The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“MORNING BUSINESS” mentioning Patrick J. Leahy was published in the Senate section on pages S3876-S3878 on May 27.
Of the 100 senators in 117th Congress, 24 percent were women, and 76 percent were men, according to the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
Senators' salaries are historically higher than the median US income.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
MORNING BUSINESS
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S. 1260
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, today, in a bipartisan vote, the Senate advanced important legislation to increase our Nation's competitiveness with China. The United States Innovation and Competition Act, USICA, of 2021 is significant legislation and an example of what process and debate can yield in the U.S. Senate.
This legislative package is the end result of the bipartisan work of from multiple Senate committees and reflects the urgency of addressing the challenges faced by domestic manufacturers and American researchers in our global competition with China. This includes an emergency appropriation of $54 billion in funding for grants to make semiconductor chips here in America and for the continuation of chip production in Essex, VT. The package also allocates $1.5 billion in funding for implementation and domestic research and development, R&D of 5G technology to ensure that the United States drives the modernization of its own communications infrastructure.
The bill significantly raises authorization levels by almost $120 billion over 5 years for the National Science Foundation, NSF, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA, the Department of Commerce, and the Department of Energy, DOE. These historic investments in American ingenuity will help strengthen our country's R&D capabilities, regional economic development opportunities, manufacturing capacity, and supply chain resiliency.
Through the creation of a new Directorate of Technology and Innovation at the NSF, the Federal Government will be able to better support research and technology development in key focus areas, such as the growing artificial intelligence space and quantum science. Among other activities, the Directorate will help fund R&D at collaborative institutes, establish technology testbeds, and award scholarships and fellowships to build a workforce equipped to lead us through the 21st century and beyond.
Throughout the process, I was encouraged to see a strong focus on the need to continue to increase education, research, and workforce opportunities in rural and underserved areas throughout the country. The regional technology hub program at the Commerce Department established in this bill will benefit rural communities in Vermont and across the country. These hubs, of which there will be three per EDA region, will carry out workforce development activities and business and entrepreneur development activities, among other important activities. I appreciate the work done by fellow Members in the Senate to ensure that these hubs truly and accurately represent the significant economic needs of rural areas in this country.
The inclusion of increased supplementary funding for research at universities that participate in the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research, EPSCoR, takes important steps to build our Nation's capacity in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, STEM, field. This funding will also help reduce the geographic concentration of research and development and education opportunities across the country. For far too long, Americans have had to leave their hometowns and even their home States to get an education and find work. This bill will give rural residents more reasons to stay close to home and help their communities grow from the ground up. I have seen the incredible work that has already been done by the University of Vermont's participation in EPSCoR and am excited to see what is to come from this substantial investment.
This serious legislative package shows what can be done when we all work together in the Senate. Thanks to these efforts, we will be able to secure America's role as a global leader in technology, R&D, and manufacturing. I hope the House of Representatives will soon consider this legislation so President Biden can sign this historic initiative into law.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, as the Senate prepares to vote on the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, I wanted to take moment to highlight the support this bill provides to the U.S. semiconductor industry. I want to commend the leadership that Senators Warner, Cornyn, and Schumer have shown in highlighting the need for our country to ensure that we maintain leading edge manufacture capabilities in the United States. I strongly support the over $50 billion provided in this bill for the Department of Commerce to join in partnerships with U.S. semiconductor companies.
My history with microelectronics spans my career in the Senate, and I can remember when Tom Watson selected Essex Junction as the location for an IBM fab to produce some of the first generations of mass produced integrated circuit memory and processing chips. Of course, it revolutionized computing. Over the years, Vermonters working out of Essex led the way in inventing new kinds of chips and new ways to make chips, at the same time making Vermont the State with the most patents per capita.
Over that time, I heard again and again from national security leaders from both political parties that one of the biggest threats facing the United States was that our revolutionary technology was threatened by the production of chips increasingly moving to foreign countries. While some of those countries closely cooperate with the United States, being offshore provides an inherent risk of the chips being compromised by malicious actors or even facilities themselves being rendered inoperable, one way or another.
I helped create a program called Trusted Foundry within the Department of Defense to provide critical chips for national security needs that we knew were untampered with from start to finish and were made right in the United States. Because the national security needs alone could never be produced at an economically practical scale, we located Trusted Foundry in commercial fabs, including the one in Essex. Today that factory still produces both commercial and national security chips, particularly chips used for radio frequency or RF functions.
With this bill, we continue the endeavor to produce chips in the United States at a commercially viable level. We hope that the production can supply our national security needs, by geographically keeping production domestic, thereby increasing our confidence that the chips have not been tampered with.
Through the Appropriations Committee, I will continue oversight of this important area. We will ensure that these grants are administered well and build toward a better future. And we will ensure they are part of a whole-of-government effort, including contributions from the Department of Defense and other Agencies from their own authorizations and budgets. Thanks to this bill, I look forward to a brighter, and more technologically capable future.
AMENDMENT no. 1813
Mr. REED. Mr. President, I am disappointed that my bipartisan amendment with Senators Moran and Murkowski is not receiving a vote today.
Our amendment has a simple purpose--to protect taxpayers. It seeks to do so by providing the administration the discretionary authority to negotiate for warrants, which are like stock options, as part of the
$50 billion we are appropriating in this bill for the CHIPS for America Fund.
