Two months after Congress launched the Conference Committee on Bipartisan Innovation and Competition Legislation in May 2022, the Senate is nearing passage of a compromise “CHIPS Plus” bill. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) initiated a test vote for the bill on Tuesday and received the assurance—a strong bipartisan vote of 64 to 53—that he sought to proceed.
The CHIPS Plus bill, at just over 1000 pages, is much shorter than either the Senate’s United States Innovation and Competition Act (“USICA”) or the House’s America Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science Act (“America COMPETES Act”), but significantly more ambitious than an earlier approximately 80-page bill that was limited only to semiconductor and wireless supply chain incentives.
The 80-page bill now forms the base — the CHIPS component — of the CHIPS Plus bill. That bill included $54 billion in emergency appropriations for semiconductor and wireless supply chain incentives, “guardrails” that potentially constrain the companies that receive the incentives from undertaking certain business activities in China and other foreign countries of concern, and a 25% advanced manufacturing investment tax credit for the construction or acquisition of property integral to a facility whose primary use is to manufacture semiconductors or semiconductor manufacturing equipment. The CHIPS Plus bill contains all of these provisions, as well as a similar set of guardrails for the tax credits.
The Plus component, added only the day before the test vote, authorizes over $100 billion dollars in government programs to support research and development (“R&D”), technology transfer, innovation, and science, technology, education, and mathematics (“STEM”) education. These programs draw from Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee provisions in the USICA and from House Science, Space, and Technology Committee provisions in the America COMPETES Act. They contain important policy changes and are likely to present massive opportunities for businesses, nonprofits, and education institutions to bolster their R&D efforts and to partner with the Federal government. Funds will need to be appropriated for many of these programs for them to be effective.Continue Reading Senate Reaches Compromise on Innovation and Competition Legislation