President Bush signed on August 9 the COMPETES Act, which should boost scientific research in the US, but also accused the Congress of failing to approve key projects included in the bill.

The law is called the "America Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science Act," and according to President Bush it shares many goals with American Competitiveness Initiative.

The ACI is one of Bush’s most important domestic initiatives, aimed at keeping the US on top of the most innovative countries, in terms of scientific education and research, R&D investments and technological enterprise.

To boost national competitiveness, U.S. President Bush, in his 2006 State of the Union Address, announced a US$5.9 billion budget for the American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI) in 2007 to increase R&D spending, encourage industrial innovation, and strengthen compulsory education. The U.S. will further invest US$50 billion in R&D funds over the next decade, as well as US$86 billion in tax incentives.

Bush said that “since I announced ACI in January 2006, Congress has risen to the competitiveness challenge in a bipartisan way. House and Senate appropriators started the funding for ACI basic research programs in fiscal year 2007, and so far in this year's appropriations process they are fully funding my fiscal year 2008 budget request for the National Science Foundation, the Office of Science in the Department of Energy, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology at the Department of Commerce.”

Bush praised the Congress for its “bipartisan” cooperation, for the approval of critical projects like the doubling of funding for basic research in the physical sciences, and for the authorization of education programs like Math Now (which improves instruction in mathematics) or Advanced Placement (which should increase the number of teachers and students participating in AP and International Baccalaureate classes).

However, the US President expressed his disappointment concerning Congress’s refusal to ok the Adjunct Teacher Corps program, which should have helped students interact with top mathematicians or physicists during classes.

Bush also criticized the plethora of supplementary authorizations approved by the Congress, which, in his opinion, are “counterproductive”.

“In total, the bill creates over 30 new programs that are mostly duplicative or counterproductive -- including a new Department of Energy agency to fund late-stage technology development more appropriately left to the private sector -- and also provides excessive authorizations for existing programs. These new programs, additional requirements and reports, and excessive authorizations will divert resources and focus from priority activities aimed at strengthening the basic research that has given our Nation such a competitive advantage in the world economy.”

As a consequence, Bush plans to remove “excessive or duplicative funding” from his 2009 Budget request and support only “focused priorities of the ACI”. Bush toned down his criticism towards the Congress saying that “while this legislation includes many unnecessary and misguided programs, in many important ways it heeds my call to action of nearly two years ago to take steps to ensure the ongoing competitiveness of our Nation”, but also added that the “Congress still has more work to do” in this domain.

“I call on Congress to complete work on the remaining components of ACI, including modernizing and making permanent the research and development tax credit, authorizing the Adjunct Teacher Corps program, and increasing our ability to attract and retain the best and brightest high-skilled workers from around the world.”

During a press conference that followed the signing of the bill, Bush said that “I will continue to press Congress to approve the remaining measures of the American Competitiveness Initiative.”

“The bill I will sign today will help ensure that we do remain the most competitive and innovative nation in the world. I thank members of Congress from both parties who worked hard to secure its passage.”

The US are currently investing 2.6% of its GDP (gross domestic product) in R&D, while countries like Sweden, Finland or Japan are investing more than 3% of their respective GDP (3.98% for Sweden, 3.48% for Finland and 3.15% for Japan).

By comparison, EU officials are targeting a 3% R&D investment from the Union’s GDP (two thirds of which to come from private sources).

The latest figures (2005) show that EU-27 is investing 1.8% of GDP. If Member States fulfil the national targets set down in their national reform programmes, the figure should be 2.6% by 2010.

The EU still lags behind the US and Japan in terms of business R&D spending. The percentage of R&D funded by business was 55% for EU-27 in 2004, compared with 64% in the US and 75% in Japan.

Universities across the EU employ about 37% of researchers, compared to around 15% in the US and 26% in Japan.

The business sector in Europe currently employs fewer researchers than it does in other regions of the world – around 50% of its researchers work in the business sector, compared with nearly 70% in Japan and 80% in the US.

An estimated number of 80,000 to 100,000 EU-born researchers (in head-count) are active in research in the US, but this only represents 5% to 8% of the total EU researchers' population.

However, the EU has surpassed the US in the number of published scientific articles several years ago, posting an average annual growth rate of 2.8 percent between 1988 and 2003, more than four times faster than the United States.

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