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

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BEYER. Madam Speaker, I confess, I cannot connect my friend from Arkansas' comments with this motion to instruct, but I won't take any time to refute these things.

Madam Speaker, manufacturing has long been a core strength of the American economy. But the decades-long decline of manufacturing jobs in the United States has cut off pathways to economic security for so many families across this country.

Passage of the America COMPETES Act will be a landmark investment in infrastructure, in clean technology, in innovation that will create and preserve high-quality jobs in communities across America, and advance U.S. competitiveness and drive long-term economic growth.

Disinvestment in American homemade products has also contributed to the severe supply chain disruptions during the coronavirus pandemic that have pushed up prices for so many American consumers. The America COMPETES Act will bolster supply chains, ramp up domestic manufacturing of critical components, like semiconductors, and insulate U.S. workers and families from price volatility and help build their own economic resilience.

Part of the House-passed version is the National Secure Data Service Act, which will allow agencies to link together data collected through surveys, Federal program administration, nongovernmental data sources to advance evidence-based policymaking. This will be a great boon for artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Also included in the COMPETES Act, is an amendment I cosponsored with Representative Trahan to increase investment in fusion energy, the holy grail for our climate and for world poverty.

The COMPETES Act bottom line gives the U.S. the competitive edge needed to maintain our global leadership in innovation and research.

Madam Speaker, I am not sure why my Republican friends felt the need to offer this motion in the first place. Of course, we all understand that the essential subtext of the COMPETES Act has been to strengthen our competitive position versus communist China or, to restate my friend from Arkansas, to put us in the dominant position to compete against communist China.

Of course, nothing in this landmark initiative in American research, in American innovation, in American manufacturing, American artificial intelligence or American chips is intended to be transferred to the PRC. So if this is meant to show that Republicans are tougher on China than Democrats, that is silly and untrue.

Together, we will fight China's human rights abuses. We will fight its cheating on trade. We will fight its autocratic, dictatorial government. And the COMPETES Act gives us the strength we need to do that today.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source