Endless Frontier Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, the situation in the Middle East is a stark contrast from that of just 9 months ago.

Last summer, the United States helped broker the Abraham Accords--a historic step in the relationship between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. The UAE became the third Arab country--the first Gulf State-- to recognize and normalize relations with Israel. Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan would follow suit shortly thereafter. These agreements mark historic progress toward peace in decades and appear to open a new era of diplomacy in the Middle East.

Today, though, the optimism we felt just a little less than a year ago has been replaced with more violence--more violence--and more destruction than we have seen in years and civilian casualties that continue to climb every day.

Hamas has fired thousands of rockets into civilian populations in Israel. If not for the Iron Dome anti-rocket defense system and the U.S. support and funding that made it possible, the death toll would be significantly higher than it is.

Just as any sovereign state under attack by terrorist forces would do, Israel has defended its citizens. Given the way Hamas uses Palestinian civilians as human shields--a war crime, by the way, for which Hamas alone is responsible--the counterstrikes have carried a human cost.

As the conflict has intensified, some of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle have called into question Israel's right to defend itself. They have acted as though there is some moral equivalency between the terrorist acts of Hamas and Israel's right to defend itself. They have called on the President to speak out against the conduct of Israel but not Hamas. It is as though they think that Israel is somehow a terrorist group, not the other way around.

As I said, Hamas has launched thousands of rockets specifically headed toward civilian targets in Israel. The moral equivalency argument between Hamas's attack and Israel's response is clearly divorced from any reality.

Let's be clear, though. This conflict is not a welcome development for anyone. The Israeli and the Palestinian people are bearing the cost of a conflict that they had no hand in creating.

It is important to remember that two things can be true. First, Israel has a right to defend itself. If Hamas or any other terrorist group or state launches an attack on Israel, its government has both the right and the responsibility to respond and protect its citizens. Secondly, the number of civilian casualties on both sides, particularly the number of children, is heartbreaking. Both of those things are true.

The violence and destruction we are seeing is devastating, made even more upsetting by the progress we appeared to have made just last year. But this is not a conflict between two governments; this is a sovereign state defending itself against a terrorist attack.

I am afraid that message has been lost on President Biden. When asked about the conflict earlier this week, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the administration is using ``quiet and intensive diplomacy''--``quiet and intensive diplomacy'' while the rockets are raining down on civilian populations in Israel.

The only democracy in the Middle East is being attacked by a terrorist organization, and the diplomatic strategy of the leader of the free world includes remaining quiet. I am reminded of President Obama's statement--bizarre now, in retrospect--talking about ``leading from behind,'' an oxymoronic doctrine which gave way to disastrous, albeit predictable, consequences in Libya. We continued to see the dire cost of poor American leadership in other foreign countries. In Yemen, in Iraq, Syria, and Ukraine, leading from behind has done nothing but harm the cause of peace.

I hope this serves as a wake-up call for President Biden of the dangers of a similar quest. ``Quiet and intensive diplomacy'' is not the appropriate course when one of our closest allies in the world is being attacked by an internationally recognized terrorist organization.

But we can't lose sight of the country behind the curtain, the silent financier of this conflict, which is Iran, the No. 1 state sponsor of international terrorism, because this is, in fact, a proxy war waged against the Jewish State.

Iran is a prolific state sponsor of terrorism and has felt growing pressure from the United States and its allies in recent years. The Trump administration withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal and placed sanctions on hundreds of businesses and individuals who have helped finance Iran's illicit activities. And there is no question that Iran stood to lose the most from the peace agreements brokered last year. The threat of Iran was largely responsible for these countries to come together and to lay down their arms and to work together.

The Biden administration has made clear it intends to recklessly revive the Iran deal, while loosening the sanctions that would provide the United States leverage to negotiate better terms. These important sanctions target Iran's support for terrorist groups like Hamas, as well as its ballistic missile development and human rights violations.

Removing them now, essentially unilaterally, is a grave mistake. Simply by signaling this intent, President Biden has already emboldened and encouraged Iran's malign activities through its proxies--Hamas, Hezbollah, and others.

This current loss of life and destruction demonstrate that Iran is capable of wielding deadly force, even with lean resources. Fewer sanctions, though, have meant less cash flowing to their terrorist proxies.

This week, we are reminded of the saying that has been around for years: ``If Hamas laid down its weapons today, there would be no more violence. If Israel laid down its weapons, there would be no more Israel.''

America must remain steadfast in our commitment to support Israel, as well as our responsibility to counter threats posed by terrorist organizations like Hamas and malign nation state actors like Iran.

I hope for a day in the future when the Middle East can be a place of peace, stability, and democracy, but we simply will not reach that point without a strong and secure Israel.

I stand in full support of Israel and will continue to fight for a strong U.S.-Israel relationship. The United States does not bow down to terrorist organizations, and we will not allow our allies to be bullied and beaten by Hamas or any other terrorist group.

