Senate passes billions for tech in U.S. Innovation and Competition Act
The Senate voted overwhelmingly to pass the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, formerly known as the Endless Frontier Act, Tuesday. The bill approves hundreds of billions of dollars in spending for science and technology at a range of government agencies, as well as $52 billion for chip manufacturing. The heavily debated and amended bill now heads to the House, where it faces an uphill battle against key Democrats who have, up to this point, vocally opposed it.
[...] Senators attached a slew of new provisions to benefit certain sectors of the tech industry, including appropriating $52 billion to boost chip manufacturing in the U.S. Another amendment would add $10 billion for NASA's lunar landing program, a provision Sen. Bernie Sanders called "welfare to Mr. [Jeff] Bezos," who owns the space company Blue Origin.
The semiconductor industry applauded the bill upon its passage. "Senate passage of USICA is a pivotal step toward strengthening U.S. semiconductor production and innovation and an indication of the strong, bipartisan support in Washington for ensuring sustained American leadership in science and technology," John Neuffer, CEO of the Semiconductor Industry Association, said in a statement.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar also managed to squeeze in an antitrust provision that would increase filing fees for large mergers.
The final bill includes a litany of oddball items vaguely linked to China — from a prohibition on the sale of shark fins to an exemption on country of origin labeling for cooked king crab. By the time it passed, the bill stretched more than 2,000 pages long.
The mad rush to stuff the bill full of tangential amendments was as good a sign as any early on that the law could actually pass the Senate. But it faces a bigger challenge in the House, where Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, who chairs the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, could block its advancement. Johnson has written publicly about her opposition to the Endless Frontier Act, arguing that it creates a "'shiny new object' that gets the attention of policymakers to the detriment of NSF's fundamental research mission."
Also at CNBC, The Verge, The Guardian, and USA Today.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Wednesday June 09 2021, @01:47PM (2 children)
If memory serves this started as a $200B bill that got it's guts stripped out and replaced with pork. I suspect this is maybe $50 Billion stuff and $200B pork.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Snotnose on Wednesday June 09 2021, @01:58PM
Found the article I was thinking of: https://www.vox.com/2021/6/4/22518923/endless-frontier-act-innovation-competition-act-china-congress [vox.com]
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday June 09 2021, @02:03PM
Was $100 billion the original price tag which has now become around $250 billion, does the "Directorate for STIs" exist anymore? You decide.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday June 09 2021, @02:19PM (5 children)
Is there anything in there for the working class? Maybe a couple cans of spam?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 09 2021, @02:27PM
Well no, but in the future you'll have (Chinese-made) super awesome smart can openers. Will that help?
(Score: 5, Funny) by Snotnose on Wednesday June 09 2021, @02:49PM
The bill.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 09 2021, @04:26PM
You don't get enough in your email?
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 09 2021, @07:47PM
All-you-can-take Covid vaxxes?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 10 2021, @04:43AM
I'm afraid the bill is similar to spam egg sausage and spam -- it hasn't got much spam in it.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 09 2021, @02:28PM (4 children)
When did he become fiscally sensible?
Supporting science development is good, but the snag will be preventing our captains of industry selling out the tech to China in hope of access to "one beellion consumers".
And the NSF should also be scrutinized since they allowed universities to shut down for 20 months with everyone getting paid. How much real, defensible science did we actually get in that time?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 09 2021, @02:39PM (2 children)
You should be scrutinized for being a Russian bot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 09 2021, @04:26PM (1 child)
All you have is ad-hominems?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Tork on Wednesday June 09 2021, @06:05PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 10 2021, @07:52PM
>And the NSF should also be scrutinized since they allowed universities to shut down for 20 months with everyone getting paid.
Yeah, crazy that people with tenure should expect to have job security!
>How much real, defensible science did we actually get in that time?
Quite a lot, actually
(Score: 3, Insightful) by crafoo on Wednesday June 09 2021, @02:36PM (8 children)
Handing out money no one has, produced by inflation your average american is no prepared for is the height of irresponsibility. Maybe take a hard, practical look at existing laws and regulatory bodies and really think about their existence. Are they an actual net benefit to the environment, economy, peoples' lives?
But no. Let's buy votes instead with money we don't have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 09 2021, @02:48PM (4 children)
It's all good until the plebes realize a dollar now only buys 70 cents worth of goods.
One of the most evil and therefore popular for the govt aspects of inflation is that it makes it "possible" for the government to pay back (snicker!) its debts, so long as they force the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates close to zero. Due to inflation, you take in more (somewhat worthless, but high denomination) tax dollars, so you can easily "pay back" the debt (well, part of it) so you can borrow even more!
