Senate Bill Tackles U.S. High-Tech Competitiveness
A bill that would establish a Presidentially appointed council on innovation -- and set up a grant program to encourage agencies that fund research and science to allocate 3% of their R&D budgets to toward high-risk projects -- is expected to be introduced today (Thurs.). The legislation, which would also double National Science Foundation (NSF) basic research funding over 5 years and make permanent the research and experimentation tax credit, is sponsored by Sens. Ensign (R-Nev.) and Lieberman (D-Conn.).
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The measure was inspired by Council on Competitiveness (CoC) conclusions that macro-economic forces and financial constraints make innovation more urgent for growth than ever. American businesses, govt., workers and universities face unprecedented acceleration of global change, relentless pressure for short-term results and fierce competition from countries are betting on innovation themselves, the report said. Sens. Bingaman (D-N.M.), Alexander (R-Tenn.), DeWine (R-Ohio) and Lugar (R-Ind.) will cosponsor the bill.
The advisory council proposed in the legislation would develop a national innovation agenda for the public and private sectors. In concert with the Office of Management & Budget, the group would create and utilize metrics to assess the impact of existing and proposed laws that affect innovation, according to a bill summary obtained by Washington Internet Daily. The council would also help coordinate administrative agencies’ innovation efforts and submit an annual report to the president and Congress on how the govt. can best support innovation.
The bill would authorize NSF to fund innovation-based experimental learning at 500 secondary schools and 500 elementary or middle schools. NSF would be allotted $10 million for fiscal 2007 and the amount would increase to $20 million for 2008 and 2009. The legislation would expand educational programs in physical sciences and engineering by increasing funding for NSF graduate research fellowships. The bill authorizes $34 million a year for those programs 2007-2011.
The Defense Dept. (DoD) would be authorized to create a training program for undergraduate and graduate students that focuses on multidisciplinary learning. About $11 million a year over 5 years would sponsor up to 30 doctoral candidates, 30 master’s candidates and 20 undergraduates who would be encouraged to work for DoD for at least a decade, the bill summary said. The Commerce Dept. would be charged with starting up state-of-the-art advanced manufacturing systems and supporting up to 3 Pilot Test Beds of Excellence for the projects. The bill develops regional clusters or “hot spots” for technology innovation throughout the U.S. and requires that a guide to developing successful hot spots be published within a year of the bill’s enactment.
About 6.4 million college graduates emerge annually in China and India alone and over 950,000 of them are engineers, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chmn. Lugar said. By comparison, the U.S. turns out 1.3 million college graduates and 70,000 are engineers. “We live in a global society, and by spurring research and innovation in the U.S., we are also insuring that our companies stay competitive internationally and prosper domestically,” Lugar said.
House Science Committee Ranking Member Gordon (D- Tenn.), who last week introduced his own innovation legislation, lauded the bill. His HR-4434 and HR-4435 would enact the recommendations of a recent National Academies report on competitiveness. “The House and Senate bills each put into legislative language the major recommendations of the 2 major competitiveness studies of 2005,” Gordon said: “If we can enact and fund the best of both approaches, the U.S. will be well on our way to strengthening our economy and laying the foundation for long term competitiveness of U.S. workers and industry.” Committee Chmn. Boehlert (R-N.Y.) “fully supports the intent” of the competitiveness legislation, a spokesman told us. His office was still reviewing details of the Senate measure.
Most previous innovation bills have been directed at specific opportunities “to change the economic ecosystem of the country,” said CoC Senior Adviser Bill Booher. The Ensign-Lieberman bill incorporates more than 20 recommendations to govt., he said. “This is recognition on the part of Congress and others in town that these messages are important in their totality as well as in their individual pieces,” Booher said. Another positive aspect of the legislation is that it’s divided into sections that track the House and Senate committee system, so each panel can examine its piece and the whole bill, he said.