WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Senator John Thune (R-SD), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, delivered the following prepared remarks at today’s “America COMPETES: Science and the U.S. Economy” hearing:

Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing today to evaluate scientific research and development and STEM education initiatives under the America COMPETES Act authorizations.

I am pleased to welcome Senator Alexander as today’s hearing is a good opportunity to discuss the impact R&D funding has on each of our states and on the U.S. economy overall. As we do so, I believe it is important to remember our current budget realities and the need to set federal funding priorities in scientific research and continue to improve coordination.

I know Senator Alexander worked closely alongside you, Mr. Chairman, and former Ranking Member Kay Bailey Hutchison on the America COMPETES Acts of 2007 and 2010, and we appreciate his participation today to provide us with a history of those legislative efforts.

The America COMPETES Acts of 2007 and 2010 have served as the authorizing vehicles for the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) under our Committee’s jurisdiction, as well as for the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Science.

The NSF is the primary source of federal funding in fields such as mathematics and computer science. Researchers in my home state of South Dakota, as well as other states represented by members of the Committee, benefit from NSF’s Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), a program aimed at avoiding undue concentration of research in certain states and improving R&D competitiveness and STEM education throughout the U.S.

Another agency of committee jurisdiction, NIST, carries out its mission of promoting U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by supporting research in fields such as engineering and Information Technology at NIST laboratories in collaboration with private sector industry. The Committee has looked to NIST this year with particular interest on the issue of cybersecurity, passing a bipartisan bill earlier this year that would authorize NIST to facilitate the development of a voluntary set of standards and best practices to reduce cyber risks to critical infrastructure. And, as we will examine more closely next week when Secretary Pritzker is before us, NIST is also seeking to bridge the gap between cutting-edge research and advanced manufacturing.

DOE’s Office of Science is the lead federal agency supporting fundamental scientific research for energy and the largest federal supporter of basic research in the physical sciences. DOE, along with NSF, has supported cutting-edge physics research at the world class Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in Lead, South Dakota.

At SURF, as Dr. Perlmutter appreciates more than most, physics researchers are leading the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) experiment a mile underground in the former Homestake gold mine in an effort to detect the existence of dark matter. Just last week, researchers announced results from the experiment’s first run, indicating that it is the most sensitive and capable dark matter detector in the world, and making SURF scientists more likely to discover dark matter than anyone else. The LUX experiments, and other experiments at SURF, search for answers to some of our most fundamental science questions and present a significant opportunity for U.S. leadership in the area of physical sciences, as prioritized by the earlier America COMPETES Acts.

Federal support for basic research reflects a consensus that such research is the foundation for many innovations. Many have argued that closer cooperation among industry, government, and academia could further stimulate innovation, lead to new products and processes, and expand markets for U.S. businesses. Along these lines, while I appreciate the importance of foundational science and basic research, I also look forward to hearing from our witnesses today about ways to improve technology transfer and commercialization of federally-funded research, as well as some of the successful discoveries stemming from federal research dollars.

Finally, I look forward to hearing from our witnesses about their ideas on how to improve STEM education, as well as their views on the challenges that affect our global competitiveness in the STEM professional fields.

Thank you all for being here and sharing your insights with the committee.

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