Commentary
Congress and the Biden administration are gearing up a bloated Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors for America Act, but the CHIPS for America Act runs the real risk of chipping away at America’s economic freedom and competitiveness, rather than enhancing it.
The Senate is scheduled this week to vote on the bill, whose price tag has soared to $250 billion from the initial $76 billion. The legislation does little to counter the economic challenge posed by China and the Chinese Communist Party, but spends billions of dollars on corporate handouts to tech companies and more funding for federal agencies.
Despite a handful of useful foreign policy and security provisions, the eye-poppingly expensive legislation would hand out $250 billion with few firewalls to keep those funds from helping China, and it bluntly disregards the fact that inflation, which has been fueled by the Biden administration’s out-of-control spending, has topped 9 percent….