Business and Academic Coalition Urge Congress to Reauthorize Landmark Competitiveness Bill
A group of leading universities, businesses, and trade associations has written a letter to key Senators urging them to reauthorize the America COMPETES Act and provide the investments necessary to secure America's economic competitiveness.
A coalition of 250 universities, trade associations, and leading businesses has written a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell urging them to quickly pass a reauthorization of the America COMPETES act before the end of the current Congressional session.
COMPETES was originally passed by with bipartisan support in 2007, in response to the release of the National Academies Report, "Rising Above the Gathering Storm," which documented a sharp decline in U.S. economic competitiveness, particularly in education, science and technology-intensive industries.
The Act authorized a number of new initiatives and funding for various programs, particularly for science, research, and science, technology, engineering and math education (STEM), including a doubling of the research budgets of three critical science and technology agencies over seven years time: the DOE Office of Science, National Science Foundation, and the National Institutes for Standards and Technology.
Since the law's enactment in 2007, competitive pressures on the U.S. economy have grown even greater. A recently released update to the original "Gathering Storm" report concludes that things have only worsened since the publication of the original study in 2005:
America's competitive position in the world now faces even greater challenges, exacerbated by the economic turmoil of the last few years and by the rapid and persistent worldwide advanced of education, knowledge, innovation, investment, and industrial infrastructure. Indeed the governments of many other countries in Europe and Asia have themselves acknowledged and aggressively pursued many of the key recommendations of Rising Above the Gathering Storm, often more vigorously than has the U.S.
The new letter--which counts Microsoft, Applied Materials, and leading schools like Stanford University among its signatories--represents a consensus view among the U.S. academic, business, and research community that federal action is needed now to provide long-term investments to help secure the nation's global economic leadership.
In June, the Breakthrough Institute, along with ITIF and the Brookings Institution, detailed ways in which Congress could use the COMPETES reauthorization to strengthen competitiveness in the clean energy industry, which is widely viewed to be an important and strategic growth industry in the 21st century.
Securing economic competitiveness over the long-term will require major, sustained federal investment. In the wake of last week's elections, such investments are even more in doubt as the federal deficit takes primacy for many anti-government conservatives that now wield more power in Congress. But, as the 250 industry and academic signatories write, the choice between investment and deficit reduction is a false one:
Continued strong funding of basic research and STEM education programs will help ensure the economic growth needed to restore long-term fiscal strength and national prosperity.
Far from contributing to the nation's debt, investments in education, technology innovation, and competitiveness are an essential component of any responsible and effective strategy to reduce the federal budget deficit and return America to an era of sustained economic growth.
Let's hope Congress gets the message.
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