America's preeminent global status rests on three pillars: the strength of our economy, the might of our defense, and the quality of our schools. Today, some 600,000 high-tech jobs in the United States are going unfilled because we have too few technologically skilled workers. At the same time, our military is having problems with recruiting and is finding it hard to retain its most technologically skilled servicemen and women.

Both trends are alarming signs that our schools --the third pillar of America's global dominance --are graduating too few competent, computer-literate students to keep our economy soaring and our armed services strong. The problem is systemic and requires an equally ambitious solution. America needs nothing less than a comprehensive national strategy to prepare our students to help us meet the challenges of the 21st century.

U.S. corporations have beseeched Congress to relax immigration quotas for workers with technical skills. These same businesses, meanwhile, are exacerbating the military's personnel problems by hiring away the technically adept personnel our armed services need to staff the world's most advanced and sophisticated military. We cannot solve both problems in the mid to long term solely by importing high-tech workers from other nations. We must do significantly more to prepare our own young people for jobs in our increasingly technology-driven economy and military.

The Stakes Are High

Everyone remembers what happened to the U.S. automobile industry when it failed to retool itself to meet the challenge of foreign competition in the 1970s. This time the stakes are far higher. In the Information Age, many nations are capable not only of competing with the United States but also of leapfrogging us. According to Wall Street analyst Abby Joseph Cohen, the biggest threat to the American economy is a technologically inept workforce. Nations such as India, Israel, and Costa Rica are further along than the United States in recognizing the need to create a pipeline of skilled workers. If the economic consequences of failing to act are obvious, the military consequences are ominous.

Congress and the executive branch must work together to address this national problem. We need a comprehensive, integrated approach on the scale of the Marshall Plan of the late 1940s or the National Defense Education Act of the early years of the space race. We must begin to provide our students with the high-tech skills they'll need to propel the nation's commerce forward and to provide for our national defense.

It will take congressional action, not complacency, to maintain our high-tech economic and military edge. Too often in congressional debates, advocates for defense, business, and education find themselves pitted against one another in the struggle for limited resources. They need to join together and recognize their interdependency. We cannot meet the demands of the New Economy and the nation's defense with poorly trained teachers, technologically outdated schools, disengaged universities, and an indecisive government.

Planting SEEDS

Much work has already begun in various congressional committees, and several worthy and well-intended proposals have been made. However, the plans suggested to date are largely incremental steps and have been offered in piecemeal fashion. This simply will not suffice. We need to draw all the good ideas together in a coordinated, comprehensive, and omnibus manner.

We have proposed a series of actions at the executive and congressional levels to set us on the right course. We call the initiative SEEDS -- the Strategic Educational, Economic, and Defense System. We seek support both from the Clinton administration and our colleagues on both sides of the aisle in Congress.

First, we are calling on the President to form a task force that would direct the departments of Defense, Commerce, and Education to develop a strategic assessment and inventory of all resources currently involved in this effort. The task force would also help coordinate the governmental, private sector, and academic resources needed to prepare young Americans to compete and win in the Digital Era.

Second, we are calling on Congress to pass legislation that achieves five critical goals: