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America COMPETES Passes House

1 June 2010
AGU Science Policy Alert 10-15

Last Friday, 28 May 2010, the House of Representatives passed the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 (H.R. 5116) by a vote of 262 to 150. The original COMPETES bill was passed in 2007 and was a bipartisan effort in response to the 2005 National Academy of Sciences’ report, Rising Above the Gathering Storm. The original bill authorized the doubling of federal funding for the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Science. The America COMPETES Act of 2007 also established Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E). It passed with a large majority in the House and a unanimous vote in the Senate. The authorization was set for three years, requiring reauthorization in 2010.

However, this year's reauthorization has not gone as smoothly as the original. Twice, the bill was sent back to the Committee on Science and Technology from the House floor for reworking. There were calls for slashing funding authorization levels as well as shortening the authorization period from five to three years. At one point, Democrats pulled the bill after Republicans pushed through an amendment that called for massive funding cuts to the bill as well as cracking down on government employees watching pornography on government computers. Many Democrats were fearful of voting against an “anti-pornography measure” during an election year and so voted in favor of the amendment.

Despite this odyssey, the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 passed the House, authorizing funding for the next five years at the following levels:

The bill has over 750 endorsers, including AGU, and over 100 Representatives who co-sponsored the legislation. In a press release, the Chairman of the House Committee on Science and Technology, Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.), stated, “Research and education lead to innovation. Innovation leads to economic development and good paying jobs and the revenue to pay for more research. And as private firms under-invest in research and development because the returns are too far off in the future, there is a clear and necessary role of government to help our nation keep pace with the rest of the world.”

The America COMPETES bill will be sent next to the Senate, where it will await passage.

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