 80 percent of our schools are, we can say, 
achieving, or even high achieving. In other words, their students, by 
category, are meeting what we call adequate yearly progress, so let's 
catch them doing something right. About 5 percent of those schools--I 
have missed it in one category--I would say they are still achieving 
pretty well. Only about 15 percent of the schools are high need, and 
usually what we find is they are children of low income, children whose 
parents haven't been able to help them, children whose parents have 
neglected them, children who have not yet learned English, children who 
have just arrived in this country and may not be in the same school in 
January they were in October, children who are hard to teach, and 
children who need more than even good teachers are usually able to give 
them. I am coming to

[[Page S4836]]

the conclusion that we need to train teachers especially to help these 
children. About 10 or 15 percent of all the children in our public 
schools across the country are these children, and these are the ones 
we are leaving behind.
  Well, we are expanding teacher scholarship programs at the National 
Science Foundation to recruit and train individuals to become math and 
science teachers in high-need educational agencies. We are assisting, 
we have just said, teachers in establishing statewide specialty schools 
in math and science, and we will use the National Laboratories' staff 
to help with that. For example, if Tennessee wants to expand the new 
math and science academy Governor Bredesen has established--I salute 
him for doing it; he has wanted to do it for a while, but it is 
expensive and he only has a few students in it. This legislation makes 
it possible to use the National Laboratory staff to help Governor 
Bredesen in Tennessee expand and enlarge and make better the summer 
residential school for math and science.
  I can say to the chief State school officers tomorrow, and they can 
take it back to their States across the country, that if the Congress 
enacts this legislation sponsored by the majority leader and the 
Republican leader, with 56 Senators on both sides of the aisle, its 
goal is to train 70,000 more teachers so they can teach advanced 
placement courses in math, sciences, and foreign language, so we can 
bring to the number of 700,000 the number of students who can take 
advanced placement courses in math, sciences, and critical foreign 
language.
  As we have said before in the debate on this bill, students who don't 
get to take those AP courses now don't take them because they are not 
smart enough or because their brains don't work well enough; they don't 
take it often because they can't afford it or because the teachers 
aren't available to teach them in the schools they attend, so this will 
help to remedy that.
  I can say to the chief State school officers, Governor Jim Hunt of 
North Carolina, one of our leading educators in America, a former 
Governor for 16 years in that State, who testified before the 
President's Commission on Higher Education that the University of North 
Carolina only graduated three physics teachers in 1 year at its College 
of Education. As I mentioned earlier, if we are not teaching physics, 
nobody is going to be learning it. So what are we going to do about 
that?
  What this suggests is that after reviewing programs from all over the 
country, the Augustine commission recommends that we expand the You 
Teach program at the University of Texas. So there will be money that 
may be appropriated under this law that would permit universities to do 
as they do in Texas, in Austin, to go into the chemistry and biology 
programs and recruit students who are majoring in those science 
subjects, or a student who is majoring in math, and give them a 
scholarship to go to the College of Education and become a teacher of 
chemistry or biology or math.
  Now, the Augustine report recommended that we then pay $10,000 a year 
in fellowships for those students so they can go into teaching in high-
need areas, rather than for IBM or Google or Dell or some other high-
paying job. That part of our provision is not in this legislation, the 
$10,000 fellowship. I would like to see it in there.
  Senator Reid, the majority leader, the principal sponsor of this 
legislation, suggested when he introduced the bill the other day, that 
he had a very good experience--he and Paul Simon, the former 
distinguished Senator from Illinois--with finding ways to give stipends 
to teachers of math and science so they would stay in teaching. Well, 
this You Teach program at the University of Texas is now going to be 
available in Michigan, Tennessee, and other States around the country 
so we can recruit outstanding students into teaching.
  In addition, the Augustine commission, after reviewing dozens and 
dozens and dozens of programs, found an especially good program at the 
University of Pennsylvania in science called Penn Science, and instead 
of recruiting students into teaching, it takes existing teachers and 
puts them through continuous training during the summer and during the 
year so they can be even better teachers of science.
  I can say to the chief State school officers who are meeting in 
Washington, DC today that this legislation will permit you in Wyoming 
and in Tennessee and in New York and in Michigan and wherever to create 
a partnership between our National Laboratories and local high-need 
schools to establish centers of excellence in math and science 
education. So suddenly you match up a high-needs school with one of the 
greatest National Laboratories in the world. What can be more exciting 
for the teachers in that school or the students? It might go from being 
a high-needs school to one with a line around the block of students 
waiting to get in the door.
  This legislation also has significant authorization for funding for a 
program called Math Now. This is the President's proposal, from his 
American Competitiveness Act which has been included in this 
legislation, and it would provide grants to improve math instruction in 
the elementary and middle grades and provide targeted help to 
struggling students so all students can master grade level math 
standards.
  Finally, I can say to the chief State school officers who are meeting 
in Washington--and I will say it to them directly tomorrow at lunch--
that the bill also authorizes expanding programs to increase the number 
of students from elementary school through postsecondary education who 
study critical foreign languages. We find this not just in our military 
needs in Iraq and Afghanistan and around the world, but we increasingly 
live in a worldwide economy, and our students, our citizens will be 
better citizens, more effective citizens, if more of us speak more than 
one language. There is a long list.
  There are 10 or 11 programs that either expand or create efforts to, 
as the Augustine commission says, ``increase America's talent pool by 
vastly improving K through 12 science and mathematics education.''
  Senator Bingaman, I, Senator Domenici, and the House Members asked 
our national academies: Please tell us exactly what we need to do to 
keep our brain power advantage so we can keep our jobs. We understand 
that since World War II, more than half of this remarkably high 
standard of living we have has come through innovation and technology. 
We understand that and we have an idea or two and we have friends with 
an idea or two about what to do, but tell us exactly what to do about 
it. Tell us in priority order. They put down K-12--vastly improving K-
12 science and mathematics education.
  I see the Senator from New Mexico is present. We have had a good 
discussion this afternoon. Some of the principal advocates have been 
here, and I especially appreciate Senators Stevens and Inouye who have 
given a great sense of urgency to this legislation. The Presiding 
Officer, Senator Stabenow, has as well. Michigan has a tremendous 
number of research institutes and great universities that add fuel to 
the economic resurgence of that State and every other State.
  Really, we are all interested in this legislation. The key is, How do 
we put it together in a way that we can get it through this interesting 
process we call the Senate? I think we are reasonably close to doing 
that, thanks to the senior leadership of this body and Senator Bingaman 
and Senator Domenici on the Energy Committee.
  Madam President, I will conclude my remarks now and yield he floor to 
Senator Bingaman.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Stabenow). The Senator from New Mexico is 
recognized.
  Mr. BINGAMAN. Madam President, I appreciate the good work my 
colleague from Tennessee, as comanager of the bill, has been doing on 
this issue, as I have been unavoidably detained over in the Energy 
Committee.
  It is my understanding, unless someone knows otherwise, that all 
debate expected on the pending amendment has taken place. As far as I 
have been informed, the Senate is ready to dispense with the amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there further debate on the amendment?
  If not, the question is on agreeing to the amendment.
  The amendment (No. 906) was agreed to.


