Biden Admin To Warn Of National Security Threat To Salvage CHIPS/USICA

The White House will dispatch three senior members of the Biden administration to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to conduct a classified all-senators briefing on the national security implications of failing to pass the USICA/CHIPS Act (the China competitiveness/semiconductor bill).

• Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, and Deputy Defence Secretary Kathleen Hicks will lead the briefing.
• The briefing is in response to a threat from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to block the bill if Democrats push forward a partisan reconciliation bill. McConnell's calculus is that in a period of high inflation, and with the prospect of recession looming, Democrats may be permitted a bipartisan CHIPS bill or a partisan reconciliation bill, not both.
• Raimondo said today that Senate Minority Leader McConnell (R-KY) is “playing politics with our national security” by threatening to scuttle the bill.
• The all-senators briefing on Wednesday will be designed to remind Senators that the bill was strongly bipartisan, and bicameral, and devised with national security in mind.
• Raimondo said: "The only entity in the world that benefits from this bill not passing is China."
• Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), the central figure in the reconciliation bill, has spoke out against McConnell's threat today. Manchin: "That is so wrong... As bad as when progressives in the House held up the infrastructure bill. This is the problem with politics."
• Manchin said he won't "walk away" or be held "hostage" on reconciliation in order to pass USICA.
• If GOP Senators cannot be convinced to find a compromise, then Democrats have the option of pushing the Senate-passed version of the bill through the House of Representatives unchanged. This would require the consent of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) who will be reluctant to subordinate her chamber to the Senate. It will also require the near unanimous approval of Democrat House reps who passed a very different version of the bill.