“I am pleased to support passage of S. 3084, which represents a bipartisan, bicameral agreement to update and expand on parts of the America Competes Act, first enacted in 2007 and reauthorized in 2010.
“I did not always believe we would arrive at this agreement. The partisan and widely criticized House-passed version of an America Competes Act Reauthorization (H.R. 1806) was miles apart from the widely supported bipartisan Senate bill. The version of S. 3084 before us today represents what we can achieve when all parties agree to listen to each other, and perhaps more importantly, to the experts in the agencies and the stakeholder communities.
“This bill is not a Competes reauthorization in every sense, so I believe it’s appropriate that it has a different title, the American Innovation and Competitiveness Act (AICA). AICA, unlike Competes, does not contain any recommended funding levels, and I believe that is a missed opportunity to send a signal to U.S. scientists and the world about how much we value and need a vibrant U.S. science and technology enterprise. This bill also does not include important manufacturing programs at the Department of Commerce that were included in earlier version of the Senate bill, or provisions for the Office of Science at the Department of Energy that were in the original Competes bills.
“However, even with those reservations about what is not in the bill, I think we can all celebrate the many good provisions that are in the bill. We came to agreement on fair and reasonable accountability and transparency provisions for the National Science Foundation, appropriately exercising our oversight responsibilities while being thoughtful about unintended consequences. S. 3084 includes important updates to the Networking and Information Technology R&D (NITRD) program, something we’ve been trying to do for years. The bill also addresses many of the administrative burdens on research and researchers that we can all agree reduce the efficiency of our limited research dollars without effectively increasing accountability. S. 3084 includes a bill authored by Rep. Don Beyer to remove unnecessary barriers to agencies’ ability to develop and run prize competitions for important science and technology challenges. The bill, thanks in part to the long-term support of Rep. Dan Lipinski, also codifies NSF’s very successful I-Corps program. S. 3084 also incorporates a bill authored by Rep. Paul Tonko to authorize and encourage the use of citizen science and crowd sourcing projects at science agencies. The bill clarifies and strengthens NIST’s essential role as the federal leader in standards development. There are also many good STEM education and training provisions in this bill, reinforcing the very important role of our world-leading science agencies in contributing to science literacy and to a skilled STEM workforce for the jobs of tomorrow, and indeed today. Those are just a few highlights of the many good provisions in the American Innovation and Competitiveness Act.
“I want to thank Chairman Smith, Chairman Thune, Ranking Member Nelson, Senators Gardner and Peters, and the many other Members in the House and Senate who contributed their good ideas to the bill.”
