Press Conference with Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN); Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX); Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT); Senator John Cornyn (R-TX): Education, Research, Skilled Workers and the Economy

Statement

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SEN. ALEXANDER: Good morning.

Republican senators believe strongly that an important part of a pro-growth economy is keeping our brainpower advantage. That brainpower advantage since World War II has helped to create most of our good new jobs, and means that in the United States we, year in and year out, produce about 30 percent of the world's wealth for about 5 percent of the people, which are the people that live in our country.

Today, we want to talk about three specific proposals Republican senators have, which we -- which have a great deal of bipartisan support and we believe deserve more, and we believe the Senate should act on this year. Senator Hutchison, who's long been a leader in advanced placement tests for children and in terms of science and teaching, will talk about education and research. Senator Hatch will talk about research and development tax credit. Senator Cornyn will discuss more skilled workers from other countries and giving them a chance to stay here in the United States when they are here legally, and help create jobs in this country instead of in their home countries. And then we'll be glad to answer questions.

Thank you. Senator Hutchison.

SEN. HUTCHISON: Thank you. Well, I think as we are looking at the long term for our country, we've got to make sure that we are educating our workforce and that we are keeping the creativity that has brought America to be the leader in the world economies. But we have to make sure that we are educating our young people for the future, and that's what the America Competes Act is attempting to do. And now what we're trying to do as Republicans is make sure that we fund the America Competes Act.

For instance, the Center for the Study of Teaching says the most powerful predictor of student achievement in the science, technology, engineering and math courses is if the students have had a teacher who graduates in the core curriculum with a teacher certification on the side. So we have grant funds in the bill called Teachers for a Competitive Tomorrow that will encourage students to take the core curriculum and get their teacher certificates with their electives. This is modeled after a program at the University of Texas called UTeach. We think that is the model for the future, and we are now going to attempt to fund the grants for that program.

Secondly, in rising above the gathering storm, the report that was put out by the National Academies, chaired by Norm Augustine, it showed that U.S. students are placing near the bottom now in math and physics -- 20th among all nations that are rated for the number of 24- year-olds who hold degrees in science or engineering -- and compared to India and China, a decline in the number of American scientists and engineers.

So we want to address that by putting our qualified teachers in place in elementary -- in secondary education, and then having those students go on to graduate and, hopefully, encourage them to teach. Part of that is also funding for advanced-placement courses in our underserved schools. We know that if the teachers are teaching for advanced placement credits that they are getting the very top education in these core courses that we -- where we need to have better qualified students going in to college; that's engineering, technology, math, science. And those are the areas that we are going to try to address by funding the initiative that we took last year with the America Competes Act.

SEN. ALEXANDER: Senator Hatch.

SEN. HATCH: I was very disappointed last year that we did not get the research and development tax credit through the Hatch-Baucus amendment, nor did we get any of the real extenders through. And this is a very detrimental thing to our country because other countries are starting to figure out the incentives for research and development, and they are going ahead of us in some respects. We still have a robust research and development and scientific community, but without the research credit, we're not going to be competitive in the future if we don't watch what we're doing.

Hatch-Baucus does expand the research tax credit, and I'm hopeful that Chairman Baucus can get it in. One of the reasons why we have such a difficult time is because of the idiotic budget process we have around here that -- that means that you've got to either cut something or increase taxes. PAYGO to Democrats means increasing taxes. They're never going to cut anything. To us, if we do it, it should be finding the money in some other program that isn't nearly as useful or as good. But the fact of the matter is we've got to be able to give the consistency to the business community, the scientific community to know that that credit's going to be there permanently rather than just every year.

We've had 13 times where the research and development tax credit has expired. So you can imagine how difficult it is for countries -- for companies -- scientific companies to expand and to -- and to rely on the credit and to be able to think in a forward manner about how to make this system work without us doing it on a permanent basis. But if we can't do it on a permanent basis because of what I call an idiotic budget process, then it seems to me we do need to at least get it up every year and out every year, regardless of whether we increase taxes or not.

