A House panel is set to begin work Tuesday on its version of legislation to strengthen U.S. research and development in answer to China’s economic rise, aiming to come up with a bill that can mesh with a Senate-passed measure and be sent to President Joe Biden by August.
The House Science Committee will consider two bills that would bolster research funding at the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy and will form the basis for the House measure. Like the Senate legislation, a new technology directorate would be created at the National Science Foundation to support research and technology development.
The two pieces of legislation are expected to receive bipartisan support in the committee, according to a person familiar with the discussions. They ultimately may be combined with bills drawn up by the Foreign Affairs and Energy and Commerce committees, among others. Once the legislation passes the Democratic-controlled House the contours of a final bill will be negotiated with the Senate.
Biden has hailed the Senate bill and urged Congress to deliver legislation for him to sign before lawmakers leave for the August break, an outcome that would hand the White House a major victory.
It’s unclear whether the House version will ultimately be as expansive as the $250 billion Senate bill, which was passed with overwhelming bipartisan support and included $52 billion to help expand semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S. as well as measures to limit China’s influence on research at colleges and universities.
Committee Chair Eddie Bernice Johnson, a Texas Democrat, said last week that she was concerned that the Senate bill “strays too far in the direction of imposing a new, ill-fitting mission” on the National Science Foundation. “However, I think we can come together to forge a good path forward.”
The House leadership has been working with members of several committees to draft related legislation that could be added to whatever the Science Committee advances, in a kind of mirror-image of what Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer did with the Endless Frontier Act, which he sponsored with Senator Todd Young, an Indiana Republican. Yet leadership aides caution that the House has its own ideas on how to make the U.S. more competitive in technology and manufacturing.
One way the House legislation is expected to differ is that it will not include some of the provisions directly targeting China, including restrictions on research money for universities. It is also expected to include some provisions addressing climate change as part of a Foreign Affairs Committee bill, according to a person familiar with the matter. That could cost Republican support as the measure goes to a House-Senate conference conference committee to meld the two measures.
Ultimately though, the bill’s supporters point to the broad distribution of money, which is expected to go to regional technology hubs in addition to the university-heavy East and West Coasts, and the pressing need to address semiconductor shortfalls, as the impetus that will push the bill over the finish line. The goal is to reach a final product that would satisfy Democrats without losing too many Republican votes.
China has reacted harshly to the moves in Congress. After the Senate passed its bill. Chinese lawmakers said the legislation “smears China’s development path and domestic and foreign policies” and “interferes in China’s internal affairs under the banner of innovation and competition,” the official Xinhua News Agency reported last week, citing a statement from a National People’s Congress committee that handles foreign affairs.
