[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 10719-10720]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               WE ARE HEADED TOWARDS A THIRD RATE ECONOMY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Tiahrt) is recognized 
during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, last year our trade deficit was $670 
billion, our Federal budget deficit was about $300 billion, and our 
government made it more and more difficult last year to keep and create 
jobs here in America. Barriers have been created and erected by 
Congress, and the results have been the wrong environment for the 
current day economy.
  The world is changing. The world is getting more and more technical, 
and we, as a country, are not measuring up,

[[Page 10720]]

and we are headed towards a third rate economy.
  What a third rate economy means to our national security, to the 
future of our children is rather startling, and it is something we need 
to start preparing today to change. We must change the environment for 
keeping and creating jobs here.
  In 10 to 20 years from now, we are looking at countries like China, 
currently with 1.3 billion people, India with 1 billion people, add 
that to Southeast Asia, and they get a group of about 3 billion people. 
Currently, they are in talks with trying to create an Asian Union, 
similar to the European Union, with the yuan as the currency of choice. 
This would be a very strong economy. It would be very difficult for 
America, who currently has the strongest economy in the world and the 
envy of the world, to compete with that.
  Last year, China graduated 350,000 engineers. India graduated 80,000 
software engineers alone. They are preparing for the future.
  Today, a columnist for MSNBC wrote an article called, ``Can China 
build its own Silicon Valley? Beijing's recipe for technological 
success.'' In this article, China lays out what China's doing in their 
Zhongguancun district to create an environment to develop new 
technological businesses. They have already quite a few small high-tech 
companies in that area, and they also have the prestigious Tsinghua 
University, which is creating a lot of research and development to go 
along with this world-class technology incubator.
  They are also providing business support, venture capital, legal 
services, property management and health care. It is a total package, a 
culture, if you will, to try to develop new ideas.
  Dr. Meng Mei at the university said, ``We need a culture that gives 
small companies the confidence to succeed.'' It sounds like something 
we need to do here in America. What they are giving them is an 
infrastructure, an entrepreneurial infrastructure, so that they can go 
out and create new technology, driving the leading edge, something that 
America has been doing for the last several decades. In China, the 
amount of money they spend on research and development has tripled 
between 1991 and 2001, according to the article.
  In the meantime, what have we been doing here in America over the 
last generation? Well, starting in the 1960s, Congress started writing 
more rules and regulations and passing laws with good intent but 
terrible consequences.
  We have come up with burdensome regulations that keeps new companies 
from starting up. We have a litigation system that works against 
success. We have health care costs that are rising faster than small 
employers can keep up with. We have got a tax policy that punishes 
success instead of rewarding success. We have an energy policy that is 
dependent on foreign sources. We have a trade policy that too often 
goes unenforced, and our research and development sometimes gets spent 
in wasteful ways instead of looking forward to the future. Our 
education system, sadly, is lagging behind, especially in math, science 
and engineering.
  At the end of this article, it says, ``While the number of U.S. 
science and engineering graduates declines, year after year, China's 
numbers are surging. China already graduates more English-speaking 
electrical engineers than does the U.S. Last month the U.S. came in 
17th in an annual international collegiate programming contest; a team 
from Shanghai University came in first. And U.S. middle school math and 
science scores continue to lag behind those of other developed 
Nations.''
  We are on a path to a third rate economy that has worldwide 
implications for our future, for our kids, for our national security, 
and we have to change that environment.
  This is the debate that we should be having today on the floor of the 
United States House of Representatives. This is how we are going to 
create the environment, by changing these rules and regulations, so 
that we can create new jobs, create new technology and prepare for the 
oncoming challenges of the future.

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