Joe Crowley: “My initial intention was to offer an amendment today, but after consultation with both the offices of the chair and the…”

“My initial intention was to offer an amendment today, but after consultation with both the offices of the chair and the ranking member, I now rise for the purpose of entering into a colloquy with Chairman Wolf and with Ranking Member Fattah. Seven years ago when the House considered reauthorization of the America COMPETES Act, I offered an amendment at that time with my colleagues, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and Congressman Jerry McNerney, to correct a longstanding inequity at the National Science Foundation. Unlike their counterparts of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Tribal Colleges and Universities, Hispanic-Serving Institutions have not benefited from a specific program at the NSF to provide them with the grants for research, curriculum, and infrastructure development. The amendment corrected this inequity, requiring the NSF to create a separate program for HSIs. It was adopted and it became law at that time. To this day, the NSF has not implemented the programs as codified in law and funding has yet to be provided. Hispanic-Serving Institutions serve the majority of nearly 2 million Latino students enrolled in college today. My district alone has about 10,000 students attending Hispanic-Serving Institutions offering degrees in the field of science. Without access to targeted grants, HSIs have difficulty increasing the ranks of Latinos in the STEM fields, where they have been historically underrepresented.…”