[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 9398-9399]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                   TECHNOLOGY ISSUES FACING CONGRESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HOLT. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to talk a little 
bit tonight on technology issues.
  But first I would like to commend the preceding speakers, the 
gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) and the gentleman from Michigan 
(Mr. Stupak), for their important remarks about our police officers.
  I was pleased to be with the President earlier today when he 
announced that, as of today, we are announcing grants for the officers 
that will bring the total up to 100,000 officers on the streets, in the 
neighborhoods, in the schools as part of the community-oriented 
policing program. I think it has been a great success, and today is a 
fine day to pay tribute to our police officers.
  I would now like to turn to the subject of technology in our society 
and science and research and development. I am a scientist and a 
teacher, and before coming to Congress, I was Assistant Director at the 
Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. I hold a patent for a solar energy 
device.
  I have been using computers since the days that they were room-sized 
mainframes; and that is why I feel strongly about the role that 
technology plays in our lives, whether in education, in medicine, or in 
trade; and that is why I have spent a good deal of time in my first 4 
months here on the job in Washington working on science and technology 
issues.
  We live in a world where investment capital races around the globe at 
the touch of a key; where cars that we drive have more computing power 
than an Apollo spacecraft; where, in our economy today, there are no 
unskilled jobs.
  Technology advances our society and opens up exciting new worlds of 
opportunity. Over the past century, Federal investments in computing, 
information, communications, and other sorts of R&D have yielded 
spectacular returns. Yet our Nation is underinvesting in long-term, 
fundamental research.
  The fact is that, on the whole, Federal support and corporate support 
for research in technology and in science is seriously underfunded. 
Research programs intended to maintain the flow of new ideas and to 
train the next generation of researchers are funded at only a fraction 
of what is needed, turning away hundreds of excellent proposals.

[[Page 9399]]

  Compounding this problem, Federal agency managers are often faced 
with insufficient resources to meet all the research needs and, as a 
result, they are naturally favoring research that has short-term goals 
rather than long- term, high-risk investigations. While this is 
undoubtedly the correct short-term decision, the short-term strategy 
for each agency, the sum of these decisions threatens the long-term 
welfare of our Nation.
  In one area, the President's Information Technologies Advisory 
Committee recommends that Federal investment in information 
technologies research and development be increased by more than $1 
billion over the next 5 years, something that I support.
  We need to invest in our future and in our citizens. For example, 
there are today more than 340,000 high-paying information technology 
jobs open. They are open right now in the United States despite efforts 
in the past year to relax our immigration regulations in large part to 
fill those positions. We cannot seem to fill these jobs fast enough. 
Our educational system has not caught up to the demand for high-
technology workers.
  As a member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce and the 
Committee on the Budget, I have begun work to enhance our Nation's 
technology education programs so we can have students who are ready to 
enter the workforce with the skills they need and to have teachers who 
know how to teach them.
  Only 20 percent of teachers say they feel qualified to use modern 
technology and to teach using the computers that are available to them. 
Only 20 percent. How can we expect students to learn if teachers are 
not up-to-date on what to teach?
  I make a point of visiting schools in my district, schools like the 
Hi Tech High in Monmouth County that I visited last week. I know that 
we are making progress, but we have a ways to go.
  I believe when it comes to technology, and for just about any other 
issue, the Federal Government should help, not hamper, innovation.
  One of my first acts after taking office was to round up the New 
Jersey delegation and, together with my Republican colleague, the 
gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Frelinghuysen), send a letter to the 
House Committee on Ways and Means chairman, the gentleman from Texas 
(Mr. Archer), supporting the Federal R&D tax credit, the permanent 
extension of that tax credit.
  How can we in Congress expect business to plan for the future, 
especially in a technology-driven State like New Jersey, unless they 
know that they can count on this deduction permanently? We have renewed 
the R&D tax credit nine times. It is high time now that we make it 
permanent.
  Mr. Speaker, this is important. Making these crucial investments will 
help our people in areas like education in the workplace and in solving 
the problems in everyday life.

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