Vice President Kamala Harris blasted House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Saturday following his comment that the GOP may look to repeal the CHIPS and Science Act if they maintain control of Congress.
“I want to speak to the comments that have been recently made by the speaker of the House,” Harris told reporters in Milwaukee, according to NBC News. “It is just further evidence of everything that I’ve actually been talking about for months now, about [former President Donald] Trump’s intention to implement Project 2025.”
Johnson has spent the week before the election revealing his intention to take an axe to popular legislation next year. On Friday, while attending an event in New York with Rep. Brandon Williams (R-N.Y.) whose seat is vulnerable, Johnson was asked whether Republicans will seek to repeal the CHIPS Act, a bipartisan manufacturing and jobs bill President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022.
“I expect that we probably will,” Johnson said.
This put Williams in the awkward position to disagree with Johnson while standing beside him. “The CHIPS Act is hugely impactful here,” Williams said, vowing to “remind” Johnson “night and day” about the law’s significance.
Later, Johnson walked back his comment, saying in a statement: “As I have further explained and clarified, I fully support Micron coming to Central NY, and the CHIPS Act is not on the agenda for repeal. To the contrary, there could be legislation to further streamline and improve the primary purpose of the bill — to eliminate its costly regulations and Green New Deal requirements.”
Williams said in a statement that Johnson apologized and said “he misheard the question.”
Enacted in 2022, the CHIPS and Science Act, “establishes and provides funding for the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) for America Fund to carry out activities relating to the creation of incentives to produce semiconductors in the United States,” per the summary. The Commerce Department notes that the ACT has led to $53 billion in spending on semiconductors, $30 billion in private sector investments, 16 new semiconductor plants, and added more than 100,000 new manufacturing and construction jobs to date.
Earlier this week, Johnson said he wants take down the Affordable Care Act, the Obama-era health care law Trump and Republicans have been trying to repeal for years — without any plan to replace it. “No Obamacare,” Johnson said. “The ACA is so deeply ingrained, we need massive reform to make this work, and we got a lot of ideas on how to do that.”
Trump tried to distance himself from Johnson’s comments, which the House Speaker later tried to walk back by claiming that when he said the ACA was “deeply ingrained” he meant it should stay that way.
Democrats have been hitting Johnson and Republicans for their plans to take down both popular pieces of legislation. On Saturday, Harris continued to rail on Johnson’s comment about potentially repealing the CHIPS Act, saying that he only walked-back his initial statement “because it’s not popular, and their agenda is not popular.”
“And that’s why people are showing up by the thousands, tens of thousands, to talk about an agenda that actually is focused on lifting them up,” she added.