Unions
Floor Speech
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Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, I wanted to commend and thank the Senator from Mississippi for his hard work. I have the great pleasure of working with him on the Commerce Committee, and I can tell you we are here tonight--not at this very moment at 10 o'clock but at the advent of getting to this moment where we can proceed to such important legislation--thanks to him and his great work as the ranking member on the Commerce Committee.
I want to personally thank him for that because I think the Senator described the actual process pretty well. We have two colleagues who have had a lot of foresight and thought about this issue--Senator Schumer, who for a long time has discussed America's competitiveness and what we need to do about it, particularly as it relates to shifting change and demographics on a lot of foreign policy issues, and our colleague from Indiana, who has also in the last 2 years put a lot of work into thinking about the future of AI competitiveness, manufacturing, and what we need to do to be competitive in the United States of America. So the Schumer-Young proposal is not new to this Congress. It was proposed before. And so this is work for many, many, many months I do think, as Senator Wicker stated, that we should thank them for their foresight.
I think, depending on what part of America you are from, you have a perspective about the economy of the future and how we are going to compete. For me, I am very blessed to represent the State of Washington with much innovation and really longtime work to get to the point where we are today.
One thing I would like to depart with is that we didn't get to the Northwest economy overnight. A lot of thought went into the education system and the workforce training issues. Sometimes I just say we are blessed to have people there who stayed and innovated with the companies that they innovated in.
Where we are today represents decades and decades of work, but it also gives you a little bit of foresight into the importance of research and development. The University of Washington is a leader in research and development with NSF and with predecessors here in the Senate who--Warren Magnuson specifically--focused on both NIH and NSF dollars. With the size of an institution with 40,000 students, it is also a premier research institution.
So that has given us a good footing for the future, the work they have done and the advent of Microsoft and so many companies with executives who then also put more into the University of Washington so we could grow our skill set and keep investing. So it is a long-term investment.
Our colleague from Indiana and our colleague from New York basically challenged us to think about what is our R&D investment for the United States of America and are we competing. Senator Wicker knows that this is something the Commerce Committee twice before had considered, in 2007 and 2010. He said: By God, we are going to double the R&D budget, and we are going to compete.
Believe it or not, it was George Bush as President who first authored a report that said America needs to have a more aggressive competitiveness policy. He was probably looking to Asia and seeing what was happening and saying we needed to do more.
The advent of that is, we started down the right road. We tried to make a commitment. We didn't completely follow through because of the downturn in the economy. Instead of doubling that R&D budget in a short period of time--5 to 7 years, and then we thought 11 years--well, it has turned into 22 years, and we really haven't quite done the job.
To our two colleagues, I thank them. I thank the Senator from Indiana. I certainly thank the Senator from New York because I think that without his continued heft behind this issue, saying that it is a priority--I told him he must have read Andy Grove's book ``Only the Paranoid Survive'' because he has clearly adopted that attitude as it relates to America's competitiveness and making sure we make investments in the semiconductor area--an area he knows well. He really does believe it needs the R&D investment and focus. I applaud him because really, without his major push, I don't think we would be here on the Senate floor tonight.
As my colleague Senator Wicker said, this bill includes a massive investment in the NSF budget and in the DOE budget, which is kind of tandem. That is what has happened every time we have had this discussion. NSF and DOE, the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation, have been our key tools for research and development in key areas that keep manufacturing competitive, keep our energy sector competitive, and keep our technology competitive. They have been major investments.
The challenge that we faced is that we also were asking ourselves-- besides trying to double our investment in these areas, we also said we want to get more out of the investment we have today. We want to basically get more out of the technology that we are creating and get it translated into more innovation right away.
This legislation does that by creating a new Tech Director at the National Science Foundation to, if you will--we have basic research, applied research--to have translational or user research to more quickly aid in the adoption of technologies that will help our economy grow. That was a pretty big step in the legislation.
Of course, Senator Wicker and I believe that investing in the workforce that we would need with STEM education was also a priority. So there was a pretty big, hefty boost in science, technology, engineering, and math in this underlying bill, including saying that women and minorities in the sciences have to be a priority and we have to do more to encourage that.
I want to thank Senator Wicker especially for his insistence on a key provision that I think is also important. Part of this is saying that we need to be competitive and increase the R&D budget. Part of it is saying that we need to have more translational science, get more out of our universities, and have them protect their intellectual property better. But this is also about having all of America better prepared for the economy of the future and compete.
Senator Wicker said: I want 20 percent of this bill, the legislation--the R&D dollars to go to States that are called EPSCoR- qualifying States. They are regions of the country where we have identified that we need to strengthen our research capacity. So the 25 States that are qualified as EPSCoR States know, and it is a program that has been built around strengthening their research and development. Senator Wicker's insistence on this provision will help those States grow their research muscle for the future, their research ecosystem, strengthen their universities, and strengthen the dollars that go to them. I applaud him for that dedication.
The head of the NSF, the National Science Foundation, will tell you that our motto for this bill overall or our goal as a nation is to be for innovation everywhere, connected to opportunities everywhere, connected to universities. With the provision that Senator Wicker proposed, we are literally taking another step towards building that infrastructure everywhere. If you are in Fairbanks, AK, or you are in Mississippi or some other part of the country, those institutions will get an extra focus and push to get more research and development.
I like to say that you never know what is going to come out of that. You never know what is going to come out of one individual at one institution with a great idea that really charges forward in a new area. So I think it is a great provision of the legislation.
