Endless Frontier Act-- continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I call up my amendment 1858 and ask that it be reported by number.

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, last year Senator Warner, the senior Senator from Virginia, and I introduced the CHIPS for America Act to help shore up vulnerable supply chains for semiconductors and to reduce our reliance on other countries for the most critical components of everything from the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to the cell phones in our pockets and everything in between.

The vast majority of our colleagues have agreed that this is a critical task. It was carefully crafted after monthslong bipartisan, bicameral negotiations. In fact, this legislation was adopted as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act by a vote of 96 to 4 at the end of last year. But now we need to fund the program we created, and there is just one issue standing in the way.

During committee consideration of the Endless Frontier Act, an amendment was adopted that would apply controversial and unprecedented prevailing wage language to the CHIPS for America Act signed into law last year. This provision creates a needless hurdle to funding for the CHIPS provision.

Considering the current wages of U.S. semiconductor manufacturing companies, there is zero benefit--zero benefit--to workers' wages. So this is really a nonissue in terms of the compensation that workers in semiconductor manufacturing facilities will make. What is more, these Davis-Bacon provisions represent an expansion of special interest labor policy to private construction projects and set a disturbing precedent.

Leaving this language in the bill is a gratuitous act and could dramatically weaken support for the broader legislation, and I would hope we could all agree that the stakes are simply too high to let that happen. So I have introduced an amendment to strike this unnecessary and divisive language and maintain strong bipartisan support for this program. A partisan provision with zero benefit to workers' wages is hardly a reason to gamble with strong support for the CHIPS Act.

Republicans and Democrats have worked hard together to bolster our domestic semiconductor manufacturing and to confront one of the most dangerous, looming threats from China. Now is not the time to sacrifice the progress we have made. So I would encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this amendment so we can maintain the strong bipartisan support for this critical legislation and send a message to our adversaries that the United States intends to stay the world's preeminent economic and military power.

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