It ought to be done because we have to remain competitive. What we do in this country is very important. Our scientific community is critical, and this is critical to them.

SEN. ALEXANDER: Senator Cornyn.

SEN. CORNYN: Well, I'm pleased to be here with my colleagues, talking about our pro-growth, optimistic, global competitiveness agenda. And I specifically want to talk about the fact that, in addition to the American workers that we need to train or those skilled in math and science, technology, engineering, so-called stem field that Senator Hutchison talked about that we've addressed to the America Competes Act, but we still are going to have a need for workers from other countries, particularly those who are educated at our institutions of higher education here in America.

We have -- one of our greatest national resources is our world- class universities and colleges in the United States. These attract students from all around the world. And what happens is, because of a shortage of visas -- particularly H-1B visas that Congress needs to update -- many of these students, once they get a degree in engineering, math, science, technology, are required to go home to their country of origin rather than allowing us in America in our best interest to determine whether some should stay here and supplement the highly skilled workforce that we need here in the United States in order to compete in a global environment.

And it's important because there's a lot of misconceptions and misunderstanding about the H-1B visa program.

Some have said, well, it just allows you to hire foreign workers at lower wages and benefits than American workers. Actually, that's illegal; you cannot do it as a matter of law. And this is about supplementing, not replacing, the American workforce by, frankly, using those students whose educations in many instances American taxpayers have already subsidized in our colleges and universities, at least to some extent.

It's also significant for the H-1B visa, for every one issued, the company that receives it has to pay a fee, and these fees are administered by the Department of Labor and have provided tens of millions of dollars for scholarships for American students to improve their skills in math, science, engineering and technology. That's an important benefit of the H-1B visa program to American students, particularly those who need to enhance their job skills.

So the only alternative, really, if we can't grow as many domestic scholars as we need -- scientists, mathematicians and engineers, which we're trying to do through the America Competes Act -- if we can't supplement the deficit by attracting more highly skilled foreign students and allowing them to stay here to supplement that workforce to meet our need, the only alternative is for American companies to ship those jobs offshore, to send them to other countries where they can find a qualified workforce. And it's more important -- it's not just a one-to-one ratio, because for every H-1B visa holder in America it's estimated that that creates five additional jobs. So there's a lot of economic activity that we'd like to see generated right here in America rather than in other countries by a sensible H- 1B visa policy that enhances our global competitiveness.

SEN. ALEXANDER: Thank you, Senator Cornyn.

So we Republicans talk a lot about the family budget. One good way to keep the family budget in good shape is to have a good job and to keep the job from going overseas. So Senator Hatch has talked about our support for research and development tax credits so we can keep jobs from going overseas. Senator Hutchison has talked about our efforts to grow jobs here so that we have more highly skilled Americans. And Senator Cornyn's talked about our proposals to basically in-source brainpower. One good way to keep from outsourcing jobs from America is to in-source brainpower: when these skilled workers come here and researchers, they don't come here to take jobs, they come here to create jobs.

The final thing is we support President Bush's recommendation for an 18 percent increase in funding for the Office of Science and the National Science Foundation. That's also an important part of the America Competes Act's proposal that we double funding for those major science organizations over the next seven years.

Now we'll be glad to take any questions to the senators.

Q Senator Cornyn?

SEN. CORNYN: Yes, sir.

Q Could you explain what the legislation does in terms of the H-1B?

SEN. CORNYN: Sure. Well, as you know, there's now a 65,000 cap on H-1B visas because of Congress' failure to act. It would actually -- this legislation would recapture 150,000 unused H-1B visas that have been distributed over a three-year period. So in the past, if they've been unused, we'd recapture them up to the tune of 150,000. It would actually increase the fee from $500 to $1,500 that would have to be paid, thus creating more funds for training of American workers to enhance their skills. And it would increase the H-1B visa level from 65,000 to 115,000, and a number of other provisions as well.

