[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 93 (Thursday, May 27, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3876-S3878]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            MORNING BUSINESS

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                                S. 1260

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, today, in a bipartisan vote, the Senate 
advanced important legislation to increase our Nation's competitiveness 
with China. The United States Innovation and Competition Act, USICA, of 
2021 is significant legislation and an example of what process and 
debate can yield in the U.S. Senate.
  This legislative package is the end result of the bipartisan work of 
from

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multiple Senate committees and reflects the urgency of addressing the 
challenges faced by domestic manufacturers and American researchers in 
our global competition with China. This includes an emergency 
appropriation of $54 billion in funding for grants to make 
semiconductor chips here in America and for the continuation of chip 
production in Essex, VT. The package also allocates $1.5 billion in 
funding for implementation and domestic research and development, R&D 
of 5G technology to ensure that the United States drives the 
modernization of its own communications infrastructure.
  The bill significantly raises authorization levels by almost $120 
billion over 5 years for the National Science Foundation, NSF, the 
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA, the Department of 
Commerce, and the Department of Energy, DOE. These historic investments 
in American ingenuity will help strengthen our country's R&D 
capabilities, regional economic development opportunities, 
manufacturing capacity, and supply chain resiliency.
  Through the creation of a new Directorate of Technology and 
Innovation at the NSF, the Federal Government will be able to better 
support research and technology development in key focus areas, such as 
the growing artificial intelligence space and quantum science. Among 
other activities, the Directorate will help fund R&D at collaborative 
institutes, establish technology testbeds, and award scholarships and 
fellowships to build a workforce equipped to lead us through the 21st 
century and beyond.
  Throughout the process, I was encouraged to see a strong focus on the 
need to continue to increase education, research, and workforce 
opportunities in rural and underserved areas throughout the country. 
The regional technology hub program at the Commerce Department 
established in this bill will benefit rural communities in Vermont and 
across the country. These hubs, of which there will be three per EDA 
region, will carry out workforce development activities and business 
and entrepreneur development activities, among other important 
activities. I appreciate the work done by fellow Members in the Senate 
to ensure that these hubs truly and accurately represent the 
significant economic needs of rural areas in this country.
  The inclusion of increased supplementary funding for research at 
universities that participate in the Established Program to Stimulate 
Competitive Research, EPSCoR, takes important steps to build our 
Nation's capacity in the science, technology, engineering, and 
mathematics, STEM, field. This funding will also help reduce the 
geographic concentration of research and development and education 
opportunities across the country. For far too long, Americans have had 
to leave their hometowns and even their home States to get an education 
and find work. This bill will give rural residents more reasons to stay 
close to home and help their communities grow from the ground up. I 
have seen the incredible work that has already been done by the 
University of Vermont's participation in EPSCoR and am excited to see 
what is to come from this substantial investment.
  This serious legislative package shows what can be done when we all 
work together in the Senate. Thanks to these efforts, we will be able 
to secure America's role as a global leader in technology, R&D, and 
manufacturing. I hope the House of Representatives will soon consider 
this legislation so President Biden can sign this historic initiative 
into law.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, as the Senate prepares to vote on the U.S. 
Innovation and Competition Act, I wanted to take moment to highlight 
the support this bill provides to the U.S. semiconductor industry. I 
want to commend the leadership that Senators Warner, Cornyn, and 
Schumer have shown in highlighting the need for our country to ensure 
that we maintain leading edge manufacture capabilities in the United 
States. I strongly support the over $50 billion provided in this bill 
for the Department of Commerce to join in partnerships with U.S. 
semiconductor companies.
  My history with microelectronics spans my career in the Senate, and I 
can remember when Tom Watson selected Essex Junction as the location 
for an IBM fab to produce some of the first generations of mass 
produced integrated circuit memory and processing chips. Of course, it 
revolutionized computing. Over the years, Vermonters working out of 
Essex led the way in inventing new kinds of chips and new ways to make 
chips, at the same time making Vermont the State with the most patents 
per capita.
  Over that time, I heard again and again from national security 
leaders from both political parties that one of the biggest threats 
facing the United States was that our revolutionary technology was 
threatened by the production of chips increasingly moving to foreign 
countries. While some of those countries closely cooperate with the 
United States, being offshore provides an inherent risk of the chips 
being compromised by malicious actors or even facilities themselves 
being rendered inoperable, one way or another.
  I helped create a program called Trusted Foundry within the 
Department of Defense to provide critical chips for national security 
needs that we knew were untampered with from start to finish and were 
made right in the United States. Because the national security needs 
alone could never be produced at an economically practical scale, we 
located Trusted Foundry in commercial fabs, including the one in Essex. 
Today that factory still produces both commercial and national security 
chips, particularly chips used for radio frequency or RF functions.
  With this bill, we continue the endeavor to produce chips in the 
United States at a commercially viable level. We hope that the 
production can supply our national security needs, by geographically 
keeping production domestic, thereby increasing our confidence that the 
chips have not been tampered with.
  Through the Appropriations Committee, I will continue oversight of 
this important area. We will ensure that these grants are administered 
well and build toward a better future. And we will ensure they are part 
of a whole-of-government effort, including contributions from the 
Department of Defense and other Agencies from their own authorizations 
and budgets. Thanks to this bill, I look forward to a brighter, and 
more technologically capable future.


