National Science Foundation for the Future Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of legislation reauthorizing funding for the National Science Foundation, HR 2225, the National Science Foundation for the Future Act.

I thank the Chair and Ranking Member for their leadership and hard work to put together this package. I'm proud to be a cosponsor of this bill to increase much-needed NSF funding while implementing new and creative strategies to improve STEM education and bolster our research and engineering infrastructure.

The NSF is a funder of more than 1800 institutions in the US. Given that a quarter of all federal funding is contributed through the Foundation, nearly every student in STEM has been in one way or another supported by the NSF through grants, fellowships, and research opportunities.

Despite continuing support from Congress, the reality is that the majority of grant proposals NSF receives are rejected and valuable research projects are never carried out.

During an era of tough global competition in the science and technology sector, it is so important that we find effective ways to boost scientific advancements and keep up with a quickly changing world.

This bill would authorize increased funding for the next five years, setting our students and institutions on a sure path to more successful American innovation.

In addition to these funding increases, my Science, Space, and Technology colleagues and I have identified important areas of interest that are addressed through new NSF programs and policies to better support our research efforts. Among others, this legislation finds creative ways to boost STEM education from PreK-12 education all the way through graduate school.

I am glad that this bill includes an amendment I introduced in committee to give emerging minority-serving institutions access to NSF funding through a merit-based process, to help them build their research capacity and help expose diverse student populations to STEM careers.

Though our STEM workforce is some of the most well-equipped in the world, our institutions continue to report drastically low numbers in workplace diversity.

Only one in 10 STEM workers are underrepresented people of color, a statistic that does not come close to the racial makeup of the United States.

These racial imbalances will not just go away with time. We must put forward serious and concrete solutions to ensure students of color have the same opportunities as their fellow peers to pursue their ambitions.

By directly funding these MSls, which includes HBCUs, tribal colleges, Hispanic-serving institutions, and even some community colleges, we can expand their research capabilities and offer people of color more opportunities for a career in science and engineering.

Other efforts that I authored which are included in this package include helping ensure NSF funding is helping support critical and groundbreaking water research that can help address local and global water challenges, an effort I authored to help ensure that community colleges, which often serve diverse communities, can also better engage with the NSF, and finally, an effort, with Rep. Young Kim, to address K-8 STEM education in our secondary schools. The earlier we can hook kids in STEM, the better.

This is a good bill and I urge my colleagues to support it

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