Republican members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee are pressing the Biden Administration to provide them with information on how CHIPS and Science Act funding for semiconductor manufacturing incentives has been spent so far.
Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla., and Morgan Griffith, R-Va., expressed general concern over an increased amount of spending by the Federal government in the past few years in a letter to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.
“Over the past two years, under one-party Democratic rule, Congress and the Biden administration have spent trillions of dollars across the federal government. The American people deserve a full, transparent, and regular accounting of the funds that have been spent,” they said.
The lawmakers are specifically concerned about how $39 billion of the CHIPS spending is focused on incentivizing private industry to create semiconductor manufacturing facilities in the U.S.
They want the Commerce Department, which has a lead role in guiding the spending, to provide “regular updates on the status of funding the Department has received from the CHIPS and Science Act,” on a monthly basis.
The letter also asks for information on:
- The total amount of funding that has been obligated to date;
- Statutory authority associated with obligated funds;
- Statutory authority for providing awards;
- All recipients for which funding has been obligated;
- The amount of funding that has been obligated for each recipient;
- The type of award (e.g., grant, loan, etc.);
- The number, job titles, duties, and worksite locations of employees, including contractors, who have been hired using the funding; and
- An accounting of the funds that have not yet been obligated.
The letter asks for a response by April 18.
