Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 6602. In recent years, our use of export controls to safeguard our national security has expanded greatly. However, these efforts have not come with a commensurate increase in the budget of the Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security, or BIS, which is the U.S. Government entity leading export control efforts. The Biden administration has vastly expanded controls against Russia and Belarus since the horrific invasion of Ukraine and has imposed unprecedented unilateral controls against China in the semi-conductor space. This has resulted in a large increase in the license review and enforcement burden at BIS, which now processes nearly 40,000 licenses per year. For our controls to be effective, I strongly believe that they need to be laser-focused on the highest priority cases where the national security concerns are most clear. At the moment, the Departments of State, Defense, Energy, or Commerce can individually block the approval or denial of a license by an interagency committee by escalating a decision if they don't agree with it. This legislation will allow the chair of the operating committee to decide cases where the agencies are divided 2-2, which should mitigate the number of escalations that we see and result in a more streamlined and effective process. Mr.…”