This is how Third World governments operate, and people are stupid to think we can't crash our own economy this way.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday June 09 2021, @03:18PM (3 children)
That sounds like a Ponzi scheme. They're not legal now, are they?
(Sorry for the sarcasm / cynicism; inflation is pretty much a given in any even slightly free-market economic system, greed being a thing and all...)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 09 2021, @05:19PM (2 children)
There is low inflation (under 3% a year), and then there is oh shit inflation from Carter's presidency. The first is tolerable, the second, not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 09 2021, @07:45PM
It started under Nixon, due to the profligate spending on the lost Vietnam war and the space race.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday June 09 2021, @08:07PM
Guess you weren't around in '73 [youtube.com]
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 09 2021, @03:14PM
It's not a big problem for the US people IF they get a decent share of the created US dollars. That's a big IF there though.
Because with the Petro Dollar as long as the rest of the world is using/holding trillions of US dollars they are living in the USA's "Zimbabwe".
When the US Gov ("US Mugabe") creates dollars, the US people who have net positive amounts of USD get poorer BUT the rest of the world also becomes poorer (that's including China who is owed trillions in USD, and is paid by the world in USD and holds lots of USD to buy oil, soybeans and zillions of other stuff that's priced in USD).
But if the US people get a lot more of the created dollars than the rest of the world then the US people actually become richer relatively to the rest of the world.
So if you're a US citizen and you're getting some of that pork then it's working out for you.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday June 09 2021, @03:17PM (1 child)
Well there is expected to be significant Democratic pushback to this bill in the House so we'll see how it plays out.
Personally I'm generally in favor of funding basic research that isn't profitable (yet) to the private sector. But some of the line items that got added to the Senate version are definitely concerning. Bans on shark fins but exemptions to labeling requirements for king crab? Yeah....hopefully the House strips that nonsense out.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday June 09 2021, @08:01PM
Do you know who put it in? Let's hear some names, and see if they sound familiar or not.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by Username on Wednesday June 09 2021, @09:50PM (6 children)
Everything made in the US uses chi-nah components. If china ever wanted to ruin the united states, they would just stop selling us resistors. Far is I know, noone makes resistors inside the US anymore. The current price is about 0.00006 usd per resistor. Without chi-nah that decimal would move a few spots over. Aerospace manufacturers have to stockpile entire lots of every part they use, since that was the approved component, and to replace it with any other component, you will need to redo everything. requality everything, test it for years etc. The MELFs we have are inventory from the 1990s. No joke. Unwind them from the reel and the tape disintegrates. If the prices of resistors skyrocketed from lack of supply companies would have to stockpile $0.05 resistors. Military contractors would be going out of business left and right. They'd be eating red.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 09 2021, @10:18PM (3 children)
The world worked just fine before we sent everything to China, and it can work fine again if we decouple. Do you think there isn't some other poor country we can build up by sending them all our manufacturing? :-|
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 10 2021, @06:28AM (2 children)
My guess is on Communist Vietnam for tech because of the relative order of things there.
For basic goods, India is already making a stronger appearance felt.
China's running out of road, they are trying to establish themselves militarily in the region to be as self-sufficient as the US is, but I feel they are going to eventually fall short.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Thursday June 10 2021, @11:39AM (1 child)
India seems like a good bet. Big population, and at least the foundation of democracy. I always wonder why folks go with China when they such a nasty government (and the big risk that comes with that). Some sort of tax hole?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 11 2021, @06:47PM
Because Indians tend to lie even more than the Chinese about stuff being OK when it isn't. If stuff isn't going to work the Chinese are more likely to say it's not going to work than the Indians. Go ask the many who outsourced stuff to India.
Examples:
https://www.cio.com/article/2854076/why-your-team-in-india-wont-say-no.html [cio.com]
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141024220616-1280456-indian-outsourcing-why-yes-is-not-yes [linkedin.com]
There are risks in India too: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47857583 [bbc.com]
You could get closed down because some politicians want to pander to the mob to win votes:
https://www.nytimes.com/1995/11/25/world/new-delhi-journal-fowl-fight-over-flies-sends-india-into-a-stew.html [nytimes.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 09 2021, @10:28PM
As the Cold War II heats up, there will be more incentives and tariffs to drive that manufacturing elsewhere.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by BeaverCleaver on Thursday June 10 2021, @11:22AM
Just because resistors aren't made un the USA doesn't mean they're all made in China. Vishay makes a bunch in the Czech Republic, for example. Czechia is part of NATO.