Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On Filing Cloture To Advance Chips And Innovation Legislation
Washington, D.C. – Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor after filing cloture last night on the CHIPS plus legislation, which will lower costs, boost innovation, and protect our national security. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:
Last night, I filed cloture on a major piece of legislation that will help lower costs, boost scientific innovation, and take direct aim at the national chips shortage, which is hurting almost every single American.
Members of both sides know that America’s chips crisis is sending shockwaves across the economy. It is endangering our national security: according to an article by Bloomberg China’s top chips maker has now likely advanced its tech by two generations, threatening US competitiveness.
To ignore the chips crisis means higher costs, squandered job opportunities, greater dependence on foreign chip producers. Thankfully, the Senate is close to finally taking action.
In the long run, our bipartisan chips bill will ease semiconductor supply chain woes, increase domestic inventory of chips, and thus help lower costs on all sorts of products that rely on chips to work.
But, because the vote earlier this week was so bipartisan, I amended the bill to include one of the largest science packages that the Senate has considered in a long time.
As you know, I was the original author of many of the provisions in the science section when I worked with Senator Young on the Endless Frontier Act more than two years ago.
We will devote tens of billions of dollars to cultivate the next generation of tech hubs all across the country—especially in regions that have been overlooked.
We will invest in new science jobs, and that will keep America number one. It's always been America's cutting-edge lead in innovation, in science, and in research that has created millions and millions of good-paying jobs, and kept our economy prosperous. But in the last decade, America seems to have forgotten that, and this bill revitalizes that goal and that dream.
These scientific investments are crucial, not just for innovation and science jobs, but for critical jobs that support these industries too.
I will keep working with my colleagues to get this bill done quickly. With 64 votes in favor of moving forward earlier this week, there is no reason to wait around.
The twenty-first century will be won or lost on the battleground of technological innovation.
Let me say it again, because that’s a crucial sentence: The twenty-first century will be won or lost on the battleground of technological innovation.
Our country now faces a moment of truth: will American workers, American tech, and American ingenuity shape the world over the next hundred years in the same way we’ve shaped it in the last hundred?
Of course I believe America will lead the way, if this chamber is willing to do what is necessary for our economic and our national security.
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