Senators are advancing a computer chips bill. They don’t know what’s in it yet.

WASHINGTON — Senators are moving forward this week on a scaled-back package deal to enhance domestic computer system chip output. They just do not know what’s in the monthly bill yet.

The Senate on Tuesday took the initial move to advance what lawmakers are calling “CHIPS-plus” to attempt to battle the world-wide chip shortage that has afflicted everything from vehicle producers to the video clip game market. The package is a slimmed-down edition of a much broader China competitiveness bill that Residence and Senate negotiators had struggled for months to arrive at a offer on.

Fearful that impatient chip suppliers would make their semiconductor fabrication vegetation elsewhere if they didn’t act shortly, leading Democrats manufactured the call to switch practices: Congress would get up a far more narrowly concentrated bill such as $52 billion in subsidies to chip manufacturers, then deal with the bigger China competitors deal afterwards.

CHIPS-in addition on Tuesday night cleared its initial procedural hurdle in a 64-34 vote, needing just 51 votes to progress. And critical senators said they could pass the invoice and send it to the Dwelling as early as this 7 days. But they nevertheless have not agreed on what will be added into it and what will be shelved.

What they have agreed on is that this is an urgent matter. In latest days, Senate Greater part Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Republican leaders and best Biden administration officers have all produced the argument that passing the CHIPS package shortly is an economic and countrywide protection essential as China and other nations ramp up output amid world wide offer-chain woes.

“We will see if users can come to an settlement on incorporating other provisions to the monthly bill, but the base line is that we must appear up with a package that is capable of passing this chamber without having hold off,” Schumer instructed reporters Tuesday soon after Senate Democrats’ weekly lunch.

“We should act as soon as we can to make confident we deliver chip producing back to America for the reason that our nation’s stability depends on it,” he added.

Following holding individual categorized briefings with Home and Senate lawmakers previous 7 days in the Capitol, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo warned: “This is about nationwide stability. This is not about politics, and we are out of time.”

Schumer’s GOP counterpart, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, mentioned he also thought the “CHIPS detail is a national protection difficulty of substantial proportion.” But, he stated he’s “not going to vote to carry on right up until I know what we’re proceeding to.”

“I want to see what we’re voting on,” McConnell mentioned. 

The No. 2 Republican in management prompt that the authors of the invoice want to gauge the GOP hunger on the floor and craft it on that basis.

“We do not know what the bill is. That is the obstacle suitable now,” Senate Minority Whip John Thune, R-S.D., explained to NBC News. “They’re heading to cobble it with each other primarily based on, I consider, how massive the Republican vote to get on it is.”

But other senior Republicans said they in the end anticipated to vote for the CHIPS invoice, boosting likelihood that it will protected votes necessary to distinct the Senate.

“It looks like we’re functioning out of time,” reported Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, whose condition is a hub of chip makers, like Micron and Texas Devices.

“If the ideal signals are not currently being sent now, those people fabs are heading to be created in other places close to the world and not in The us,” he reported. “I’ll most likely assist no matter what Schumer puts on the ground.”

Sen. Todd Younger, R-Ind., co-writer of the broader level of competition monthly bill, reported the more compact bundle will probable end up being “CHIPS plus Endless Frontier,” referring to yet another technological innovation competitiveness invoice he co-wrote with Schumer, totaling about $250 billion approved and appropriated.

Young huddled with a bipartisan team of a dozen senators Monday evening — which includes Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and Susan Collins, R-Maine — and explained he’s even now performing to assure some items will make it into the final package deal, together with science and exploration provisions.

“This is an investment decision in breakthrough investigate, which will happen mostly in our analysis universities — this is where some of the very best expertise in the environment resides,” Younger claimed. “And we want to harness that talent, that creativity and knowledge to deliver technologies like hypersonics, synthetic intelligence, quantum computing, semiconductors, et cetera, and then spin off intellectual property and assistance drive the 21st-century economy.

“I am assured that the Residence will acquire up what we pass,” Young included.

Both equally the House and Senate experienced passed their personal edition of the more substantial China competitiveness monthly bill and negotiators had been assembly to hammer out their variations. But McConnell quashed the talks soon after mastering that Democrats had revived initiatives to pass a partisan reconciliation bundle.

A person Home negotiator, Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, reported she would possible be supportive of the scaled-down CHIPS bill but was dissatisfied the broader negotiations broke down.

“I felt as while we could have gotten this across the finish line have been it not for Mitch McConnell stating that he was using his ball and likely household,” Escobar mentioned in an job interview Tuesday. “I am disappointed that it will be a skinny edition and that it will not choose into account discussions that happened for the duration of negotiations.”

Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden, D-Ore., explained the CHIPS monthly bill is crucial to lessening U.S. dependence on foreign suppliers for automobiles and other objects.

“From the time you get up in the early morning right until the time you go to bed at night, we’re applying chips,” he said. “And this is an enormously vital nationwide security difficulty, an economic protection difficulty.”