Motion to Instruct Conferees on H.R. America Competes Act of 2022

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCAUL. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Oklahoma for yielding.

Madam Speaker, the Chinese Communist Party poses a generational threat to the United States and our freedom-loving allies around the world.

They are brutally oppressing their own people. They are committing genocide against ethnic and religious minorities. They are expanding their military reach and carrying out territorial aggression against their neighbors. We cannot wait any longer to address these issues.

Madam Speaker, I stand before you, quite frankly, disappointed. We had a great opportunity here, and this bill that passed the House is not the bill. I am very hopeful we can get to a good place in our conference committee.

Unfortunately, the Democrat leaders chose not to work with Republicans to pass a substantive, meaningful bill to counter this malign influence. Instead, they jammed the partisan COMPETES Act through the House.

The COMPETES Act, in my judgment, is a Trojan horse filled with unserious, dangerous, and wasteful provisions.

Those provisions include fringe, progressive priorities, like $8 billion worth of taxpayer money into an unaccountable U.N. slush fund. This U.N. slush fund has already provided at least $100 million directly to China, a country that this Congress, former Republican administration, and current Democrat administration have all agreed is committing genocide.

In fact, it is worse. The Xinjiang Province--you get this money to make solar panels and batteries in the Xinjiang Province where they commit genocide itself. That is not good for America and it is certainly not good for the U.S. taxpayer.

Secretary Kerry admitted before our committee that the CCP is using slave labor to make these green energy products--like solar panels and batteries--that could be used by this U.N. fund. In effect, the bill would fund their slave labor and prop up their forced abortions. We tried to stop this from happening--to stop U.S. taxpayers from funding slave labor in my motion to recommit, and shockingly, we were outright rejected by the Democrats.

The motion to recommit prohibited taxpayer money going to slave labor, genocide, and the Wuhan Lab, and every Democrat voted against that measure. This is a test of our time.

Madam Speaker, so I remain the eternal optimist and hopeful that this conference process will be able to rectify these glaring issues that I have outlined. We can start today by supporting this motion that will block billions of dollars going to the CCP military PLA companies and human rights abusers.

Congress owes it to the American people to pass a bill that takes this threat seriously. That includes tough export controls, outbound investment screening and funding for the CHIPS for America Act, which I introduced, to give us a competitive edge, bring manufacturing to the United States to make advanced semiconductor chips and protect our national security at the same time.

This is vitally important to our national security, and it keeps critical U.S. technology out of the hands of the Chinese military, like hypersonics. It ensures U.S. taxpayers are not subsidizing their genocide.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this motion to instruct. I hope we can all work together in a bipartisan manner on what could be the most important legislation of this Congress.

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