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Thank you so much for joining our virtual pop-up Punchbowl News event with Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) yesterday. The conversation focused on global competitiveness and the role of American businesses in the 21st century economy. Afterward, Manish Bhatia, executive vice president of Global Operations for Micron, joined Anna for a fireside conversation.

Here are our key takeaways from the event:

→ The Indiana Republican said he hoped a China competitiveness bill that combines the House-introduced America COMPETES Act and the Senate’s United States Innovation and Competition Act would be signed into law by Memorial Day, if not earlier. 

This is a notable sign of urgency on the issue that suggests the long-stalled legislation has a decent chance of passing in the coming months.

Combined with Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo’s plea for the bill to pass by February or March, it’s clear that USICA will take center stage in Congress in the coming weeks.

Here’s Young expressing optimism that the Democratic leadership will pass some form of the legislation.

“It’s really my strong hope that we’re not going to get distracted this time and the Democratic leadership in both the House and the Senate will see this thing across the goal line. USICA is perhaps the most bold and comprehensive China competitiveness legislation that our country has ever passed.”

→ Young blamed Democrats for the months-long delay in passing USICA.

Young was a co-sponsor, along with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of the legislation underpinning the USICA package. While Young said he was proud USICA passed the Senate in a bipartisan manner last June, he faulted Democrats for focusing on the Build Back Better Act instead of prioritizing the technology and competitiveness legislation.

“I really feel like the biggest stumbling block to getting this done has just been distraction. It’s been the focus by Democratic leadership, by the White House, on the Build Back Better legislation, which hopefully has run its course. But that crowded out focus on this core national security issue. I don’t want to lament that too much or fixate on that because now we’re moving forward once again, but that’s really what led to the delay.”

Young also said passing USICA is a matter of both national security and industrial production importance. 

→ The bipartisan election reform group is at the “putting pen to paper points” of their negotiations. 

Young is a key Republican member of a working group of more than a dozen Democratic and Republican senators seeking to pass legislation reforming the Electoral Count Act and protecting election workers.

After Democratic efforts to pass election reform and voting rights bills failed earlier this month, focus is shifting to the bipartisan group. The effort resembles the most realistic chance of changes to elections being signed into law this Congress.

Here’s Young:

“It’’s recognized by Republican and Democrat senators alike that the Electoral Count Act is vague and certainly needs to be tightened up in the wake of the post election violence we had after the last presidential. And we want to avoid any sort of challenges in the future. So the way we can most directly address that is identify those vague spots in the law, as we have done, to work together and try and come up with sensible ways to avoid any ambiguity moving forward. and we’re really at the putting pen to paper points. 

Sen. Collins has shown great leadership here. Sen. Tillis, Sen. Manchin, Sen. Sinema and others, and we’ve identified all the areas, we’ve identified senators to work on particular areas. I also know that we have Sen. Blunt and Klobuchar, who have indicated that separately, and importantly, through the Rules Committee, they’ll be holding hearings on the Electoral Count Act and engaged in a separate initiative to try and improve this law.”

→ We were later joined by Manish Bhatia, the executive vice president of Global Operations at Micron Technology.

Bhatia noted that for companies to have a workforce that keeps them competitive, they must look to the future of technology.

“The language of the future really is data. As Sen. Young mentioned, it starts with K-12 STEM education and making sure everyone is comfortable with mathematics and data and statistics and coding.”

Bhatia also sounded the alarm that American companies were well behind their Asian competitors in the field of semiconductor manufacturing.

"There are enormous subsidies being given to our competitors in Asia and other countries have recognized the value of domestic semiconductor manufacturing at scale 20 years ago. So we are 20 years behind really, in terms of investing in advanced semiconductor manufacturing capability. 

So the ecosystems to support these massive scale fabrication facilities, each of which cost approaching $20 billion, have really sprung up primarily in Asia over the last few decades. And so we’re not going to fix this problem overnight, it’s going to take investment. The CHIPs Act is a good start.”

A big thank you to Micron for partnering with us on this event. Watch the full conversation here. 

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Team Punchbowl News