Building Chips in America Act of 2023

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (S. 2228) to amend the William M. (Mac) Thornberry National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 to clarify the scope of a major Federal action under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 with respect to certain projects relating to the production of semiconductors, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on S. 2228, the bill now under consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of S. 2228, the Building Chips in America Act. This is a companion to H.R. 4549, which was introduced in the House by Representative Kiggans along with Representatives Peters, Williams, Allred, and McCaul.

The Building Chips in America Act is fundamentally about our competitiveness and national security.

Semiconductor chips have become essential to the way we live and work. They power our phones, medical devices, cars, and computers. They are not only essential to our economic security but our national security, as well. Yet, the U.S. is dependent on foreign countries for access to chips.

The Chinese Communist Party has made it clear that it wants to dominate the globe in key technology areas, and part of their strategy is to increase China's share of the semiconductor market through both investment and acquisition.

U.S. technology companies obtain as much as 90 percent of their semiconductor chips from Taiwan, which is a huge risk given the geopolitical situation in the region.

When Congress passed the CHIPS for America Act in 2020 and the CHIPS and Science Act in 2022, the intention was to address this lack of domestic chip production to make us more competitive, and it is starting to work. Since we passed these bills, we have seen companies throughout the supply chain announcing billions of dollars in new investments in domestic chip manufacturing.

Unfortunately, these projects are being required to undergo a lengthy National Environmental Policy Act review. These reviews drag on for a long time. The Council on Environmental Quality reports that it takes an average of 4\1/2\ years to complete this process. That defeats the goal of quickly scaling up chips production in the United States.

Not only do NEPA reviews delay ongoing construction, but they also discourage future investments in chip production. This bill addresses that issue by streamlining the permit requirements so we can quickly build up our semiconductor manufacturing. It clarifies that certain CHIPS projects are not subject to NEPA reviews, and it improves efficiency by ensuring that the Commerce Department is the lead agency to carry out NEPA reviews for the projects that are subject to these requirements.

It also gives Commerce more tools to complete environmental reviews.

Finally, it limits the timeline for court challenges to these reviews.

In short, it allows Commerce to be flexible in how it promotes growth while still ensuring environmental protections.

We cannot afford to stunt our own progress in chip manufacturing because we are following a flawed bureaucratic process.

Mr. Speaker, I also note that addressing environmental permitting is an issue that extends well beyond chip production. My colleague Bruce Westerman, chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, has championed the need to comprehensively address NEPA and its unintended consequences. I appreciate his effort to make NEPA work better for the American people.

Today's bill is narrower in scope than what Chairman Westerman has proposed. While it doesn't address NEPA in its entirety, I believe this is a step in the right direction.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues in the House who have sponsored this bill, as well as our Senate counterparts, and I urge everyone to support this important reform. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentlewoman from Virginia (Mrs. Kiggans) to speak on the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas, the chairman of the House Rules Committee (Mr. Burgess).

Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, the Building Chips in America Act is pragmatic legislation that ensures we aren't sacrificing our growth in chip production because of unwieldy permitting processes.

The changes we are making here today won't compromise the laws that protect our clean air and water, but they do allow us to move forward with semiconductor manufacturing. That is why this bill has strong bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to S. 2228, the so-called Building Chips in America Act.

This bill simply should not be coming up under a suspension of the rules. All three ranking members of the committees of jurisdiction are adamantly opposed to it.

When the CHIPS and Science Act passed the House in July of 2022, it passed by a vote of 243-187. All 187 votes against the bill were Republicans.

In fact, only 24 Republicans voted for the bill, and a lot of them are no longer here. If Republicans had controlled the House last Congress, the $52 billion that we invested to ensure semiconductors were produced here in the United States instead of China simply would have never become law.

I was one of the leaders who pushed the CHIPS and Science Act through the House, and so I, unlike many of my Republican colleagues, am invested in making this program work as intended.

As we created this program, we did so with the intention of ending our reliance on other countries for microchips that are used in automobiles, consumer electronics, and washing machines. We did all this while also making sure we protected the environment.

The CHIPS and Science Act is a success, but we cannot deflect from that success by once again attacking one of the most important environmental laws that protects all of our communities from corporate malfeasance.

I oppose this bill because it would needlessly eliminate environmental review and public input under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, for semiconductor facilities receiving funding under the CHIPS and Science Act.

Now, this bill simply is not necessary because NEPA review is not a barrier to moving semiconductor projects forward.