(Mr. OSSOFF assumed the Chair. S. 1260

Mr. President, on one final matter, we know the Endless Frontier legislation, which is on the floor today, is part of our response to the competition caused by an increasingly belligerent and aggressive China, and I am glad the Senate has taken up consideration of this legislation.

In coming days, I expect both sides to offer amendments to strengthen this legislation and to ensure that it addresses a broad range of strategic threats. As Leader McConnell has said, a robust amendment process is critical to the success of this legislation.

One of the most pressing needs, though, is to bolster our domestic semiconductor manufacturing, which will be addressed and is addressed by the underlying bill. We rely on these microelectronic circuits, or semiconductors, for everything from our telephones that we have in our pockets to the cars in our driveways, to the missile defense systems that are right now knocking down Hamas rockets raining down over Israel.

Over the past couple of decades, as our need for semiconductors has increased, as we have become more technologically centric, so has our dependence on the countries that produce those semiconductors.

Here is a graphic reminder of our dependency on foreign supply chains in order to supply these critical semiconductors that are so important to our economy and to our national security. As you can see, 63 percent of the global market supply of semiconductors comes from Taiwan, 18 percent comes from South Korea, 6 percent from China, but nearly 90 percent of chips are sourced from Southeast Asia.

As we learned in the pandemic called COVID-19, vulnerable supply chains are something we need to be aware of and to fight against.

I am reminded of what President Jimmy Carter said in 1980 in the State of the Union Message when he spoke about the Persian Gulf and Soviet threats to the movement of essential energy supplies through the Strait of Hormuz. President Carter at that time articulated the Carter doctrine, as it came to be known. He said:

An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America.

In other words, it would be an act of war because of the dramatic dependence that the United States had at that time on oil flowing through the Strait of Hormuz.

But I think you could consider today that semiconductors are the new oil. Instead of the Strait of Hormuz, we are now dependent on a supply chain from parts of the world we can no longer depend upon.

Just as a blockade would have left the world with devastating consequences, a blockade of the semiconductor supply chain would have far-reaching, negative consequences to our national security and economy. In fact, we are getting a glimpse of what that might look like right now.

There is a global semiconductor shortage that is largely related to COVID-19 and has led to far-reaching consequences across virtually every industry. In Texas a couple of weeks ago, I met with executives from companies across the range of industries that have been impacted by the shortage of semiconductors, including automotive, consumer electronics, and defense.

So we need a strong response to restore domestic semiconductor manufacturing, which is why last year, Senator Warner, the Senator from Virginia, and I introduced what we call the CHIPS for America Act. Thanks to the leadership of then-Chairman Jim Inhofe on the Senate Armed Services Committee, that became law, and it will help restore American semiconductor manufacturing by creating a Federal incentive to encourage chip manufacturing right here in the U.S.A.

But the thing we couldn't do then, even though the amendment we introduced passed 96 to 4, to authorize this Federal incentive program, the one thing that was missing was the money and the finances in order to make this happen.

My preference is always to fund things through the regular order whenever possible. We simply cannot get into the habit of cutting the Appropriations Committee out of the appropriations process. But there is clearly broad support for the CHIPS for America Act. As I said, 96 Senators voted to include it in the Defense Authorization Act.

I am committed to securing funding for the program created by the bill, and there have been many conversations about the alternatives available to us on how to do so.

Originally, we introduced a tax credit provision, but unfortunately that did not seem to gain the traction that we needed. When we tried to get the funding in December, we came up emptyhanded.

But today I am glad to say there is a significant emergency appropriation included in the underlying bill. But unfortunately, politics being what it is and Washington being a political city, there are unnecessary and purely political provisions related to the payment of prevailing wages, which U.S. semiconductor manufacturing companies already pay their employees, and they have created a problem for funding this noncontroversial measure to bring chip production back to American soil.

I have reached out to our friends across the aisle to try to work in good faith to reach a compromise that allows this funding to pass with a broad bipartisan majority. There is a clear and urgent need to bolster domestic semiconductor manufacturing and to secure one of our most, if not the most, critical supply chains.

Here is what a recent support of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence said:

[T]he United States is almost entirely reliant on foreign sources for production of cutting-edge semiconductors critical for defense systems and industry more broadly, leaving the U.S. supply chain vulnerable to disruption by foreign government action or natural disaster.

It is clear that other countries--notably China--are steadily investing in their own semiconductor manufacturing. Today, as I speak, China is building 17 fabs, or manufacturing facilities, in the People's Republic of China.

The United States needs to compete, and in order to do so, we need to pass this essential funding. We should not be bogged down by bipartisan or political points to be scored when, in fact, they really don't make any difference to the semiconductor industry because they already pay high wages. The only reason to do this is to try to advance the interests of organized labor and impose additional costs on the construction of these advanced fabrication facilities.

The fact is, this actually expands the role of prevailing wage requirements because this is essentially private construction, funded in part--in a modest part--by U.S. Federal tax dollars. So now is not the time to let politics get in the way of our progress. It is just simply too important to our country.

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