Legislation that began nearly a year ago in the Senate seems destined to become law more than a year later. What is now commonly referred to as the Bipartisan Innovation Act, once was the Senate CHIPS Act and the COMPETES Act in the House of Representatives. The Senate last night passed a version of the House bill and requested a conference with its Lower Chamber colleagues. Below is a list of committees and matters considered within the scope of the conference that will reconcile the differences between the two bills.
Twenty conference committees have convened in the past eight years, most ironed out House/Senate differences on annual defense authorizations or omnibus spending bills. It’s been since Dodd-Frank in 2010 that Congress tried to reconcile such a complex authorization. However, this one differs from the banking bill in several ways, including the number of committees with significant jurisdiction involved.
The complexity of reconciling the two bills will be heightened by the existence of a few rules. The more constraining is that any matters included in a conference report must have originated in the version agreed to by one of the chambers, so no new authorizing provisions will be permitted. Secondly, the same restriction applies to adding new required spending not in the House or Senate bill. In the Senate, each hurdle can be overcome if three-fifths of eligible senators agree to waive points of order that lie against such provisions.
The secret is out about likely US federal action to support semiconductor manufacturing. The Philadelphia Exchange Semiconductor Index is up only 3.5% over the past month but booked a 15.4% leap between the close on March 14 and yesterday. The following chart shows recent investor interest.
We again leaned on John Roque to score the SOX after the close yesterday. Interestingly, on Friday 33.33% of SOX constituents scored good (3) or strong (4) in his scoring system. At the close one trading day later, that category had jumped to 40 percent. In fact, it is getting a bit chippy out there.
