July 8, 2022: Schumer ups pressure on McConnell in USICA-reconciliation dance

Breaking Overnight — Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was shot and killed during a campaign speech Friday in western Japan. He was 67.

And, Chuck Schumer made a couple of new moves in his effort to advance two pieces of legislation tangled in political knots.

Recall that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell recently tweeted, “There will be no bipartisan USICA as long as Democrats are pursuing a partisan reconciliation bill.”

USICA, the United States Innovation and Competition Act, is the industrial policy legislation that would shower the semiconductor industry with $52 billion of incentives to ramp up chip-making in America. China hawks like the bill because it makes the U.S. less reliant on Chinese imports. The Biden administration hails it as a policy that will strengthen the supply chain, boost domestic manufacturing, and “help us outcompete China.”

The new reconciliation bill being negotiated by Schumer and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who tanked the last one in December, has been inching along.

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