Commerce Secretary Raimondo, who oversees the CHIPS and Science Act, and who had initially voiced concern about NEPA reviews, acknowledged at an Energy and Commerce hearing: I can report to you today that we have made a lot of progress on that, and we are on track to complete environmental reviews for all these companies before we issue any awards.

There is simply no need for wholesale exemptions from NEPA reviews, given the steps that Congress has already taken to increase the speed, efficiency, and management of permitting for this industry.

We made semiconductor manufacturing eligible for the abbreviated permitting process under the FAST-41 Act. This ensured that reviews do not drag out for the most serious environmental impact statements.

We also, under the Fiscal Responsibility Act, eliminated NEPA review for loans, loan guarantees, or other forms of financial assistance for similar activities, and we gave the Department of Commerce the ability to adopt categorical exclusions from other agencies.

This is really, Mr. Speaker, a bill that is a solution in search of a problem that doesn't exist.

Now Republican leadership is bypassing regular order to ram through an anti-environment bill that didn't go through any of the committees here in the House before being rushed to the House floor on the suspension calendar.

The phenomenal work of the CHIPS Program Office is a cause for celebration, and the program has produced critical wins for countless domestic industries worth highlighting.

It is clear that NEPA reviews are not a barrier to moving these projects forward. Fundamentally, NEPA requires us to look before we leap, which is just common sense, and failing to do so could create many new problems for our environment.

My colleague mentioned the Superfund sites in Silicon Valley. Do we want those again?

This affects our water supply, our worker safety, and our communities, and ignoring these impacts is not going to make them disappear, Mr. Speaker.

I thank Ranking Member Lofgren from the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology and Ranking Member Grijalva from the Natural Resources Committee for joining me in leading the effort to oppose this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I strongly urge all of my colleagues to vote ``no''.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to S. 2228, the Building Chips in America Act.

I can't begin to tell you how frustrating it is that we are here considering a bill that hasn't had a single hearing or the slightest bit of real scrutiny, but here we are because Speaker Johnson thinks it is a priority.

Now we need to set the record straight for the sake of our communities' health and safety and basic common sense.

Let's talk about the history of semiconductor manufacturing for a second. In 1947, Silicon Valley was the birthplace of the modern semiconductor, the backbone of our tech industry, but that birth left behind some pretty deep scars.

Semiconductor manufacturing has never been clean. It has left behind pollution, toxic waste, and even poisoned workers. Silicon Valley still holds the record for the most Superfund sites in the country. We are talking miscarriages, cancer, and entire communities still dealing with the fallout today. It is serious.

As we work to bring semiconductor manufacturing back to the U.S., we must do it right this time. We cannot afford to repeat the devastating mistakes of the past, and we don't need to.

What does this bill want us to do?

It intends to throw all those lessons out the window and bring back the same toxic mess we saw in Silicon Valley, only bigger.

Are we really going to let this disaster play out again in places like Palm Bay, Florida; Colorado Springs, Colorado; Clay, New York; or St. Peters, Missouri?

These are the communities on the line, all home to semiconductor plants getting funding under the CHIPS and Science Act.

Polluting our communities and putting families in harm's way is a policy choice. We have cleaned up a lot of the mess in Silicon Valley, and we have proven that semiconductor manufacturing can be done without hurting workers or the environment.

Democrats worked to pass the CHIPS and Science Act to ensure that when we invest in America's future, we do it the right way.

We made sure these investments benefit all Americans, not just a select few, and we have Secretary Raimondo and the Biden-Harris administration making sure that taxpayer dollars being spent on this are stewarded with care.

So far, those investments are already showing results across the country, and it is just the beginning, but this bill wants to scrap all that progress.

It would wipe out environmental reviews and public input under the National Environmental Policy Act for semiconductor facilities.

That means no guarantees, no checks to make sure companies aren't using our money to harm the very people paying those taxes.

Let me tell you something else: The rush is fake. Republicans keep saying that environmental red tape is slowing down progress, but that is just not true.

Secretary Raimondo has testified that things are moving along just fine. We even made sure the agency got enough funding to handle the workload.

What we are looking at is a dangerous, pointless bill that doesn't solve any real problems. In fact, it creates new ones, ones that could put the health and safety of countless Americans at risk.

I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to stand with me in opposing this bill so we can do it the right way.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Stanton).

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on S. 2228, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of S. 2228, the Building Chips in America

Act, the Senate version of bipartisan legislation I introduced last year to bring semiconductor manufacturing back to the United States.

Last year, 120 Members of Congress signed a letter to House and Senate leadership urging its inclusion in the National Defense Authorization Act.