                           Amendment No. 908

  Mr. BINGAMAN. Madam President, I send another amendment to the desk 
and ask for its immediate consideration.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from New Mexico [Mr. Bingaman] proposes an 
     amendment numbered 908.


[[Page S4837]]


  Mr. BINGAMAN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that reading 
of the amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

       On page 55, lines 21 and 22, strike ``engineering)'' and 
     insert ``engineering and technology)''.
       On page 56, line 8, after ``engineering'' insert ``and 
     technology''.
       On page 56, line 24, strike ``mathematics and science'' and 
     insert ``mathematics, science, engineering, and technology''.
       On page 59, line 6, strike ``mathematics and science'' and 
     insert ``mathematics, science, and, to the extent applicable, 
     technology and engineering''.
       On page 59, line 15, strike ``mathematics and science'' and 
     insert ``mathematics, science, technology, and engineering''.
       On page 60, line 6, strike ``mathematics and science'' and 
     insert ``mathematics, science, technology, and engineering''.
       On page 60, line 10, before ``that'' insert ``in 
     mathematics, science, and to the extent applicable, 
     technology and engineering''.
       On page 61, lines 8 and 9, strike ``mathematics and 
     science'' and insert ``mathematics, science, and, to the 
     extent applicable, technology and engineering''.
       On page 62, line 14, strike ``mathematics or science'' and 
     insert ``mathematics, science, technology, or engineering''.
       On page 65, lines 16 and 17, strike ``MATHEMATICS AND 
     SCIENCE'' and insert ``MATHEMATICS, SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND 
     ENGINEERING''.
       On page 65, line 19, strike ``MATHEMATICS AND SCIENCE'' and 
     insert ``MATHEMATICS, SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND ENGINEERING''.
       On page 66, lines 8 and 9, strike ``Mathematics and 
     Science'' and insert ``Mathematics, Science, Technology, and 
     Engineering''.
       On page 67, line 9, strike ``Mathematics and Science'' and 
     insert ``Mathematics, Science, Technology, and Engineering''.
       On page 67, lines 16 and 17, strike ``math and science'' 
     and insert ``mathematics, science, and technology''.
       On page 68, lines 21 and 22, strike ``mathematics or 
     science (including engineering)'' and insert ``mathematics, 
     science, or engineering''.
       On page 69, lines 4 and 5, strike ``mathematics or 
     science'' and insert ``mathematics, science, or technology''.
       Beginning on page 69, line 25 through page 70, line 1, 
     strike ``mathematics and science'' and insert ``mathematics, 
     science, technology, and engineering''.
       On page 70, lines 10 and 11, strike ``mathematics and 
     science'' and insert ``mathematics, science, technology, and 
     engineering''.
       On page 71, line 7, strike ``mathematics and science'' and 
     insert ``mathematics, science, technology, and engineering''.
       On page 71, line 10, strike ``mathematics and science'' and 
     insert ``mathematics, science, technology, and engineering''.
       On page 71, line 18, strike ``mathematics and science'' and 
     insert ``mathematics, science, and, to the extent applicable, 
     technology and engineering''.
       On page 72, line 23, strike ``mathematics and science'' and 
     insert ``mathematics, science, technology, and engineering''.
       On page 73, lines 18 and 19, strike ``mathematics and 
     science'' and insert ``mathematics, science, and to the 
     extent applicable, technology and engineering''.
       On page 73, lines 23 and 24, strike ``mathematics and 
     science'' and insert ``mathematics, science, technology, and 
     engineering''.

  Mr. BINGAMAN. Madam President, for the information of Senators, this 
amendment makes a series of clarifying changes in the bill that are 
technical in nature. It is not controversial, as far as I have been 
informed. I am informed by the leadership that they would like to leave 
this pending at this point. We will proceed that way in case a Member 
decides to come and speak on it.
  Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BINGAMAN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________