America Competes Act

Floor Speech

AMERICA COMPETES ACT -- (Senate - April 25, 2007)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

AMENDMENT NO. 914

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I come to the floor to offer an amendment that I am going to withdraw. I ask unanimous consent, if necessary, to set the pending amendment aside and offer my amendment.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The clerk will report.

The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Iowa [Mr. GRASSLEY] proposes an amendment numbered 914.

The amendment is follows:
(Purpose: To increase the fee to be paid by employers of H-1B nonimmigrants and to set aside 25 percent of such fees to improve programs and projects for gifted and talented students)

At the appropriate place, insert the following:

SEC. __. H-1B VISA EMPLOYER FEE.

(a) In General.--Section 214(c)(9)(B) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1184(c)(9)(B)) is amended by striking ``$1,500'' and inserting ``$2,000''.

(b) Use of Additional Fee.--Section 286 of such Act (8 U.S.C. 1356) is amended by adding at the end the following:

``(w) Gifted and Talented Students Education Account.--

``(1) IN GENERAL.--There is established in the general fund of the Treasury a separate account, which shall be known as the `Gifted and Talented Students Education Account'. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, there shall be deposited as offsetting receipts into the account 25 percent of the fees collected under section 214(c)(9)(B).

``(2) USE OF FEES.--Amounts deposited into the account established under paragraph (1) shall remain available to the Secretary of Education until expended for programs and projects authorized under the Jacob K. Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Act of 2001 (20 U.S.C. 7253 et seq.).''.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, in his bestselling book, ``The World is Flat,'' Thomas Friedman discusses the challenges of globalism using the metaphor of the world getting flatter to describe how the breaking down of international barriers to the movement of goods, services, people, and ideas creates an intensely competitive global environment. I liked it so much, and it has so much wisdom in it.

In chapter 8, entitled ``This Is Not a Test,'' Friedman says, ``If this moment has any parallel in American history, it is the height of the cold war, around 1957, when the Soviet Union leaped ahead of America in the space race by putting up the Sputnik satellite.''

Not coincidentally, the Congress passed the National Defense Education Act the following year, 1958.

That act really started Federal Government involvement in education.

It was designed primarily to jumpstart education in math, science, and modern foreign languages so we would be able to match and exceed the achievements of the Soviets and win the cold war.

According to Thomas Friedman, to meet the challenges of what he calls ``flatism'' will require, ``as comprehensive, energetic, and focused a response as did meeting the challenge of communism.''

As I mentioned, Federal education policy started with an urgency to support and encourage students to excel in fields that were considered to be of major importance to national security during the cold war.

Subsequently, Federal education policy became concerned with equity between students of different socioeconomic classes as part of President Johnson's war on poverty.

Both of these dual focuses of Federal education policy, excellence and equity, are legitimate and important.

However, we sometimes seem to ping pong between the two, forgetting about one in favor of the other.

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 deepened the existing focus of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act on making sure that all students have an adequate education.

Now while we don't have a single event like Sputnik to bring home to us the current challenges we face, there is a growing recognition that, for the sake of our future economic competitiveness, we cannot neglect the importance of challenging and encouraging students to excel so that they will some day be the scientists, engineers, and researchers that will create the innovations that will drive our economy.

This means that we must not only help underachieving students to achieve at grade level, but we must encourage high ability students to achieve to their full potential.

For years, I have been leading the charge to do a better job unlocking the tremendous potential that lies in gifted and talented young Americans. They represent a national resource that, unfortunately, too often goes untapped.

Gifted students learn faster and to a greater depth than other students and often look at the world differently than other students. As a result, it takes a great deal more to keep them challenged and stimulated.

If they are not sufficiently stimulated, they often learn to get by with minimum effort and adopt poor learning habits that can prevent them from achieving to their potential.

In fact, many gifted and talented students underachieve or even drop out of school.

Jan and Bob Davidson, from the majority leader's home State, wrote an important book called ``Genius Denied'' about how, nationwide, we are letting gifted students fall through the cracks and wasting their potential.

