Political Quotes

“Madam President, I rise to express my support for the substitute amendment to the House message accompanying H.R. 4346, which is the vehicle for the so-called CHIPS Act. Semiconductors are crucial to nearly every sector of our economy. They are in our cars and trucks, medical devices, and 5G telecommunications equipment. America created the semiconductor industry in the 1960s. We ceded global leadership in the 1970s. We regained it, to an extent, in the 1990s but have lost it again. In 1990, the U.S. share of semiconductor manufacturing was 37 percent. By 2020, that share had declined to 12 percent. As Mark Muro and Robert Maxim of the Brookings Institution recently reported: While the 1990s saw a significant expansion in U.S. innovation capacity in semiconductors, the nation's production capacity continued to decline. In some cases, this owed to foreign countries out-competing the U.S. on labor costs. But more can be attributed to the significant subsidies foreign governments have been providing to build and maintain fabrication plans--a level of support that the U.S. hasn't matched. The Senate is poised, with strong bipartisan support, to get the United States back on track with respect to domestic semiconductor manufacturing, which is critical for our national and economic security.…”