[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15775-15776]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       INVESTING IN R&D AND STEM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Texas (Ms. Eddie Bernice Johnson) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON of Texas. Today, I would like to emphasize 
the important role that Federal investments in research and 
development, or R&D and science, technology, engineering, and 
mathematics, or STEM, education play in stimulating growth, creating 
new industries and jobs, and delivering long-term benefits to our 
citizens.
  As a member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, 
and now as ranking member, I have had the privilege of hearing 
countless witnesses from industry, academia, and government over the 
past several years testify that investments in R&D are essential to 
keeping America competitive in a challenging international marketplace. 
In fact, according to a paper by the National Bureau of Economic 
Research, changes in technology are the only source of permanent 
increases in productivity.
  If we are to reverse the trend of the last 20 years, where our 
country's technology edge in the world has diminished, we must make the 
investments necessary today. The statistics speak for themselves. It is 
estimated that more than 50 percent of our economic growth since World 
War II can be attributed to development and adoption of new 
technologies. The path is simple: research and education lead to 
innovation. Innovation leads to economic development and good-paying 
jobs and the revenue to pay for more research.

                              {time}  1050

  As private firms underinvest in research and development because the 
returns are too far off in the future, there is a clear and necessary 
role of government to help our Nation keep pace with the rest of the 
world.
  More than 50 years ago, when DARPA was first created, no one had any 
idea that the research that they would fund would be responsible for 
the creation of the Internet or the proliferation of GPS technology, 
but it did. Those inventions started with Federal dollars, as did 
countless other game-changing technologies.
  It is clear that Federal investments in R&D bring significant returns 
for decades to come. In 1987, MIT Professor Robert Solow was awarded 
the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work proving that improved 
technology and improved education in the workforce was clearly and 
chiefly responsible for long-term growth, much more than increases in 
labor or capital. The current best estimate for the return on academic 
research alone is 28 percent. Federal efforts are underway now to more 
vigorously and rigorously quantify the return on Federal investments in 
R&D.
  Today we find ourselves at a crossroads. The United States remains a 
leader in science, technology, and innovation but no longer the 
unchallenged leader. While our own world-class innovation 
infrastructure is under stress, our competitors in other countries,

[[Page 15776]]

even as they institute austerity measures in other parts of their 
budgets, are seizing the opportunity to make strategic investments in 
long-term basic research and build and leverage public-private 
partnerships to support the shorter term R&D that will help create jobs 
now and long into the future.
  As we struggle with our own deficits, we too can make the strategic 
choice to continue to invest in our future--both in our human capital 
and physical infrastructure--or we can make the strategic choice to 
permanently cede our leadership, to fail our current generation of 
young people and to put our economy in a state of stagnation for years 
to come.
  STEM education is another critical component to the Nation's economic 
competitiveness. Yet according to the Program for International Student 
Assessment, the U.S. currently ranks 17th in science and 25th in math 
out of 34 countries. Though our best STEM students have no trouble 
competing with their international peers, on average, our K-12 students 
continue to lag far behind their international peers in math and 
science aptitude. According to the National Assessment of Educational 
Progress (NAEP) 2009 science assessment, 34 percent of the fourth-
graders, 30 percent of the eighth-graders, and 21 percent of the 12th-
graders performed at or above the proficient level in science. When 
eighth-graders were tested again in 2011, they achieved a modest 2-
point gain in the percentage of students demonstrating proficiency.
  When the results are broken down by demographic groups, we see a 6-7 
point gender gap that begins somewhere between the 4th and 8th grade 
and persists through 12th grade. Even more troubling, there are huge 
and persistent gaps across racial/ethnic groups. Among African American 
students, in 2009 only 11 percent of fourth-graders, 8 percent of 
eighth-graders, and 4 percent of twelfth-graders performed at or above 
the proficient level in science. The number for Hispanic students--14, 
12 and 8 percent, respectively--are only slightly better. The one small 
sign of improvement is a 4 point gain for Hispanic 8th graders from 
2009 to 2011. But how as a nation and as parents and grandparents can 
we tolerate any of these numbers for any of our students?
  We must also do better at the college level. Even among those 
minority students who have access to high-performing schools or who 
otherwise succeed against the odds and enter college intending to major 
in a STEM degree, fewer than 20 percent finish within five years, 
compared to a 33 percent 5-year completion rate for White students and 
42 percent for Asian students.
  We've been talking about ``A Nation at Risk'' since the report by 
that name came out nearly 30 years ago, but in that time we've made 
little to no improvement. Some suggest we may even have gone backwards. 
As long as our nation overall was still number one, it was easier for 
our leaders to let year after year pass without taking the hard steps 
to take on an enormous set of challenges in a large and diverse country 
where, rightly so, education is controlled at the local level.
  However, the world is changing, the demand for STEM skills is 
steadily increasing, and our nation's leadership is being challenged. 
At the same time, our demographics are shifting in profound ways, 
making the racial/ethnic gaps that much more consequential for our 
future. By the year 2050, minorities are predicted to represent 55 
percent of the national college population.
  I am heartened by many of the initiatives going on now at both the 
federal and state levels, including the Obama Administration's Race to 
the Top, Initiative and the state-drive common core standards in math 
and science. Nevertheless, we have a long way to go to ensure that the 
U.S. continues to produce the world's best scientists, mathematicians, 
and engineers and to make sure that every student is prepared for the 
highly technical, high-paying jobs of the future. According to 2008 
data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the professional information 
technology (IT) workforce was projected to add a little under a million 
new jobs between 2008 an 2018. This represents more than twice the rate 
of overall workforce growth over that same period. Many high-tech 
companies cite the availability of a skilled STEM workforce as the 
number one reason for determining where they locate their facilities. 
Producing students with the STEM skills needed to fill the jobs of the 
future is necessary to maintaining our nation's innovation capacity and 
creating new high-skill, high-paying jobs at home.
  We need to take a step back and refrain from making short-sighted, 
ill-advised cuts to our R&D and education investments in pursuit of 
illusory budgetary benefits. While we debate turning the lights off on 
groundbreaking research projects, shuttering world-class research 
facilities, stopping emerging industries in their tracks, and losing 
many of our best and brightest scientists from the STEM pipeline for 
good, our competitors in China, India, and elsewhere are surging ahead 
in their investments in R&D, STEM education, and emerging industries.
  I urge all of us, as we undertake our very difficult task of trying 
to set us on a more sustainable fiscal path, to do whatever it takes to 
prioritize steady growth of our investments in science, technology, and 
STEM education. It is when our economy is hurting the most that we 
should be redoubling our efforts to innovate our way into a brighter 
future of new jobs, new technologies, and untold societal benefits.

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