Yes, we thought we’d heard it all, too. Until we learned why Congress voted down a major bill to help U.S. companies compete against foreign firms.
The reason the bill got canned comes down to one word: pornography.
The bill was called the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010. It had been endorsed and supported by such rock-ribbed organizations as the National Association of Manufacturers, which ran an editorial on its website urging Congress to pass the bill. Similarly, the Institute of Physics and the American Physical Society got behind the bill, which, among other things, would have provided grants and funded government-agency partnerships with small companies to explore new technologies that tend to get overlooked because they require high-risk investments.
And the outlook for passage looked good until …
The bill — a reauthorization of an original bill passed in 2007 — was sponsored by Reps. Bart Gordon (D-TN) Vern Ehlers (R-MI) and came out of the House Committee on Science and Technology for a full vote in the House. That’s when things got weird.
Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX) proposed a “motion to recommit” (MTR). This sought significant reductions in funding for any government agencies that had employees who were found to be watching pornography on government computers. As it happens, the National Science Foundation, which was slated to receive COMPETE Act funding, had disciplined some employees for surfing porn last year.
Several Democrats would have had to vote against the MTR and hence appear to support pornography. So the majority of the House voted to return the bill to committee, effectively killing it.
So the next time someone asks why the U.S. is lagging on job-creating technology, you’ll have the answer. Pornography.
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Tags: America COMPETES Reauthorization Act, National Association of Manufacturers
May 27th, 2010 at 3:50 pm
Leave it to (R-Tx) to kill a bill designed to help American companies compete against foreign companies for some lame reason. They certainly are the party of NO. In the next breath they will claim Obama is not doing enough to help American companies compete against foreign companies. Go figure.
May 28th, 2010 at 10:36 am
Gordon, did you not read the next paragraph. “Several Democrats would have had to vote against the MTR and hence appear to support pornography.”
I’ve got no problem with the motion to recommit. Why should agencies that have employees surfing the web for porn instead of working while they’re being paid by the taxpayers not have their funding cut? In the private sector, people get fired for doing this.
Maybe they should have voted for the MTR and started over.
May 28th, 2010 at 11:07 am
So Linn, Lets say your company survives on government contracts and one of your employees has been caught surfing porn. He/she should be warned and if it continues, fired. But according to you and the (R-Tx) your whole company should lose its contracts, fold up and send the work overseas. I’m not sure you or The Party Of No really wants to punish a whole industry because some ee’s were disciplined for viewing porn on gov computers. The next claim from the republicans will be “Democrats want to reward pornography supporters while Obama sits and does nothing to help science and manufacturing. I know its ridiculous, but politics in general is getting ridiculous – on both sides I’m afraid.
June 2nd, 2010 at 5:44 pm
Rock on, Gordon.
June 4th, 2010 at 10:39 am
This is a purely cynical political move on the part of Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX). He wants to get Democrats to vote on this so he can use it to score political points later. He will hold this bill hostage and the people lose again. It sucks.