National Science Foundation for the Future Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. WALTZ. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 2225, the NSF for the Future Act, which I am proud to be an original cosponsor of, along with Chairwoman Johnson, Ranking Member Lucas, and Chairwoman Stevens.

As ranking member of the Research and Technology Subcommittee, I am proud of the process this bill went through to get here today, with well over a year's work, including meetings, roundtables, legislative hearings, and two committee markups.

The final bill includes over 13 Republican amendments and standalone pieces of legislation and 11 recommendations from the House GOP's China Task Force. It is projected that China surpassed the United States in 2019, in total research and development spending.

I would like to thank Chairwoman Johnson and Ranking Member Lucas for their leadership throughout this process, which set the tone for developing thoughtful legislation.

H.R. 2225 takes important steps in expanding the mission of the National Science Foundation to ensure we maintain our edge against rising global competition, while protecting the foundation's primary mission of supporting fundamental research.

It makes key investments in the STEM workforce to expand the American talent pipeline. It supports world-class research facilities, like Embry-Riddle, Bethune-Cookman, and Stetson Universities, all of which are in my district. It promotes the research needed to develop revolutionary technologies that are crucial to our national and economic security.

While making these investments, we also secure taxpayer-funded research and technologies from adversaries like the Chinese Communist Party.

The National Science Foundation Inspector General is seeing a 1,000 percent increase in FBI referrals for research theft inquiries. H.R. 2225 gives the NSF security office the resources, the authority, and the tools for the foundation, for the sponsoring institutions, and for the applicants to identify and address malign foreign influence and to address research theft.

The bill also instructs the NSF to develop mandatory security training to ensure that individual researchers, frankly, have no more excuses and that they understand the threat and the Federal policies and guidelines.

Lastly, Representative Randy Feenstra and I successfully added an amendment during the full committee markup that bans grant applicants from participating in malign foreign talent programs, like the Chinese Communist Party's Thousand Talents program.

It is critical that we strike a balance between keeping our research enterprise open, but also protecting it from adversaries who seek to take advantage of our open system.

There is more work to be done, but I think these provisions take some big steps in striking that balance.

Mr. Speaker, I encourage my colleagues to vote for this bill.

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