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September 19, 2006
Congress in competitive pause?
Most Washington insiders don't expect much to happen legislatively before the November election. As the Washington Post put it, Congress Bustles With Busywork:
With 10 days left before the scheduled Sept. 29 recess, Congress's much-trumpeted national security agenda is becalmed and awaiting a stiff wind to get it to port. This week, there doesn't even seem to be a gentle breeze on the horizon.
My guess is that Congress will attempt to finish the Defense and Homeland Security spending bills - and that is about it.
Left on the table for either the lame-duck, or more likely next year, is the competitiveness agenda. For all the hype early on, the momentum on this has been slowed. Last week, Senate staff convened a group of interested parties to discuss the composite Senate bill -- meddling together the various components from at least three Senate Committees. The unanswered question is whether the bill can make it to the Senate floor before recess (possible, but not likely) and if it does, whether it can be matched with the various piece of House legislation by the end of the year.
There is an old saying that a camel is a horse designed by a committee. Well, the competitiveness camel was very much on display. That is not to be taken as a criticism of the staff and committee's work. The bill is admittedly the plain vanilla version. It has a lot of good things in it, including the establishment of a Cabinet-level Council on Innovation Policy and a concomitant outside advisory panel (as you may know Athena Alliance has advocated for the creation of a Commission on the Future of the US Economy - similar to the Young Commission on competitiveness in the 1980s). The bill also has some questionable items in it, specifically the elimination of the Commerce Department’s Technology Administration. There is also a lot missing – such as an expansion of the Manufacturing Extension Partnership to innovation and design issues. The legislation also does not address immigration and patent reform.
On the whole, it is a good piece of legislation – and one that deserves to be enacted.
But, it doesn’t really do that much to address our innovation and competitiveness challenges. A good step, but only one step. And if it becomes a way for folks to say “done that,” then it will have done the country a disserve.
Whether this bill passes or not, look for the issue to heat up next year. There will be two drivers, both coming out of the Senate Finance/House Ways & Means Committees: extension of the R&D tax credit and the expiration of trade negotiating authority. It is not clear in my mind whether the next Congress will be able to address these two issue. But if they do move forward, they become powerful locomotives to pull the rest of the innovation/competitiveness agenda along. A similar dynamic happened in 1987-88, and history has been known to repeat itself.
Posted by Ken Jarboe at September 19, 2006 8:37 AM
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See also the LA Times story Competitiveness Can't Compete With Politics.
Posted by: Ken Jarboe ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.athenaalliance.org/weblog/nav-commenters.gif)
at September 25, 2006 12:26 PM