Senate Passes Competitiveness Act, 88-8

With the title America Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science Act, it isn’t surprising that S. 761 had 69 cosponsors in the U.S. Senate. The bill’s passage last night by an 88-8 vote by the full chamber sends an even stronger signal that the vast majority of the Senate has heard the message regarding the need for the federal government to be more aggressive in its support for science and technology.

 

This morning’s online issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education states “the Bush Administration had expressed ‘serious concerns’ about the measure” but indicates no specific veto threat has been issued.

 

S. 761, a 210-page bill, compiles the recommendations of the National Academies of Science’s report Rising Above the Gathering Storm, the President’s American Competes Initiative, and a few additional initiatives. The House of Representatives, by contrast, is considering several separate bills.

 

The Chronicle article by Jeffrey Brainard reports S. 761 creates 20 new federal programs. A quick scan of the bill by SSTI yields the following examples or highlights:

• Establishes the Innovation Acceleration Research Program – 8 percent of every federal research agency’s R&D budget would be set aside to provide grants to support “research projects that can yield results with far- or wide-ranging implications but are considered too novel or span too diverse a range of disciplines to fare well in the traditional peer review process.” Grants would be for research period of up to three years and renewed for another three-year period. Each federal research agency would be given 90 days after the Act becomes law to develop an implementation plan for meeting the program’s research and funding goals. Existing programs and initiatives could be incorporated into the implementation plans. That could mean an agency’s mandatory expenditures for programs like SBIR or STTR may count toward the 8 percent innovation goal.
• Creates a NASA Aeronautics Institute for Research. NASA would be required to move up to $160 million in unobligated fiscal year 2008 balances to supplement its spending on basic science and research, including the Explorer Program.
• Increases authorization levels for the National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST) by 33 percent over FY 2008-2011. The authorization level for the Manufacturing Extension Partnership would increase by $5 million per year – from $115 million in FY08 to $130 million in FY11. Language also is included defining a process for NIST to remove underperforming MEP centers from the program.
• Re-establishes the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Technology (EPSCoT) within NIST. The revived program, to be developed in cooperation with state and local TBED organizations, would provide matching grants to support TBED initiatives in states which historically have received less federal R&D funding than a majority of the states have received.
• Creates an Office of Science Math and Engineering Education Programs within the Department of Energy to oversee several initiatives and funding programs including grants to states to support specialty schools and summer institutes for science and math education.
• Increases authorization levels for the National Science Foundation (NSF) from $6.808 billion in FY08 to $11.2 billion in FY11. The bill requires a standard proportional share of NSF’s funding go to the Education and Human Resources directorate and the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). Authorizations levels for several programs also are increased or established.

The eight dissenting senators were Allard (R-CO), Coburn (R-OK), DeMint (R-SC), Graham (R-SC), Gregg (R-NH), Inhofe (R-OK), Kyl (R-AZ) and Thomas (R-WY).

 

S. 761 is available at: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:SN00761: