When Congress last faced a government funding deadline in December, lawmakers teed up provisions to slow the growth of China’s expanding tech industry as part of a spending deal — until Elon Musk and other Republicans killed that legislation in favor of a narrower stopgap bill.
Now, as lawmakers face yet another government funding deadline next week, those China-related provisions look like they will once again be left on the cutting room floor — or, more accurately, left in an Appropriations Committee filing cabinet.
China hawks in Congress told NOTUS they don’t see the upcoming continuing resolution as an appropriate place to make new policy on China. Legislation limiting American dollars from helping critical sectors of the Chinese economy and military failed to pass Congress last year.
“People working on the CR are working to make it a clean CR, so I don’t I don’t see a lot of policy to that,” Rep. John Moolenaar, chair of the Select Subcommittee on the Chinese Communist Party, told NOTUS.
“The key thing here is that we want to get the CR passed, and the cleaner it is, the more likelihood it’s passed,” Moolenaar added.
The upcoming government funding bill is one of the rare chances for Republicans and Democrats in Congress to make law. It’s one of the reasons Democrats are so insistent on adding provisions to a continuing resolution that would prevent President Donald Trump from blocking money that Congress appropriates.
But China hawks are opting to sit this spending fight out, after provisions that would have restricted U.S. tech investments in China, secured microchip supply chains and helped protect U.S. telecommunications networks from malicious state actors were cut during the last CR battle. (Notably, many of those provisions would have negatively affected Musk’s businesses — and Musk was a key player in killing the expanded government funding bill during the last go-around.)
Moolenaar and Speaker Mike Johnson worked for months to include those provisions in the prior failed spending package. And the provisions are still sitting around, unable to find a legislative vehicle headed for the president’s desk.
But with a government shutdown looming, Republican China hawks aren’t trying to make funding the government any harder by insisting that those China provisions be included in the CR.
“The president has made it clear that funding the government until September is our main priority,” a GOP staffer involved in the China policy fight said, requesting anonymity to discuss private discussions. “Adding anything to the CR risks losing support of the razor-thin majority we have in the House.”
While Republican leaders insist they are pursuing a clean CR, it’s clear some so-called “anomalies” will be included in the bill. The White House has already requested a series of provisions related to national security, and a White House memo sent to Congress at the end of January requested additional funding for agencies like the Department of Defense, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Veterans Affairs.
Still, the final CR is undecided, and some GOP China hawks told NOTUS the China provisions should be included.
“It’s a very fluid situation,” Rep. Darin LaHood said of the China policies. “And, at this point, I don’t know that we have a clear path on where to actually go.”
“If we’re doing a clean CR, then nothing should be added up,” LaHood told NOTUS. “If we’re not doing a clean CR, we can add things that are gonna benefit U.S. companies and hold China accountable.”
As Chinese government investments in its tech market start to pay dividends — China is catching up to the U.S. in technology — supporters of these China measures argue they should be attached to must-pass legislation.
Bills like the “Comprehensive Outbound Investment National Security Act” would allow U.S. authorities to scrutinize American investments in Chinese tech industries and its semiconductor manufacturing.
“We need serious export controls, particularly with technology related to AI,” Sen. Josh Hawley told NOTUS on Thursday. “They’ve benefited off our companies like Microsoft, who have had labs there for years and have done private public partnerships with Chinese government entities. And now we’re shocked that these Chinese are so advanced in AI.”
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Samuel Larreal is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.