Democratic Caucus Innovative Agenda

DEMOCRATIC CAUCUS INNOVATIVE AGENDA -- (House of Representatives - February 15, 2006)

Mr. DELAHUNT. If the gentleman will yield for a moment, I want to welcome Congressman Miller and Congressman Holt to the 30-Something Group. The two of you have created, of course, a new definition of the 30-Something Group, but we will let that pass for the moment.

I think it is important to frame the issue that we have, you or Congressman Miller, detail for those of us here and those who are watching the international comparisons that you have expressed a concern about. Because I think we all hear terms like the global village and the global economy, and I think we recognize that that is the reality. But I know I hear figures, for example, where China is going to graduate a multiple of four or five times what this country will do in terms of students that have majored in the sciences and math.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I just want to show you the graph that we have here. I would like to welcome all the gray hairs to the 30-Something group. And you, obviously, Mr. Delahunt, the gentleman from Massachusetts, has been here for a while, so your gray hair is--

Mr. DELAHUNT. Really dark.

Mr. HOLT. The rest of us have been here for a while.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. You brought up the issue of global standards, and this is a chart that illustrates what you were talking about.

This is the students who will graduate with engineering degrees this year. In China, 600,000; India, 350,000; and the U.S., 70,000; and a good portion of the U.S. graduates will be foreign born who will probably return to one of these countries but fits under the U.S. statistics.

How are we going to possibly try to jump start our economy if we are not going to address this issue? Under our innovation proposal we are saying we want to create 100,000 new engineers and scientists in the next 4 years. We are limited to what we can do because this President and the Republican House and the Republican Senate have run up such tremendous budget deficit that we have to pay down. When we get in charge we will have to pay down the debt for a while and reduce the deficit, but we are focused and we have a way to pay for this 100,000 new engineers and scientists in the next 4 years.

Mr. DELAHUNT. I think these are the points we have to stress is that the trends, as you allude to, are running in the wrong direction; and I guess if we do not jump start with this initiative and work with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, we are going to suffer. The future of the 30-something generation is at risk here.

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Mr. DELAHUNT. And we want to fully fund, if the gentleman would yield, we want to fully fund the landmark legislation that was passed in a bipartisan way under the leadership of Mr. Miller and others and Republicans that was described as the No Child Left Behind Act.

What has happened to that, Mr. Miller?

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. What has happened to that is we made a promise to the country. We put it out in the bill. We negotiated with the President of the United States. And now what we find is in this budget the President is about $55 billion behind where he promised the country he would be on the funding of No Child Left Behind.

What is interesting is, while the President is creating those deficits in education funding, the private sector is telling us one of the key items in terms of economic growth in this country is to fully fund No Child Left Behind. They are not telling us, the Federal Government, to create 100,000 new scientists. They are saying we want to partner with you. We will employ these people in internships in summer jobs, in graduate jobs, full-time jobs. We want to work with you because it is so critical to the future growth of our companies.

These are some of the most successful companies in the history of the world. They are worried about whether or not America will be able to generate the workforce necessary so they can continue to do business in this country and we can have jobs in this country.

And what happens? The President says he wants to do it in the State of the Union. It is not in this budget, and the new majority leader slams the program as simply more spending. This was not our agenda. This was not partisan. We specifically laid this out as a challenge to this Congress, to 435 Members of Congress to take up what the private sector now has been telling them for years to do with the permanent extension of modernization of the R&D tax credits, the full funding of No Child Left Behind, the doubling of the National Science Foundation, maintaining the doubling of the National Institute of Health, to get broadband across this country so that economic growth can take place all over the country in the rural areas, people can start jobs, and education can be brought there.

And what do we find out? You just get a big partisan slam from the Republican side of the aisle. Most of the CEOs who helped us draft this program and consulted with us in Boston and in California and in Austin and in North Carolina are Republicans. But they can see the challenge of what China and India that Mr. Ryan just talked about. The trend line for American scientists and engineers is going down; in our most fierce competitors it is soaring up.

Mr. DELAHUNT. Can I suggest that what we will see with that trend line in terms of the increase of the number of scientists and mathematicians and computer personnel is those jobs, those well-paying jobs will also trend towards China and India and OPEC and all those countries that we are borrowing from today. And we discussed this last night, that we have borrowed from that, are funding those tax cuts that translate into 1 percent of Americans, the most affluent, receiving 40 percent of the benefits. We are putting ourselves on a trajectory that will put America permanently behind.

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