Sec. 2. Findings
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Congress finds the following: For over 70 years, the United States has been the unequivocal global leader in scientific and technological innovation, and as a result the people of the United States have benefitted through good-paying jobs, economic prosperity, and a higher quality of life. Today, however, this leadership position is being eroded and challenged by foreign competitors, some of which are stealing intellectual property and trade secrets of the United States and aggressively investing in research and commercialization to dominate the key existing and future technology fields.
While the United States once led the world in the share of our economy invested in research, our Nation now ranks 9th globally in total research and development and 12th in publicly financed research and development. While wages for American workers rose in parallel with growth in national productivity from the end of World War II through most of the 1970s, since then wage growth has been uneven and labor’s share in national income has declined. Without a significant increase in investment in research, education, technology transfer, intellectual property, manufacturing, and other core strengths of the United States innovation ecosystem, it is only a matter of time before the global competitors of the United States overtake the United States in terms of technological primacy.
The country that wins the race in key technologies—such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, advanced communications, and advanced manufacturing—and uses technological innovation to support high-quality jobs and incomes will be the superpower of the future. The Federal Government must catalyze United States innovation by boosting research investments focused on discovering, creating, commercializing, and demonstrating new technologies and manufacturing those technologies domestically throughout the country to ensure the leadership of the United States in the industries of the future.
The distribution of innovation jobs and investment in the United States has become largely concentrated in just a few locations, while much of the Nation has been left out of growth in the innovation sector. More than 90 percent of the Nation’s innovation sector employment growth in the last 15 years was generated in just 5 major metropolitan areas. The Federal Government must address this imbalance in opportunity by— dramatically increasing funding for science and engineering research and expanding partnerships with the private sector to build new technology hubs across the country; spreading high-quality innovation sector jobs more broadly; increasing the participation of underrepresented populations, engaging workers, and collaborating with labor organizations in innovation efforts to tap the talent and potential of the entire Nation to ensure the United States leads the industries of the future; and building regional capacity in such critical areas as entrepreneurship, access to capital and other investment, and supply chain development.
As President Franklin D. Roosevelt stated, [N]ew frontiers of the mind are before us, and if they are pioneered with the same vision, boldness, and drive with which we have waged this war we can create a fuller and more fruitful employment and a fuller and more fruitful life. As Vannevar Bush stated in his 1945 report entitled Science, The Endless Frontier, New products, new industries, and more jobs require continuous additions to knowledge of the laws of nature, and the application of that knowledge to practical purposes.
Similarly, our defense against aggression demands new knowledge so that we can develop new and improved weapons. This essential, new knowledge can be obtained only through basic scientific research. Since their inception, the National Science Foundation and other key Federal agencies, like the Department of Energy, have carried out vital work supporting basic and applied research to create knowledge that is a key driver of the economy of the United States and enhances the Nation’s security.