We have, I think, with the other provisions our colleagues worked on--Senator Warner and Senator Cornyn--on trying to, in the last NDAA bill, make us crisply focused on the immense competition that we face in the semiconductor industry, we really have, I think, before us the shape of the debate about America's competition. We are not afraid to put research dollars on the table as a country. Our Nation believes in that more than other nations. Our people believe that is what has made our Nation great, and they know that if we keep making that investment, we are going to grow jobs and the economy. So we have made that commitment in this legislation.
We have made the commitment to diversify our research, to get more out of our research and translate that faster. We have made a commitment to skill and educate a workforce, not only with the diversity we like to see in science but the geographic diversity we like to see as well.
We didn't spend a lot of time talking about what is in here for the Department of Energy. It is not specific as to what the Department of Energy will do for this, but it is safe to say the Department of Energy's innovation program and ARPA-E are basically trying to help us with the next generation of energy technology. But it also includes carbon sequestration and a whole variety of other areas, nuclear power and a whole translation of various energy sciences.
I really believe we will be working together. I believe DOE, NSF, our National Laboratories, our universities--the collaboration that we heard about in committee will be the kind of growth that comes out of this legislative effort.
To many Americans at home, all I can say is, we are making another investment in American know-how, the ability to use our scientific skills to help create the next generation of work and effort.
I, too, want to thank our staff. I certainly on my side want to thank our staff director David Strickland and Melissa Porter, Richard-Duane Chambers, Mary Guenther, and Stacy Baird.
I, too, want to thank the Senator's staff--John Keast, Cheri Pascoe, and James Mazol--because they have been a great team to work with.
I also want to thank, on Senator Schumer's staff--Mike Kuiken and Jon Cardinal--because they have been a constant source in all of this.
Of course I thank all the floor team who have been out here working on this. I know there are other people from this room.
I also thank Senator Wicker's staff, Crystal Tully and Steven Wall.
On my staff, I thank Jonathan Hale and David Marten and Amit Ronen, who worked on a lot of the energy stuff that was part of this underlying stuff.
I am sure we will have more to thank later. This is a wish by Senator Wicker that this would be the wrap-up. I know we are not quite at the wrap-up, but we are hoping that we will hotline a managers' proposal. I hope our colleagues will look at that. I hope that our colleagues will allow us to move forward on that. If they are not going to let us move forward on that, I wish they would come down to the floor and tell us that. It is time to move forward on getting the rest of this legislation through the Senate and move to whatever discussions we are going to have with the House.
It is safe to say this represents a lot of work by a lot of people. In the committee, I think we processed before we even got to the legislation something like 52 amendments prior to the actual day. With the substitute, I think we processed another 40 or 50 amendments. I think we had dozens of rollcall votes. That was all in committee.
Out here, we processed lots of legislation to be part of the managers' amendment. It is safe to say that practically every Member of the U.S. Senate has had some part or discussion or legislative suggestions that are a part of this bill. It is, as Senator Wicker said, a very regular order process, albeit quick at times.
I think we have a lot to do. We have been very challenged as a Congress to deal with a lot of issues--COVID specifically--but the competition is not waiting and the competition has different tools. We have a different government and we believe in collaboration, and collaboration, yes, takes a little more time.
I think it is going to strengthen us in our ability to compete because we are going to be on the same page about what we need to get done. I hope our colleagues will indulge us to move ahead. I hope that we can get this next managers' amendment and other things voted on very soon.
Quorum Call
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Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I know my colleague knows the Commerce process, knows that we went through a very elaborate process in Commerce, and I know that he has amendments in this proposal. Some of these have been available since 11, 12 hours ago. People have been talking about these amendments. So it is time for us to honor the request of our colleagues to move forward on a managers' package worked out by the leaders and the relevant chair and ranking member, so I object to the modification.
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Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, my colleague also knows the work of the Commerce Committee because he is on the Commerce Committee, and this bill came out of the Commerce Committee 24 to 4. So I know the Senator knows the work of that legislation.
The remarkable aspect of this legislation is that it did compile product from various committees, and those committees did their regular order process. In fact, this process for the last several--you could say 24 or 48 hours was held up because one committee's product wasn't considered, and your side said it wanted it considered before we could move forward. And, guess what, we accommodated that.
So we now have a work product that is, I think, ready to be voted on--again, in a bipartisan fashion, working together with both leaders and with committee chairs and the ranking members.
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Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President.
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Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, to recap this process, I respect every Member's right to express their opinion. That is what regular order is about.
In committee, we had 233 amendments filed. My colleague from Utah filed 130 of those. So, yes, the Commerce Committee staff worked through 130 of Senator Lee's amendments. That is a lot of amendments to work through. I guarantee you, I am sure we probably would have liked a little more crystalized concerns and opposition than 130-plus amendments. We ended up putting 14 of them in the managers' amendment. We ended up voting on five more during the committee process. So, yes, I could have been frustrated with that, but we worked through those amendments.
Now there is this process on the floor where my colleague is concerned and upset over 900 pages that he voted to accept. The moment to be concerned about those 900 pages, he could have objected, but he didn't but now wants to revisit that decision.
So I can propound many requests here, and we can continue to discuss these, but our colleagues--our leadership on both sides of the aisle have worked through a process of regular order with our colleagues on a host of 36 different amendments where--I am looking at this list--many of them are bipartisan, and I think those Members deserve to have a vote on their amendments. Amendment No. 1527 Withdrawn
Mr. President, I withdraw amendment 1527.
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