US Senate releases possible successor to America COMPETES
- PDF / 291,003 Bytes
- 2 Pages / 585 x 783 pts Page_size
- 48 Downloads / 153 Views
US Senate releases possible successor to America COMPETES
G
overnmental investment in science has long been a means to achieving political goals such as increasing global competitiveness, advancing economic stability, improving public health, and enhancing national security. Many scientists—materials and otherwise—depend on government funds to support themselves as well as graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, to finance their research, and to pay for equipment and facilities. The nexus in the United States between science and policy means that science funding, especially for basic sciences, depends heavily on the legislative process. A new bill to authorize funding and provide policy goals for basic sciences research was introduced in the US Senate and passed favorably through the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee in June. The American Innovation and Competitiveness Act (S. 3084) is the product of a bipartisan group of senatowrs, led by Cory Gardner (R-Col.) and Gary Peters (D-Mich.), tasked with drafting a successor to the America COMPETES (Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science) Act.
For nearly a decade, US investment in basic sciences had been governed by the America COMPETES Act. First passed in 2007 and reauthorized in 2010, COMPETES garnered broad bipartisan support in Congress and provided a significant boost to the basic sciences research budget as it was spread across the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science. Although appropriations never met the legislative goal of doubling US investment in basic sciences, COMPETES has widely been hailed as a success in both the government and science communities because it was responsible for the establishment of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), it created programs to develop science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, and it provided for a significant increase in the overall basic sciences research budget. Despite the success of COMPETES, it was allowed to expire during a time of significant congressional turmoil just before the US government shutdown in October 2013. Since then, there has been no legislation providing a roadmap or driving investment in basic sciences research, leaving the budget entirely in the hands of the appropriators. The American Innovation and Competitiveness Act is by no means the first bill to attempt to fill the void left by the expiration of COMPETES—over the last two congresses, several bills have been introduced in both the Senate and the House. These bills include the Frontiers in Innovation, Research, Science, and Technology (FIRST) Act of 2014; the Department of Energy Research and Development Act of 2014 (also known as the Enabling Innovation for Science,
Technology, and Energy in America— EINSTEIN—Act of 2014); the America Competes Reauthorization Acts of 2014 and 2015 (offered by House Democrats); and t
Data Loading...
