On the recordJuly 19, 2022
I want to express my gratitude to the Senator from Ohio for his excellent remarks and for his support getting us to the point we are today, which is on the cusp of a historic accomplishment--and that is to make sure that the supply lines of advanced semiconductors remains available to American businesses and, even more importantly, to our national security. Now, 2 years ago, Senator Warner, the senior Senator from Vermont, and I introduced the CHIPS for America Act. It has been a long, strange trip till today. I daresay at the time we introduced the bill, there were many people who didn't know the difference between chocolate chips and microchips. Frankly, that is an exaggeration, but the point is that most people are really unaware of the dependency of our economy and our national security and, frankly, just the quality of our life on access to these microcircuits known as semiconductors. And over time, the semiconductor manufacturers have been able to make them smaller and smaller and more and more powerful until your cell phone, which is essentially a minicomputer, contains thousands of these microchips. Again, whether you are talking about a laptop computer or a new car or a washing machine or just some desktop computer, all of them depend on access to these semiconductors. As I said, Senator Warner and I introduced the bipartisan CHIPS for America Act 2 years ago.…