Semiconductors go in everything from cell phones to innovative technologies that support American energy, powerful new AI tools, key weapons systems keeping Americans safe at home and abroad, and the list goes on. Despite this, the U.S. is home to only 10 percent of global semiconductor production.

Thankfully, the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act authorized nearly $40 billion in grant funding to reshore this critical manufacturing capability for which we have historically relied almost entirely on China.

This monumental investment in our domestic industry has spurred companies up and down the semiconductor supply chain to start bringing new manufacturing projects to our shores.

However, existing requirements by the National Environmental Policy Act, NEPA, threaten to delay semiconductor projects already underway and discourage future investment in domestic semiconductor manufacturing.

A recent study from Georgetown University found the United States builds semiconductor fabs at a slower rate than the rest of the world.

To put it simply, we cannot allow Federal bureaucracy to hold up critical CHIPS Act projects while the Chinese Communist Party spends billions of dollars to become the world's leading producer of advanced semiconductors.

One of the greatest national security threats we face today is China's choke hold on our defense industrial base. We must be able to produce these components critical to our economy and national security here on American soil.

Last week, I had the privilege of visiting Silicon Valley with the House Armed Services Committee. We did a field hearing there, and we heard time and time again the importance of expediting the process for building semiconductor chips here domestically. This was an ask from that defense industry in the Silicon Valley.

The Building Chips in America Act would address this issue by clarifying how NEPA applies to projects that receive funding from the CHIPS Act.

This bipartisan bill would ensure these projects can move forward in a timely fashion while still obtaining all necessary permits and requiring projects to undergo necessary environmental reviews at the State and local level.

This approach streamlines our domestic semiconductor manufacturing without changing the environmental requirements and standards these projects need to meet.

Mr. Speaker, I represent coastal southeast Virginia, which is one of the heaviest military congressional districts in the country. We know how to be good stewards of the environment without sacrificing our economy or our national security.

If we want to ensure American economic and national security in today's dangerous world, we must reduce our dangerous reliance on Chinese supply chains and increase our domestic production of these critical technologies.

Our military men and women need secure, reliable electronics to carry out their missions safely. Relying on adversarial nations that directly seek to undermine our national security is not an option.

I encourage my colleagues to support this legislation and allow our country to restore chip manufacturing on American soil, which we can do while maintaining our basic environmental laws. We cannot afford to lose this race with China.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to S. 2228 the Building Chips in America Act.

It is really unfortunate that this bill was added to the schedule at the last minute, with no consultation with the committees of jurisdiction, at least on the Minority side. Republicans promised us the most open House in history, but instead now officially preside over the most closed House in our Nation's history.

I say this, because this bill is the poster child of something that needs further review. I'll note here that this bill hasn't received a single hearing in the House of Representatives.

And this is a bad bill. This bill would eliminate NEPA environmental reviews from semiconductor projects funded under the Chips and Science Act.

This issue is personal to me. My home county, Santa Clara County, is the heart of Silicon Valley. It is also the largest collection of superfund sites in the nation. Most of those sites were tied to semiconductor or microelectronics manufacturing. While most of these toxic sites have since been remediated, the legacy of this pollution remains in the contaminated groundwater in many places in Silicon Valley.

Moreover, there was a human toll from the use of toxic chemicals in chips manufacturing. Some workers at factories developed health problems. Stillborn babies, infant deformities, and disease were also tied to exposure.

In California, we learned lessons from the past semiconductor manufacturing in Silicon Valley. We should be learning from this legacy and ensuring we don't repeat it. NEPA reviews are a vitally important tool in this regard.

When Congress passed the Chips and Science Act, we rightly decided that the trade imbalance in semiconductor manufacturing was an issue of economic and national security. As a result, we gave companies in this sector unprecedented amounts of taxpayer money. That money comes from regular people, like nurses, firefighters, custodians, and the like. We should require, at a minimum, that when we take these people's money and give it to corporations, the government will review the environmental impacts of these activities.

Furthermore, NEPA reviews provide an avenue for public participation in this process. I think we owe it to the hardworking taxpayers of America to provide them with this process.

The last thing I'll say about this is that it is unnecessary. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo herself said as much at a hearing this summer when she stated: ``[w]e are on track to complete the environmental review for all these companies before we issue the award.'' The NEPA process is not slowing down the Chips awards.

So, I am deeply disappointed we are here today considering this ill- advised and unnecessary legislation. There really is no good reason anyone should support this bill. I urge my colleagues to vote against