A warrant is the right to purchase one share of common stock at a preestablished price, known as the strike price. Warrants, just like stock options, are exercised when the stock price is greater than the strike price. The idea is that if taxpayer dollars are necessary to invest in a company, then taxpayers should also benefit from some of the upside when the company grows.
I worked on a bipartisan basis to secure warrants when Federal funds were needed for private companies as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, TARP, and in the CARES Act. As a result of the warrants provision in TARP, nearly $10 billion in profit was generated for taxpayers. And according to new Department of Treasury estimates, taxpayers stand to gain more than $1 billion for the CARES Act warrants.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, who also has prior private sector experience as a venture capital investor and as a former treasurer of Rhode Island, said this week at a CJS Appropriations Subcommittee hearing that she would ``support'' having this authority as a ``good way to stick up for American taxpayers.''
So if companies are receiving taxpayer funds to make investments in semiconductors, U.S. taxpayers should also be able to get some of the upside when these investments pay off. We should be striving to ensure that we get the best possible deal for our constituents' money.
I appreciate Leader Schumer's commitment to get this concept included in the bill as it moves forward in the process, and I will continue working with him and all of our colleagues to make that commitment a reality.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, the Budget Control Act of 2011 expires this year, and that is a good thing.
This law led to a decade of underfunding our domestic priorities, from which it will take years to recover. Right now, in communities across the country, our infrastructure is crumbling, millions of Americans cannot access Federal programs for which they qualify, and we are falling behind in investing in science, research, and development on the global economic stage--all of this because the Budget Control Act set artificial and unrealistically low caps on discretionary spending, and it inflicted arbitrary, across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration.
President Biden understands the real consequences of this decade-old decision. That is why tomorrow, President Biden will propose a 16-
percent increase for nondefense investments in his budget. We cannot build back better until we recover the ground we have already lost.
I want to give a few examples of what I mean. For many low-income families with young children, the beginning of summer means the end of school breakfast and lunch programs and waking up every morning dreading how you will be able to put food on the table for your children. Basic nutrition is a basic requirement for child health, development, and education.
The Summer EBT program is meant to help these families bridge to this gap, with an extra $30 or $60 per child every month. This is a program that has proven itself successful, reducing the number of households with food-insecure children from 43 percent to just under 35 percent. But because of the Budget Control Act, this program has been flat-
funded. We could not expand upon its success. And today, only 16 percent of children who need access to USDA food programs have that access.
This problem of underinvestment in successful, worthwhile programs is true across our appropriations bills.
Our country, which has led in some of the greatest scientific discoveries of the last century, ranks 24th out of 36 developed nations for investments in university research and development as a share of GDP.
We once accounted for 69 percent of global research and development expenditures but have fallen to just under 30 percent. China now accounts for 23.9 percent of global research and development spending, and growing.
How did this happen? One analysis by the American Association for the Advancement of Science directly attributes $200 billion in lost Federal research and development investments to the Budget Control Act. The National Science Foundation alone has lost $2 billion a year, which could support more than 5,500 grants and 65,000 scientists, technicians, and students.
We cannot lead in a rapidly evolving technological landscape unless we are investing in science and our scientists.
Failing to do so only cedes the next great discovery to China at the cost of innovation here in the United States. As chair of the Appropriations Committee, I am committed to fighting for the investments in American science, research, medical progress, and technological development that our great Nation needs and deserves.
There has been a lot of talk in this Chamber about the need for a major infrastructure package to repair our Nation's crumbling bridges and roads, and I support addressing that need. But there is a reason why our roads are in disrepair, forcing the American people to spend nearly $130 billion each year on vehicle repairs and operating costs. There is a reason why our drinking water systems lose the equivalent of 9,000 Olympic-size swimming pools of water every day. And there is a reason why one in five children lacks the high-speed internet connections they need to learn and participate in school.
That reason is a decade of budget caps that artificially constrained our ability to address these issues before they became the national limitation and embarrassment that they are today.
Now there is a $44 billion backlog in airport improvement projects,
$35 billion in deferred maintenance for public housing, and $472.6 billion in urgently needed funds to maintain and improve the Nation's drinking water infrastructure.
Over the last decade, we have lost ground in education, childcare, environmental protections, and affordable housing. The Budget Control Act did not constrain our national debt; it left us as a nation in disrepair.
Joe Biden understands this, and I commend him for taking the bold action to address this in the budget he will release tomorrow. As chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, I look forward to working with the President, his administration, and my dear friend Vice Chairman Shelby on passing responsible appropriations bills that address the damage caused by the Budget Control Act.
The end of the Budget Control Act gives us the opportunity to invest in our communities. Tomorrow, Congress will receive the President's budget. The full Appropriations Committee has already held hearings on the need to invest in our infrastructure and on the threat of domestic violent extremism, and in June, we will hold hearings on global leadership and national security. In June, our subcommittees will hold numerous hearings to scrutinize the President's budget.
When Congress returns in early June, it is essential that Congress, on a bipartisan and bicameral basis, work with the President to negotiate budget toplines so that we can commence the appropriations process for the fiscal year that begins October 1. As President Biden has said, we can, should, and need to build back better.
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