TMS Public and Governmental Affairs Resource Center

FROM THE FEDERATION OF MATERIALS SOCIETIES: After four days of debate, the Senate passed the America COMPETES Act by a vote of 88-8. The massive bill (294 pages) includes a five-year doubling of the National Science Foundation's (NSF) budget and a ten-year doubling of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Science. Senator Lamar Alexander, who managed the bill on the floor, said "This is the biggest piece of legislation this year, because it goes right to the heart of how we keep our high standard of living." Alexander continued, "This is pro-growth legislation. At a time when we are spending $2 billion a week in Iraq and $7 billion a week on our national debt, the America COMPETES Act is a small but key investment in growing the economy so it can continue to support our high standard of living and pay the bills for urgent national needs."

The White House has expressed "serious concerns" with sections of the bill, primarily on cost issues, but has not threatened a veto.

On April 24, the House passed two bills included in the Democrats' "Innovation Agenda." The primary bill, H.R.363, originally was crafted to be the Democrats' counterpart to U.S. President George W. Bush's American Competitiveness Initiative, doubling the combined R&D budgets of the NSF, the DOE Office of Science, lab programs at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and adding basic science research at NASA, as well as addressing science and engineering education. The R&D language was omitted from the bill in committee mark-up, with Bart Gordon (D-TN), chair of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science and Technology, and ranking Republican member Ralph Hall (R-TX) saying it would be taken up separately later in the year. H.R.363 as amended is entitled the "Sowing the Seeds through Science and Engineering Research Act." It would authorize awards to outstanding early-career researchers in academia and in nonprofit research organizations; provide graduate research assistantships; and establish a national coordination office to prioritize university and national research infrastructure needs. A related bill, H.R.362, the "10,000 Teachers, 10 Million Minds" Science and Math Scholarship Act, would encourage science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) faculty to collaborate with education faculty at universities on how to improve education for math and science teachers, and also provide scholarships for STEM students who commit to teaching math and science. The plan now is to combine these bills into one to go to conference with the Senate's COMPETES legislation—probably right after the Memorial Day recess.

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