Democrats want to throw billions, including funds for the U.N., at problems unrelated to China or national security.
Democrats want to throw billions, including funds for the U.N., at problems unrelated to China or national security.
B arring a major surprise, the House is poised to pass the 2,900-page China-focused competition bill that Speaker Nancy Pelosi released last night. Republicans, however, were quick to pour cold water on the massive legislative package, which their Democratic colleagues pitched as a landmark proposal. The GOP officials say it’s fundamentally unserious, nakedly partisan, and unlikely to advance America’s national-security interests.
That bill — dubbed the America Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science Act, or the America COMPETES Act — is the House’s answer to the Senate-passed U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, the bipartisan $252 billion research-and-development investment measure aimed at prepping the U.S. for the long arc of its competition with the Chinese Communist Party. The House and Senate versions share some notable differences, but they both boost investment in scientific research, provide $52 billion in semiconductor-production subsidies, and address other aspects of U.S. policy toward China.
But even the process by which the legislation was drafted —Republican lawmakers said it was crafted unilaterally by Democratic leadership — elicited furious criticism yesterday evening. Representative Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, released a statement in which he blasted the Pelosi bill as partisan and unserious, saying:
We have been in talks with House and Senate committees of jurisdiction for weeks, trying to put together a bipartisan bill that could pass Congress. Rather than allowing those talks to play out, Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats have decided to torpedo the chance of a bipartisan, bicameral bill to confront the generational threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party.
Similarly, Representative Frank Lucas, the ranking member of the Science Committee, said in his own statement last night that Pelosi’s unilateral move to introduce this bill ignored a year’s worth of bipartisan negotiations on legislation to provide increased funding for high-tech research projects.
All of that is to say nothing of the substantive complaints from GOP lawmakers, who fault Democrats for incorporating into the legislation the EAGLE Act, a previous version of the House bill that they said was unserious. Among other things, they attacked EAGLE last year for throwing money at a number of different programs that do not have a direct bearing on the competition with China — including a proposal to send $8 billion to the U.N.’s Green Climate Fund.
The bill unveiled last night in fact also includes a grant to the U.N. fund — which Republicans say is an unaccountable slush fund — at $4 billion per year in 2022 and 2023. That is too much, according to leading GOP lawmakers.
“It is weak and fails to properly confront the China threat, and it throws billions at unrelated issues that have nothing to do with national security,” Representative Jim Banks, the chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, said in a statement today. The RSC, a 150-member caucus, led the opposition to the EAGLE Act on similar grounds, and it also opposed the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act (USICA) for failing to provide adequate safeguards to prevent China from stealing research funded under the legislation.
The RSC alternative, said Banks, would only cost half of a percent of USICA, because it would fund only certain offices in the Treasury, Homeland Security, and Justice Departments that have more of a direct bearing on China competition.
One of these is the Office of Foreign Asset Control, Treasury’s sanctions office, which a Republican staffer said is the key to confronting the CCP more aggressively. “OFAC barely has enough employees to begin with to go after Iran and North Korea and Venezuela,” the staffer told National Review, pointing out that that lack of personnel contributes to the fact that no designations have yet been made under a 2020 law to punish the mass internment of Uyghurs.
In addition, some GOP lawmakers are especially skeptical of the new bill’s hallmark $52 billion investment in semiconductor production. The Senate version also includes $52 billion in chip subsidies, and lawmakers of both parties view these as a critical solution to the ongoing chip-supply-chain crisis. But conservatives worry that the funding will go to companies that continue investing in China.
The discussion about conditioning the subsidies became all the more relevant last month when Intel apologized for telling suppliers they must comply with the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. Intel in particular is pitching itself as part of the solution to America’s supply-chain vulnerabilities while also defending their aggressive expansion in the Chinese market. Recent controversies surrounding Intel’s China ties have led a handful of lawmakers to support prohibiting the subsidies to companies that are expanding in China. But the California-based company’s recent investments in the U.S. — including $20 billion for two new semiconductor factories in Ohio announced last week — have also earned it bipartisan plaudits.
Unless Pelosi’s China legislation faces significant progressive opposition — which remains plausible, given the debate over USICA and EAGLE — it’s likely to win adoption. After passing the House, it would head to a bicameral conference committee process, where Republican negotiators would have a chance to sand down some of its rough edges. Those negotiations might resolve some of the sticking points identified by conservatives, but probably not their more fundamental problems with the ineffective funding offered by the bill.
Update: This article has been changed to reflect that Green Climate Fund grants in this bill would amount to $4 billion per year.