Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I come to the Senate floor today to correct the record, really. Some of my colleagues in the Chamber voted yesterday to begin consideration of this chips package that we have talked about a lot because they believed it included legislation called Safeguarding American Innovation Act, or SAIA, the bipartisan, Senate- passed, White-House supported, essential legislation to protect taxpayer-funded research and intellectual property from being taken, stolen, by China and other adversaries and then used against us. It is understandable people thought that because the SAIA research security provisions were in the broader USICA bill that passed the Senate last year. In fact, as the coauthors of USICA know, it was the reason I was one of the then-original Republican cosponsors of USICA and only because of that. At that time, we needed Republican cosponsors. And it is understandable because, this week, all Republican offices were emailed a list of items by the lead Republican on this bill which included chips-plus legislation, including SAIA. So Republicans, when they voted yesterday, thought SAIA was part of it. Even today, Democrats and Republicans alike have come up to me and said they thought SAIA was in this bill. By the way, they want it in this bill, but it is not. It was stripped out of this USICA.…”