Newsclip
Kennedy looks to lift US as global competitor
The Boston Globe | February 22, 2006
Chris Reidy, Globe Staff
US Senator Edward M. Kennedy plans to a unveil a sweeping economic proposal today that aims to improve US competitiveness and make globalization a force of prosperity for American workers.
''To help America embrace the competitive challenges we face, we must invest in promising new technologies and high-growth industries that will lead to the jobs of the future," said Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat.
In a speech at Northeastern University, Kennedy plans to outline proposed legislation he calls the ''Right Track Act," a list of measures that includes investing in high-technology industries, lifelong education for US workers, and eliminating tax breaks that give US companies incentives to ship jobs overseas.
Among Kennedy's proposals is one to make the research-and-development tax credit permanent.
Another would create a tax credit for investing in nanotechnology-based businesses.
A summary of the speech was provided to the Globe.
Kennedy estimated the initiatives would cost between $30 billion and $50 billion a year, but would generate far more dividends in terms of new jobs, innovation, and additional productivity.
Kennedy said the nation's global economic leadership is challenged by countries such as China, Japan, Ireland, and South Korea. Between 1995 and 2001, China doubled its R&D investment as a percentage of its gross domestic product, but the United States only increased it by a third, he said.
As Kennedy sees it, America is in ''another period of challenge" and needs major legislation to help keep the country and its workers competitive.
The outlines of Kennedy's proposal drew mixed reviews.
At Associated Industries of Massachusetts, a nonprofit association of Massachusetts employers which has advocated making the federal R&D tax credit permanent, spokesman Brian Gilmore said Kennedy's proposal ''would be terrific."
But at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank whose views are generally right of center, scholar Kevin Hassett noted that some of Kennedy's ideas are already advocated by the White House.
''It sounds like Senator Kennedy is echoing President Bush's State of the Union message," Hassett said, after hearing a summary of Kennedy's proposals.
Kennedy said Bush's proposals to spur innovation have yielded few results.
''He's got some of the rhetoric, but none of the follow-through," Kennedy said of Bush.
Kennedy's provision to create a tax credit for investing in nanotechnology-based businesses would be a big help to Massachusetts, said Patrick Larkin, director of the John Adams Innovation Institute at the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative. Larkin noted that researchers at Harvard, MIT, Northeastern, and the University of Massachusetts at Lowell have provided the state with a strong nanotechnology infrastructure.
Kennedy's tax-credit proposal, Larkin said, would ''spur investment in an emerging technology, and that really is where the need is right now."
A spokesman for Representative Sherwood Boehlert, the New York Republican chairman of the House Committee on Science, who has been a big proponent of nanotechnology, declined to comment on the Kennedy proposal until he could review it.
To ensure US workers compete on a level playing field, Kennedy's proposal includes provisions that would require the president to impose tariffs on the goods of countries that unfairly underprice their products through currency manipulations.
Kennedy's bill would also invest in attracting math, science, and foreign-language teachers to schools where many students are below the poverty line.
Kennedy's is the latest in a series of proposals to improve competitiveness and science education.
Earlier this week, Ranch Kimball, Massachusetts' secretary of economic affairs, detailed a program designed to make big firms in other states aware of the resources hidden in small Bay State companies.
In November, meanwhile, technology leaders in the Boston area unveiled plans for a regional robotics competition for high school and middle school students.