American Research and Competitiveness Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. Speaker, there is one type of innovation in which these Republicans are truly unexcelled--there is no competition. And that is the innovation in names, in naming these bills.

They salute climate deniers and The Flat Earth Society by slashing funding for earth science that is strongly opposed by geophysicists and one academic after another. What do they call it? The ``America COMPETES Act.''

On this measure, its companion, they borrow almost $200 billion from anyone who will lend it to us to give mostly to the largest corporations, largely for doing research that they would be doing, even if they weren't rewarded. And they call that the ``American Research and Competitiveness Act.'' Now, that is true innovation. They don't need a credit; they ought to get a prize for being contortionists when it comes to labeling these measures.

This particular bill just digs us deeper and deeper into debt, while adding very little to our research capability. That is truly unfortunate, since America's future competitiveness is in jeopardy. And that is outlined this very day in ``Innovation Lies on Weak Foundation,'' a New York Times economic column.

As Eduardo Porter notes, ``Investment in research and development has flatlined over the last several years as a share of the economy ..... other countries are now leaving the United States behind ..... government budgets for basic research, the biggest source of financing for scientific inquiry ..... fell in 2013 to substantially below its level 10 years earlier.''

Indeed, the Republican budget makes significant cuts to research, including hundreds fewer research grants that the President sought at both the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. I think we need more than another Ice Bucket Challenge to fund research for cures for cancer and diabetes, ALS, AIDS, and the like. We need the resources to tackle problems that are touching every family in this country.

Unfortunately, this R&D credit that is being made permanent without reform has required American taxpayers to subsidize the development of electronic cigarettes and other products to addict our children to nicotine, instead of using those dollars to fight those dreaded diseases to which nicotine contributes.

Corporate research generally is focused more and more on the next quarter's reports to Wall Street to which excessive corporate compensation is tied, instead of focusing on basic research. Porter concludes in the same article that this particular bill is ``unlikely to help much.'' And he notes the conclusion of the Congressional Research Service, an objective source, that this regularly renewed credit ``delivered, at most, a modest stimulus to domestic business R&D investment from 2000-2010.''

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I support a permanent research and development credit to incentivize more research. The question is: How do we pay for it, and how do we ensure that it actually encourages more jobs, leads to more research and more economic development, instead of just giving a reward to those who are already doing something in this area to advance their product?

Nothing, of course, prevents multinationals from taking the credit and then putting the patent or the copyright in some foreign tax haven and avoiding paying their American taxes, another reform that is necessary.

We should reject this proposal in favor of a strong research credit that actually incentivizes necessary research here in America and which is paid for, in part, by comprehensive reform of this very credit. Surely, we don't need any more research today to know that today's bills are the wrong way to go for America.

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