WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Mike Johnson said Friday that Republicans “probably will” try to repeal legislation that spurred U.S. production of semiconductor chips, a statement he quickly tried to walk back by saying he would like to instead “streamline” it.
Johnson made the initial comment while campaigning for a vulnerable New York GOP congressman in a district that is anticipating a large new Micron semiconductor manufacturing plant. A reporter asked Johnson whether he would try to repeal the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act , which Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump had disparaged last week. “I expect that we probably will, but we haven’t developed that part of the agenda yet," Johnson replied.
Democrats quickly jumped on the Republican speaker’s comments, warning that it showed how Johnson and Trump are pursuing an aggressive conservative agenda bent on dismantling even popular government programs. The White House has credited the CHIPS Act for spurring hundreds of billions of dollars of investments as well as hundreds of thousands of jobs. Vice President Kamala Harris has pointed to the legislation on the campaign trail as proof that Democrats can be entrusted with the U.
S. economy. Johnson, who voted against the legislation, later said in a statement that the CHIPS Act, which poured $54 billion into the semiconductor manufacturing industry, “is not on the agenda for repeal.
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