[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 99 (Tuesday, June 8, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3974-S3975]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Endless Frontier Act
Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, I come to the floor, hopefully today
will be the day we wrap up debate on the America Competes-Endless
Frontier legislation now known as the USICA, United States Innovation
and Competition Act of 2021. We come to talk about this now, primarily
because we know that the research dollars invested today are going to
decide the jobs of the future. And we know that we all believe a
significant increase in the investment in research and development
dollars will help us spur innovation, continue to help us compete, and
continue to be competitive in key sectors of our economy that are so
important to us.
We know that we have been having this debate literally now for more
than a decade, starting with President Bush's 2006 report saying
America needed to invest more in the National Science Foundation. And
at the time, I am pretty sure we thought we were in a track meet where
our competitor was maybe half a lap behind us
I am pretty sure now, as the decade has moved on, we are looking over
our shoulder and realizing that the competition is gaining. So we need
to make this investment in research and development to stay
competitive, to grow jobs for tomorrow, and solve some of our most
pressing problems, whether that is climate change, national security on
cyber issues, or the advent and usage of artificial intelligence and
what that will mean both for our opportunities and for our challenges.
So we are making a renewed commitment to the National Science
Foundation. I thank my colleagues again, Senator Schumer and Senator
Young, for
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their innovative legislation. They are telling us a couple of things.
They are saying, one, invest more money in research and development, so
this bill not only increases the NSF budget, it increases DOE's budget
and increases the Defense Advanced Research Program Agency's funding as
well by $17.5 billion.
So it is saying, yes, basic research is still very important. But it
is also saying, for the first time, we need to get more out of the
research that we do, and we need to have more translational science,
that is, taking the basic research and applied research and actually
using the applications of that in a more robust way so that we can
translate more of that into actual science and manufacturing.
Why is this so important? Because we know that our competitiveness as
a nation is suffering from the fact that people are looking at our own
research and development. They are looking at our teachings and our
publishing at universities and actually going and implementing this. So
we need to do better on tech transfer.
This underlying legislation not only helps us do that by helping to
help universities who are our No. 1 research partner with Federal
dollars, it allows those universities to help us with more tech
transfer in innovative ways, that universities not just do the
research, but help commercialize it. It also makes investments and
helping them protect the patenting of that critical information, so no
longer having that patentable information used in other places around
the globe, but actually capitalizing on the jobs here in the United
States.
It also makes a huge investment in STEM, the science, technology,
engineering, and math jobs that we need for the future. And clearly,
you can't make a major investment in research and development if you
don't have the workforce to carry it out. And we need a workforce to
carry it out. So this underlying legislation helps us not only
diversify our workforce by a major investment in STEM, going from an
annual budget of about $1 billion in the year 2020 to about $4 billion
a year by 2026. So we are going to get a more diversified STEM
workforce with women and minorities participating.
And we are also trying to distribute more of our engineering and
science capacity around the United States. Our colleagues, Senators
Schumer and Young, were adamant that we also look at innovation
infrastructure happening in more regional places in the United States,
where they may not currently have the R&D capability of some of our
major institutions.
So this legislation promises 20 percent of the research and
investment dollars go to those EPSCoR states, Established Program to
Stimulate Competitive Research, an already identified landmark in how
we distribute research dollars, that tries to grow the regional
research infrastructure in more places in the United States. Again, I
thank my colleagues Senator Wicker for leading the charge on that and
helping us make that investment. And it also triples the Manufacturing
Extension Partnership Program, so that we get more out of manufacturing
workforce training and resiliency of our supply chain for the future.
As I mentioned before we left, it also includes an authorization for
NASA and the Artemis mission and making sure that we are staying
competitive. As Senator Nelson said in a House hearing on our mission
and challenges, as China has made it clear, they are going to Mars, we
are going back to the Moon to ready ourselves to go to Mars, and we
think that it, too, deserves the funding and support to make us
competitive.
I think the bottom line here is that we know that American innovation
drives the economy of the future. In a lot of ways, in passing this
legislation today--and just so our colleagues know, we will have a
couple of votes here before we get to a final passage--we really are
doing our part.
People hopefully will support this legislation enthusiastically, well
past the majority of Members, because you believe in the history of the
United States research and development that we have achieved innovation
goals--whether that was what we did with the internet, whether that was
what we have done on biosciences, even on some of our issues as it
relates to energy. We have achieved big breakthroughs.
So today's vote is about investing in that innovation economy of the
future. I am pretty confident because I have met some of these
innovators across the United States. I don't know if everything that we
have done so far will be absorbed by universities, our researchers, and
our labs, but literally, we are trying to dust off R&D skills and make
them more competitive for today.
I guarantee you, though, these dollars that reach American
entrepreneurs, who reach American innovators, they are ready and
willing to take up this challenge. Give them those collaborative
research resources through innovation at universities, through tech
hubs, through more collaboration on workforce training, through
investments in semiconductors, and I guarantee you these entrepreneurs
in America will innovate our economy and create the economies of the
future.
And what is at stake? If my colleagues have a better idea, I am
willing to hear it. But I know this: Americans want us to lead on their
regional economies, on the U.S. economies, and on global economies.
They do not want to get left behind. They look at this time and era as
a challenge to the leadership we have provided in the past.
So settling for Federal investment being near their lowest point as a
percentage of GDP in 60 years won't cut it. What cuts it is making an
investment in R&D and empowering those entrepreneurs so they will
create those future economies.
I yield the floor.