This bill has been -- as Senator Alexander said, this is -- these are proposals that we support as Republicans, but they also enjoy significant bipartisan support. Senator Lieberman is a cosponsor, along with Senator Gregg and others, and Senator Hagel I believe. But this is something that I think everywhere you go travel the country and you talk to our innovators, the people that actually create new technology to keep America at the forefront in this global competition, they say they don't have the qualified workforce. And we've got to get that by a combination of growing local talent and allowing a reasonable H-1B visa program to exist.

SEN. HUTCHISON: Could I add one other point?

One of the Wall Street firms said that they had job offers out to 200 graduates of Ivy League schools in America who were foreign-born, but foreign students in America, and only 60 of those could get the work visas to stay in the United States. All the rest of them went to work in London for the houses in London and the New York -- and the London Stock Exchange. So you can see that we're having a brain drain by not having enough capacity for these highly skilled college graduates from our best schools, who have gotten the job offers but are not qualified to stay in the United States.

SEN. HATCH: If I could add something, we educate about 60,000 engineers a year in this country, about half of whom are foreign. Compare that to China; it's between 150,000 and 300,000 a year.

Now, what we do is we educate them here and they get their masters and PhDs here, and then we -- and they want to stay -- (chuckles) -- because of our robust technological growth, and they're shipped out. Now we have tremendous competition from China and from India. We're not opposed to having competition from them, but it seems kind of stupid for us to not retain these people here who have these type of degrees and these types of abilities to contribute, especially in the high-tech world, where they produce very, very high- class jobs and well-paying jobs for people in this country. And as Senator Cornyn has said, each one produces perhaps the ability to come up with five or six more jobs. So it just seems pennywise and pound foolish for us to continue under the current process.

And I've heard some of our friends on the other side say, well, it's unfair to allow them to stay here just because they're highly educated and not treat everybody else the same way. Well, it may be unfair, but it's in the best interests of our country so that we don't lose it out in the competitive world and in the high-tech world as well, which we are losing out.

Q Later today, the president's going to be coming out with global warming principles and talk about the goal of reducing emissions. Do you think this is something that Republicans on the Hill should get behind, even and try to overcome some of the skepticism within your ranks?

SEN. ALEXANDER: May I?

SEN. CORNYN: Senator Alexander, of course.

SEN. ALEXANDER: Well, thank you for the -- thank you for the question.

We Republicans had a conference of all of our senators a couple of weeks ago, and the subject was climate change, and we heard from 14 different senators with their different proposals for how to deal with it. I've been briefed on the president's speech. Any time the president of the United States, which produces 25 percent of all the energy in the world and consumes it -- or consumes 25 percent of all the energy in the world -- any time the president of the United States, a country that consumes 25 percent of all the energy in the world, cites an issue as important, that is important. So the very fact of his speech is of importance to the world.

He also frames the issue well, in my opinion, by suggesting that we approach it on a sector-by-sector, step-by-step basis. The Senate does not do comprehensive well; we proved that with immigration. In order to come up with solutions for climate change that are realistic, that fit within the family budget, that actually work, and that contain the fewest surprises, we need to take it step-by-step. So that's a very important contribution by this president.

From my own view, I think we need to take a series of aggressive steps to recognize the urgency of climate change. Speaking for myself, I think we need to put limits on carbon coming from power plants. We need to speed up the building of nuclear plants, which produce 70 percent of our carbon-free energy. We need to be aggressive about conservation. We need a low-carbon fuel standard to follow up the fuel efficiency standards which the Congress adopted last year. We need to increase production offshore and in Alaska, so we can hold gasoline prices down.

We need to take all of those aggressive steps, and Republicans are working together to see which of those steps we have a consensus about. But many individual Republican senators are among the leaders. One of those is Senator McCain, who is our presidential nominee, in finding solutions for climate change.

Q (Off mike) -- reflecting his views on it, on global climate change? And does this help him politically?

SEN. ALEXANDER: Well, I think Senator McCain speaks for himself. I think it helps the country and the world for the president to recognize the importance of climate change and dealing with it. Senator McCain has some specific solutions framed in a bipartisan way to begin to actually deal with climate change, and those will be the solutions that will be examined in the presidential race.

Thank you very much.

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