WASHINGTON — To Silicon Valley engineers, the physics of politics is a strange science in which the momentum of a plan to make high-tech companies more competitive is halted by seemingly unrelated debates over the estate tax and illegal immigration.
President Bush unveiled the so-called American Competitiveness Initiative during his State of the Union address in January. Since then, though, the ambitious plan with bipartisan support has been stalled by election-year politics.
The initiative is a top priority for high-tech executives alarmed by the bumper crops of engineers and scientists produced in China and India. After pressing since 2004 for legislation to help the United States maintain its technological dominance, the tech industry thought everything was aligned for action this year.
"These CEOs aren't Washington guys, and in their minds, when everybody agrees that something's necessary ... they just can't see why action is so difficult," said Bruce Mehlman, executive director of the Technology CEO Council, a public policy association of nine top high-tech chief executives.
The experience has provided another lesson in Silicon Valley's political education: how the crosscurrents of a high-stakes election can derail even broadly popular legislation.
The 10-year, $136-billion plan would combine increased federal science and education spending with tax breaks for research and easier access to highly skilled foreigners. Leading lawmakers from both sides of the aisle who had already made or were drafting similar proposals enthusiastically vowed their support.
But little of the multifaceted initiative has been approved. And two key components are on their deathbeds.
A proposal to increase the number of specialized visas for technically trained foreign workers has been held up by the partisan stalemate over illegal immigration. Legislation to extend and expand an expired tax credit for research and development costs was derailed this summer, when Republican leaders included it in a contentious plan to cut the estate tax.
"We're sorry that some of the important provisions got tied up in much more controversial issues," said White House science advisor John H. Marburger III. "We can't just give up after a year. The stakes are sufficiently high to view this as a multiyear campaign."
Tech executives thought the whole package would be wrapped up in months, not years, and warned that the United States risked falling behind in the global economy unless Congress acted quickly.
