Senator Cornyn

Cornyn: Controversial Wage Provision Jeopardizing Semiconductor Funding

May 20, 2021

WASHINGTON – Today on the floor, U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) discussed the political provisions inserted by Senate Democrats into the Endless Frontier Act that are jeopardizing the funding for his widely-supported Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) for America Act. Excerpts of Sen. Cornyn’s remarks are below, and video can be found here.

“The strong support for this legislation on a bipartisan basis shows that this is a priority for a majority of the members of this body. There’s no reason these funding programs shouldn’t be bipartisan, too.”

“And we’re already seeing divisions about provisions related to the payment of prevailing wage, so-called Davis-Bacon provisions, which is frankly dividing us, which is a moot issue given the current wages of U.S. semiconductor manufacturing companies. It’s a non-issue for them, yet some of our Democratic colleagues decided to insert this divisive issue in this underlying Endless Frontier bill.”

“We should not allow unnecessary or purely political provisions [to] weaken our strong support to our consensus commitment to deal with these vulnerable supply chains.”

“I’m committed to securing funding to bolster our domestic semiconductor manufacturing and there have been a lot of conversations about the most effective way to do so, but let me be clear, these Davis-Bacon provisions inserted into the committee markup in the Endless Frontiers bill is jeopardizing this funding.”

“I hope our friends on the other side of the aisle will work with us in good faith to come up with a compromise that allows this funding to pass with broad bipartisan support.”