Posted on 02/02/2006 2:00:40 PM PST by NormsRevenge
MAPLEWOOD, Minn. - President Bush urged Congress on Thursday to give new life to a research and development tax credit for business to better compete with China, Indian and other rising global economies.
At a 3M Corp. plant outside Minneapolis, Bush said the United States needs to embrace technological innovation and emphasize math and science education. That was a theme of his State of the Union address and one he intended to promote Friday in Albuquerque, N.M., and Dallas.
"Congress needs to understand that nations like China and India and Japan and Korea and Canada all offer tax incentives that are permanent," Bush said about the tax credit that expired Dec. 31.
For the budget year that begins Oct. 1, Bush proposes to spend $5.9 billion on the competitiveness plan. Some $4.6 billion would pay for the tax credit that U.S. companies get for investing in research and development projects.
"You cannot run a business and plan to make long-term investments if the incentive program is only temporary," Bush told about 300 employees at 3M, the industrial company known for its Scotch brand and Post-It supplies.
The White House said midterm election politics were not a factor in deciding where Bush would travel to promote themes from Tuesday's address to the nation.
In Minnesota, Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who introduced Bush, faces re-election. Also, there is an open seat in the U.S. House because GOP Rep. Mark Kennedy (news, bio, voting record) is running for the U.S. Senate, and there also is an open Senate seat because Democratic Sen. Mark Dayton (news, bio, voting record) is not seeking re-election.
In his remarks at 3M, Bush scolded Congress for not making progress to fix the future solvency of Social Security. He appealed for passage of medical liability legislation and a measure to compensate asbestos victims and halt related lawsuits.
The president asserted again that America, with an intense focus on developing alternative energy technologies to power automobiles, will be on its "way to no dependence on oil from the Middle East."
In his State of the Union address, Bush said his goal was to replace three-fourths of the country's oil imports from the Middle East over the next two decades by developing alternative fuels.
Senior administration officials acknowledged Wednesday that even if the president's push for substitutes for gasoline and diesel were successful, the reliance on Persian Gulf oil by world markets including the U.S. market is unlikely to change.
Bush's main message, however, was about priming the budgets of federal laboratories and agencies to foster basic science research and strengthening math and science education.
The president's motorcade drove down Innovation Drive to visit a 3M business and graphics laboratory where a sign read "3M Innovation." The president and first lady Laura Bush saw a 77-ton diamond turning machine that uses measurements used in nanotechnology, which is in dimensions 10 times smaller than the human hair.
Bush said more scientists and high-tech workers should be given visas to work in the United States. Federal law provides 65,000 H1-B visas H1-B visas for scientists, engineers, computer programmers and other professionals, every budget year. Of those, 6,800 are set aside for workers from Chile and Singapore under terms of U.S. trade agreements with those countries.
High-tech and other employers say too few such visas are available and more are needed. Groups representing labor unions and high-tech workers say Americans are being replaced by foreign workers who work for less money.
"I call upon Congress to be realistic and reasonable and raise that cap," he said.
President Bush wants more American kids to study math and science but why would they bother when the Government is going to cut the legs out from under them in the employment market place?
If we want more people to go into these fields we should put policies in place that make it more lucrative.
As Mark Steyn commented: "Isn't there something a little ridiculous about the government, which has no competition, running a competitiveness initiative?"
Mr. President, tear down this tax code!
While vacationing in Big Sky last week, I toured Yellowstone with a Bechtel engineer. He was told by management that when he speaks to our school kids and college students...to lie. He was told to tell them there is a big need for them to go into math and sciences. What he is not allowed to tell them is that there won't be any hiring of the U.S. students at Bechtel. Bechtel now sends half of all its engineering work (by man-hours) to India.
Ping.
As we are always told by the H-1B lobby. This is NOT happening. After all, The visa holders are supposed to be paid prevailing wages
It's incredible that this idea is again resurrected after such a history of failure. Don't those clowns in Washington ever learn from history?
Yet another call to allow more low wage foreigners to take American jobs. This is just the big money donations speaking.
Agreed. This interview with Cohen needs to be broadly disseminated to counter the spin being put out by the BeTrayders.
BI Vendor CEO Blasts Gates' Position on H-1B No need to eliminate cap on visas, claims Information Builders' Cohen
Q&A by Don Tennant
MAY 09, 2005 (COMPUTERWORLD) - Gerald Cohen, the outspoken founder and CEO of New York-based business intelligence software vendor Information Builders Inc., spoke with Computerworld late last month about the controversy surrounding offshore outsourcing and the H-1B visa program. Excerpts follow:
Bill Gates told an audience in Washington recently that the U.S. needs to get rid of the cap on H-1B visas. What's your position on that?
He's full of it. He says, "I'd hire a lot more American engineers if I could find them -- they're not available, and that's why we're going to China and India." He's going there because it's just cheaper. He can find all the engineers he wants in this country.
A lot of CEOs at companies like yours are saying that they just can't find the people.
That's bull. You know who wants [to get rid of the cap]? The Indian companies. The way the Indian companies work is they have to have a certain number of people here, and a lot more people back there - so they're the ones who want to get all these people in. And they don't even pay them American wages -- they just pay them as cheaply as they can.
But surely you use overseas labor to lower your own costs.
I'm going to put two hats on. With one hat, I say we want to keep jobs in New York City. The other hat says that we want the company to be prosperous, and if I can lower my costs by doing work overseas, the company's more prosperous. But I'm not so sure that's better for the country. How much of your development work is done outside of the U.S.?
We do a little quality-assurance work outside of the U.S. We find it's economical to do the routine kind of QA work [overseas].
What's your response to the unemployed U.S. IT worker who says you should be keeping those jobs in the U.S.?
We have to [do business] economically. It's a real problem. The government is providing us with no help, so we're doing [what we have to do] ourselves.
If you look further down the road, there's going to be a huge drain of IT jobs. A lot of these jobs that go overseas are the spawning grounds for future jobs. So the whole industry's going to move offshore.
What do you want the government to do to help?
[Indian vendors] will bring people into the U.S. cheaply. No! When you [bring people into] the U.S., you have to pay American wages. That would be a minimum standard, for example.
There are a lot of small things that could be done, but I have no solution for how we're going to throttle this in some way.
A lot of people say the education system in the U.S. is failing to provide qualified IT workers. Do you disagree?
That's bunk. Why do you have declining computer science majors? Because every parent is saying, "Why major in computer science when all the jobs are going offshore?" It feeds itself.
And I guarantee you, if it doesn't stop, in a couple years, you're not going to have much of an IT industry here.
Gerald Cohen, founder and CEO of Information Builders Inc.
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