Andy Barr: “Let's be clear, the so-called America COMPETES Act, is not about countering the threat from the Chinese Communist Party.…”

“Let's be clear, the so-called America COMPETES Act, is not about countering the threat from the Chinese Communist Party. It is a subterfuge intended to conceal what this legislation is actually about, a repackaged Build Back Better, and the Democrats' backup plan to push their Green New Deal agenda. It is $350 billion in deficit spending to pay off the climate activists and the labor unions that run the Democrat Party. It sends $10 billion of taxpayer funds to a climate slush fund at the U.N. that subsidizes solar projects in China that use Uyghur slave labor. The bill implements a Supply Chain Resiliency Program that gives preferential treatment to labor unions, a scheme designed more to maintain resiliency for Democratic Party fundraising than resiliency of our supply chains. The bill references coral reefs more times than China and climate change twice as much as national security. The bill bans overfishing and the sale of shark fins from the Pacific, but it doesn't put more Virginia-class subs in the Pacific. It doesn't put more forward class aircraft carriers in the Pacific. It does nothing to hold the CCP accountable for the origins of COVID at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. By trying to copy China's Big Government, central planning, industrial policy, the bill would actually make the United States less, not more, competitive. We cannot out-compete China by trying to become more like China.…”