Senate Commerce Chair Maria Cantwell expected to finalize a bipartisan, bicameral conference committee agreement on rival competition bills this month. But when “leadership politics” got in the way, the Washington Democrat and other lead negotiators pushed to salvage as much of their work as possible.
Ultimately the lawmakers were successful in convincing Senate leaders to add nearly 1,000 pages of science and research and development provisions that the conference committee had largely finalized to a more narrow “chips-plus” bill focused on semiconductor manufacturing incentives. Lawmakers are rushing to pass the measure before their summer recess.
“We thought it was really important before we went home for the August recess to say that we were going to make this investment in science and R&D to make the U.S. more competitive in key areas of national security, not just in semiconductor manufacturing, but in [artificial intelligence] and quantum and other key manufacturing sectors,” Cantwell said in an interview.
