A Plan to Reinvest in American Workers and Reclaim Our Competitive Edge

When the coronavirus gripped the nation nearly two years ago, many of us hunkered down as we adjusted to the new realities of pandemic work, remote school and new routines designed to keep our loved ones and our communities safe. All the while, our essential workers took great risks to keep us safe.

In the uncertainty and anxiety that marked the early days of COVID, we quickly realized there were a lot of things we needed: from face masks, to technologies to facilitate our new virtual posture, to extra household goods to tide our families over during quarantine. And we all needed these things at the exact same time.

This happened all over the world, not just here at home. Factories that manufactured those critical goods shut down, the shipping companies that transported them halted their operations, and the workers we relied on to keep them flowing were also largely staying at home to keep their own communities safe.

This put pressure on our ability to buy basic goods, used cars, even furniture.

But these challenges hardly arrived out of nowhere – rather, they are the result of decades of domestic economic policies that favored corporations looking to cut costs and disinvest in workforces that drive the research and manufacturing to create the goods we rely on every single day. While countries like China have spent that time investing in these industries up and down the supply chain, America often looked the other way as powerful companies simply offshored jobs to chase larger profit margins.

These policies have left us especially vulnerable to major disruptions like natural disasters and military conflicts on the other side of the world and reliant on our economic competitors, some of whom practice grave human rights abuses. And even worse, communities all across the country, including right here in Los Angeles, have lost millions of the manufacturing jobs that helped build this country and have supported working families for generations.

While recent actions – including the critical relief and support packages passed by Democrats in Congress – have alleviated some of these pressures in the short-term, we cannot afford to be caught off-guard again. We need to invest heavily in our ability to manufacture critical goods here at home and to make our supply chains resilient against future threats and disruptions.

The America COMPETES Act, which I helped pass earlier this month, will do just that. This legislation isn’t about Band-Aid solutions – it’s about building a stronger foundation for our economy and working families so that we can keep leading the world. It would invest $52 billion to jumpstart the American semiconductor industry – the key component in just about every electronic device from the electric grid to your cellphone. It would invest another $45 billion to plug gaps in our supply chains and create stockpiles for everything from medicine and food products to communications and clean energy technologies – which will help us avoid the shortages that cause price spikes that are hurting California families. This will spur new long-term job opportunities for California workers. And it would invest in bolstering America’s research infrastructure to ensure we remain on the cutting edge of developing the technologies of the future so we can enjoy a bright economic future for decades to come.

We’re not out of the woods of this pandemic yet – but relief and normalcy are coming back. Let us address the challenges the pandemic has revealed and exacerbated, with all the strength we can muster, so we never find ourselves in the same vulnerable position in the future.