America COMPETES Act Keeps America's Leadership on Target

President Obama's signing of the America COMPETES Act this week represents a major milestone on this Nation’s path to building an innovation economy for the 21st century -- an economy that harnesses the scientific and technological ingenuity that has long been at the core of America’s prosperity and applies that creative force to some of the biggest challenges we face today.

Whether it’s developing new products that will be manufactured in America, or getting and using energy more sustainably, or improving health care with better therapies and better use of information technology, or providing better protection for our troops abroad and our citizens at home, innovation will be key to our success. And that is exactly what the COMPETES Act is all about. This bill comes at a crucial time in our Nation’s economic and technological trajectory -- a time that President Obama characterized last month as a “Sputnik moment.” Just as Americans in 1957 quickly grasped the significance of the Soviet Union’s historic launch of the world’s first artificial satellite—responding aggressively with new investments in research and development (R&D) and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education -- Americans today are recognizing that we are once again on the brink of a new world. The decisions we make today about how we invest in R&D, education, innovation, and competitiveness will profoundly influence our Nation’s economic vitality, global stature, and national security tomorrow. COMPETES keeps America on a path of leadership in an ever more competitive world. It authorizes the continued growth of the budgets of three key agencies that are incubating and generating the breakthroughs of tomorrow -- the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the laboratories of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the National Science Foundation. COMPETES also bolsters this Administration’s already groundbreaking activities to enhance STEM education -- to raise American students from the middle to the top of the pack and to make sure we are training the next generation of innovative thinkers and doers.

[Holdren is Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy]