Majority Leader Schumer’s Floor Remarks On The CHIPS And Science Law Delivering A $6.1 Billion Grant For Micron, Driving Major Investment In Upstate New York

Washington, D.C. – Today, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) spoke on the Senate floor, announcing Micron is expected to receive $6.1 billion in funding through the CHIPS and Science law, which Leader Schumer helped author and led to passage. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:

Today is the dawn of a new day in Syracuse and in all of Upstate New York: I am proud to announce that Micron is expected to receive $6.1 billion from my CHIPS and Science Law, to support its chip mega-fab project in Central New York and its expansion in Idaho.

This multi-billion dollar award is one of the largest single direct federal investments in Upstate New York’s history. It’s a landmark announcement for Syracuse, and all of Upstate New York, and for the nation. It will create 50,000 new, good-paying jobs in NY alone, and propel Micron to reach its goal of investing well over $100+ billion to make advanced memory chips here in the U.S. We've had other chip fab announcements. They're all good. I welcome all of them. But this one is the first for memory chips, and memory chips are becoming more and more important because they're the basic chip used in A.I., and A.I. is expanding all over the place. So I'm glad about this announcement.

We are rebuilding upstate New York with good-paying, middle class jobs – one microchip at a time!

Micron is the leading manufacturer of memory chips, which are critical to everything from cell phones to cars to A.I. And this major CHIPS investment is making possible the largest, one of the most advanced memory chip projects in the U.S., even the world. 

And its critical to our national security and to our competitiveness. With this investment—and the hundreds of billions of other transformational CHIPS investments by Intel, TSMC, Samsung, GlobalFoundries and more—we are bringing manufacturing back to America. We are shoring up our supply chain to prevent shortages and high prices. And we’re strengthening our national security.  

I worked real hard to write and pass the CHIPS and Science Act into law, with goal of bringing advanced manufacturing back to the US as my guiding light. And not just communities in New York but communities everywhere: Arizona, Idaho, Texas, Ohio. These are the places where the story of American innovation will be written this century.

And speaking about my own home state--and I wearing my orange tie today for Syracuse—I had communities like Syracuse and others across Upstate New York in mind when I wrote CHIPS and Science. I made sure they would be the ones celebrating these types of investments, not far off places in countries like China. We want these chips made in Syracuse, not in Shanghai.

I am proud this six billion dollar investment delivers on my promise to Micron, and makes the promise of the CHIPS and Science Act a reality. It’s not just a once-in-a-generation investment – it’s a once-in-a-lifetime investment.

It was a long, hard-fought battle to get CHIPS and Science done. It took us four years, we had to persuade the House of Representatives of how important it was, but this announcement proves that the hard work and persistence is paying off. We still have a long way to go, but we are one step closer to securing America’s future as a leader in the global semiconductor industry.

###