The Belin-Blank Center in my home State of Iowa produced a report titled, ``A Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America's Brightest Students.''

This situation must be reversed if America is to retain its competitive edge which, obviously, is the purpose of the very good legislation before us, led by Senators Bingaman and Alexander.

I am glad that the American competitiveness bill currently before the Senate recognizes the need to do a better job of helping students to excel in fields like math, science, and critical foreign languages.

However, if we want to go toe to toe with countries that place a very high value on learning, we must do more to support and encourage the best and brightest American students.

My amendment would increase the fee employers pay for H1-B visas for highly skilled foreign workers to immigrate to the United States and to use that additional funding for the Jacob Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Act.

This is the only Federal program that provides funding to support programming to meet the unique learning needs of our brightest, most promising students.

It funds a national research center that produces invaluable research in instructional strategies that can truly tap into the potential of gifted students as well as a small grant program to encourage such research nationwide.

The Javits Act also contains a grant program to encourage greater focus in the States on meeting the needs of gifted learners, although it has been funded at levels that severely limit its effectiveness. The quality or even existence of services for gifted students varies widely among our 50 States.

While the Federal Government should not assume the primary responsibility for funding gifted and talented education, just as Congress provides funding to augment State efforts to provide an equitable education for disadvantaged students and students with disabilities, the Federal Government still has a vital national interest in encouraging State efforts to fully develop the gifts and talents of American youth.

The proposal that is in my amendment before the Senate would essentially charge a fee to those investing in talent from abroad and use it to invest in talent for the future here at home.

Doesn't it make sense if we are using our educational system to bring students or workers over here to train them better--they take advantage of our higher education system; they take advantage of our educational system generally--wouldn't it be wise to use those resources so we can enhance the opportunity we have for our own gifted and talented students right here in the United States?

We have to put more attention on education. Now, I am offering a Federal program, I know, or the expansion of a Federal program, and funding it in a
way that is not appreciated by those who will soon be involved in the immigration bill that is going to be before us. They have asked I not offer this amendment, and that is why I said I would offer it and withdraw it.

But I think this is a very important approach we must use if we are going to make adequate use of our own talented and our own gifted students right here at home--the homebred students whom we have--as opposed to thinking we have to rely, in the 21st century, in this great country of America, upon the talent of foreign lands.

Now, there is a lot of talent in foreign lands that if we can draw upon it, we ought to draw upon it. But the fact we have to do that, or we think we are willing to submit to that sort of an approach, to advance the competitiveness of our economy in this globalization we are involved in, is a sad commentary.

That is why I have offered this amendment. I want to say even though I am withdrawing it, I am doing it with the idea I am not giving up on this effort. I am going to advance this effort in other appropriate places in the legislative process in the future.

Let me suggest, for those who maybe want to fight it, it is going to be in the near future. For those who maybe like it, would they join me in this effort to get this job done?

Having emphasized competitiveness and everything involved in it, I want to say my philosophy of improving education in this country is not rested only upon Federal programs. I think four basic things are at the base of changing or improving our educational system, and they do not involve the expenditure of more money. It basically is a societal attitude that needs to be changed.

No. 1, we have to think in terms that there is nothing wrong with homework. There are too many parents, too many teachers in this country who think, somehow, we have to eliminate homework. Secondly, we have to have the schools in this country and the parents involved think that education and book learning is more important than sports; thirdly, that weekends are not something just for leisure. Weekends have to be used for study as well. And lastly--and the one thing that is most important--parents, to a greater degree than they are presently, have to be involved and show interest in the education of their own kids, and supporting the great teachers of this country who are there doing both the job of parenting as well as the job of teaching.

Those societal changes are going to do more to enhance education and the competitiveness of our economic system than anything we can do by passing any Federal program. But I think we can enhance a lot of programs, and this bill is a good step in that direction. I wish I had been able to convince the people on the Judiciary Committee that we ought to advance this amendment here at this time because it is very associated with the competitiveness of our society and the purposes of this bill.

AMENDMENT NO. 914 WITHDRAWN

But I ask unanimous consent to withdraw the amendment.

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