Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of the COMPETES Act. And quite frankly, I am stunned to hear some of the rhetoric coming from the other side around a bill that finally, after decades, recognizes that we are in a very stiff competition with China, and for the longest time America didn't know it. China was in this competition. China was doing everything they could to dump steel in our country. They spend 7 to 9 percent of their GDP on infrastructure every year. They got islands in the South China Sea. They told us they weren't going to militarize them; now they have. They have bases in Africa, long-term raw material contracts in African countries to solidify their control of precious metals so that our phones, our weapons systems, our computers, they have a plan. This is not complicated. But it is being seen through the prism of our current, broken, insane political system. And so what we are trying to do here is recognize that they are winning. Seventy percent of chip manufacturing comes out of China. The cargo ships along the California ports, those aren't coming from Kansas. They are coming from China. Over 50 percent of the electric vehicle market is dominated by China. And so the thoughtful thing, the smart, strategic thing for us to do in the United States is one, recognize this, and two, make sure we reinvest back into the United States, which is what we did with the bipartisan infrastructure bill.…”