Bioeconomy Research and Development Act of 2021

Floor Speech

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Mr. BARR. Mr. Speaker, let's be clear, the so-called America COMPETES Act, is not about countering the threat from the Chinese Communist Party. It is a subterfuge intended to conceal what this legislation is actually about, a repackaged Build Back Better, and the Democrats' backup plan to push their Green New Deal agenda.

It is $350 billion in deficit spending to pay off the climate activists and the labor unions that run the Democrat Party. It sends $10 billion of taxpayer funds to a climate slush fund at the U.N. that subsidizes solar projects in China that use Uyghur slave labor.

The bill implements a Supply Chain Resiliency Program that gives preferential treatment to labor unions, a scheme designed more to maintain resiliency for Democratic Party fundraising than resiliency of our supply chains. The bill references coral reefs more times than China and climate change twice as much as national security.

The bill bans overfishing and the sale of shark fins from the Pacific, but it doesn't put more Virginia-class subs in the Pacific. It doesn't put more forward class aircraft carriers in the Pacific. It does nothing to hold the CCP accountable for the origins of COVID at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. By trying to copy China's Big Government, central planning, industrial policy, the bill would actually make the United States less, not more, competitive. We cannot out-compete China by trying to become more like China.

But most troubling of all and what underscores that this bill is not a serious effort to confront the very real economic and security challenges posed by the People's Republic of China, is the fact that this bill completely disregards the work of the China Task Force, as well as the work of this, the bipartisan United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

If this bill were serious, it would take into account these recommendations. It does neither of those things. This was a very serious effort that this bill completely disregards.

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Mr. BARR. Mr. Speaker, exhibit A of how unserious this bill is when it comes to confronting China is how it does nothing to address the key challenge facing us from China, and that is the unfettered access that the Chinese Communist Party military and surveillance companies now have to American capital markets. If we really wanted to confront the threat from China, we would protect American investors from unwittingly financing and fueling the rise of China. This bill does nothing to address that. Right now, American investors are unwittingly fueling the civil-military fusion of the Chinese Communist Party.

The House should pass a real bill, a bill recommended by this report, the Chinese Military and Surveillance Company Sanctions Act, that would actually address Chinese access to American capital markets.

Mr. Speaker, today, I urge my colleagues to reject this subterfuge, reject this distraction, this bill that they say confronts China but does nothing of the sort, that actually assists and enables the rise of China. Let's formulate a real strategy that will position us to take on the military, economic, and technological threat of the Chinese Communist Party.

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