                           AMENDMENT no. 1813

  Mr. REED. Mr. President, I am disappointed that my bipartisan 
amendment with Senators Moran and Murkowski is not receiving a vote 
today.
  Our amendment has a simple purpose--to protect taxpayers. It seeks to 
do so by providing the administration the discretionary authority to 
negotiate for warrants, which are like stock options, as part of the 
$50 billion we are appropriating in this bill for the CHIPS for America 
Fund.
  A warrant is the right to purchase one share of common stock at a 
preestablished price, known as the strike price. Warrants, just like 
stock options, are exercised when the stock price is greater than the 
strike price. The idea is that if taxpayer dollars are necessary to 
invest in a company, then taxpayers should also benefit from some of 
the upside when the company grows.
  I worked on a bipartisan basis to secure warrants when Federal funds 
were needed for private companies as part of the Troubled Asset Relief 
Program, TARP, and in the CARES Act. As a result of the warrants 
provision in TARP, nearly $10 billion in profit was generated for 
taxpayers. And according to new Department of Treasury estimates, 
taxpayers stand to gain more than $1 billion for the CARES Act 
warrants.
  Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, who also has prior private sector 
experience as a venture capital investor and as a former treasurer of 
Rhode Island, said this week at a CJS Appropriations Subcommittee 
hearing that she would ``support'' having this authority as a ``good 
way to stick up for American taxpayers.''
  So if companies are receiving taxpayer funds to make investments in 
semiconductors, U.S. taxpayers should also be able to get some of the 
upside when these investments pay off. We should be striving to ensure 
that we get the best possible deal for our constituents' money.
  I appreciate Leader Schumer's commitment to get this concept included 
in the bill as it moves forward in the

[[Page S3878]]

process, and I will continue working with him and all of our colleagues 
to make that commitment a reality.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, the Budget Control Act of 2011 expires this 
year, and that is a good thing.
  This law led to a decade of underfunding our domestic priorities, 
from which it will take years to recover. Right now, in communities 
across the country, our infrastructure is crumbling, millions of 
Americans cannot access Federal programs for which they qualify, and we 
are falling behind in investing in science, research, and development 
on the global economic stage--all of this because the Budget Control 
Act set artificial and unrealistically low caps on discretionary 
spending, and it inflicted arbitrary, across-the-board spending cuts 
known as sequestration.
  President Biden understands the real consequences of this decade-old 
decision. That is why tomorrow, President Biden will propose a 16-
percent increase for nondefense investments in his budget. We cannot 
build back better until we recover the ground we have already lost.
  I want to give a few examples of what I mean. For many low-income 
families with young children, the beginning of summer means the end of 
school breakfast and lunch programs and waking up every morning 
dreading how you will be able to put food on the table for your 
children. Basic nutrition is a basic requirement for child health, 
development, and education.
  The Summer EBT program is meant to help these families bridge to this 
gap, with an extra $30 or $60 per child every month. This is a program 
that has proven itself successful, reducing the number of households 
with food-insecure children from 43 percent to just under 35 percent. 
But because of the Budget Control Act, this program has been flat-
funded. We could not expand upon its success. And today, only 16 
percent of children who need access to USDA food programs have that 
access.
  This problem of underinvestment in successful, worthwhile programs is 
true across our appropriations bills.
  Our country, which has led in some of the greatest scientific 
discoveries of the last century, ranks 24th out of 36 developed nations 
for investments in university research and development as a share of 
GDP.
  We once accounted for 69 percent of global research and development 
expenditures but have fallen to just under 30 percent. China now 
accounts for 23.9 percent of global research and development spending, 
and growing.
  How did this happen? One analysis by the American Association for the 
Advancement of Science directly attributes $200 billion in lost Federal 
research and development investments to the Budget Control Act. The 
National Science Foundation alone has lost $2 billion a year, which 
could support more than 5,500 grants and 65,000 scientists, 
technicians, and students.
  We cannot lead in a rapidly evolving technological landscape unless 
we are investing in science and our scientists.
  Failing to do so only cedes the next great discovery to China at the 
cost of innovation here in the United States. As chair of the 
Appropriations Committee, I am committed to fighting for the 
investments in American science, research, medical progress, and 
technological development that our great Nation needs and deserves.
  There has been a lot of talk in this Chamber about the need for a 
major infrastructure package to repair our Nation's crumbling bridges 
and roads, and I support addressing that need. But there is a reason 
why our roads are in disrepair, forcing the American people to spend 
nearly $130 billion each year on vehicle repairs and operating costs. 
There is a reason why our drinking water systems lose the equivalent of 
9,000 Olympic-size swimming pools of water every day. And there is a 
reason why one in five children lacks the high-speed internet 
connections they need to learn and participate in school.
  That reason is a decade of budget caps that artificially constrained 
our ability to address these issues before they became the national 
limitation and embarrassment that they are today.
  Now there is a $44 billion backlog in airport improvement projects, 
$35 billion in deferred maintenance for public housing, and $472.6 
billion in urgently needed funds to maintain and improve the Nation's 
drinking water infrastructure.
  Over the last decade, we have lost ground in education, childcare, 
environmental protections, and affordable housing. The Budget Control 
Act did not constrain our national debt; it left us as a nation in 
disrepair.
  Joe Biden understands this, and I commend him for taking the bold 
action to address this in the budget he will release tomorrow. As 
chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, I look forward to 
working with the President, his administration, and my dear friend Vice 
Chairman Shelby on passing responsible appropriations bills that 
address the damage caused by the Budget Control Act.
  The end of the Budget Control Act gives us the opportunity to invest 
in our communities. Tomorrow, Congress will receive the President's 
budget. The full Appropriations Committee has already held hearings on 
the need to invest in our infrastructure and on the threat of domestic 
violent extremism, and in June, we will hold hearings on global 
leadership and national security. In June, our subcommittees will hold 
numerous hearings to scrutinize the President's budget.
  When Congress returns in early June, it is essential that Congress, 
on a bipartisan and bicameral basis, work with the President to 
negotiate budget toplines so that we can commence the appropriations 
process for the fiscal year that begins October 1. As President Biden 
has said, we can, should, and need to build back better.

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