The Collapse of Competitiveness Policy?

The Collapse of Competitiveness Policy
By Teryn Norris
May 26, 2010
Published by The Huffington Post

Last week, the flagship federal legislation for U.S. competitiveness containing broad support for science, technology, and advanced education - called the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 - collapsed in Congress after it was blocked from passage through the House, despite already being significantly weakened.

Enter the age of American polarization, where bread-and-butter competitiveness and innovation policy is subject to hyper-partisan politics and obstructionism, even in the face of rapidly rising global competition. America COMPETES, which was originally passed with strong bipartisan support under President Bush, may be yet one more casualty of today's extreme political polarization, which according to one major study is at the highest level in over a century.

But beyond the issue of partisanship, this is an alarming wake-up call to how anti-government sentiment and neoliberal economic ideology - which seeks to discredit the role of federal investment in promoting technology innovation and growth - could combine forces and seriously damage our national innovation system in the years ahead.

The United States was a driving force behind the global expansion of prosperity and security in the 20^th century, due in large part to our technological leadership. The collapse of America COMPETES is one of the clearest and most alarming examples in recent history of how this leadership is being threatened - not by some foreign entity, but from within our own country. How did we get to this point, and what lessons might this incident hold?

The Rise and Fall of COMPETES

The America COMPETES Act was originally passed in 2007 with major bipartisan support in response to the National Academy of Sciences report, Rising Above the Gathering Storm. It is widely recognized as the most authoritative assessment of U.S. competitiveness in the past decade, commissioned by Congress and developed by a committee of the country's leading experts in science, technology, and business.

"Having reviewed trends in the United States and abroad, the committee is deeply concerned that the scientific and technical building blocks of our economic leadership are eroding at a time when many other nations are gathering strength," they concluded. "This nation must prepare with great urgency to preserve its strategic and economic security."

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