{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.baldwin.senate.gov/news/press-releases/baldwin-colleagues-to-commerce-department-prevent-stock-buybacks-by-corporations-that-receive-chips-act-funds", "Baldwin, Colleagues to Commerce Department: Prevent Stock Buybacks by Corporations That Receive CHIPS Act Funds", "2022-10-05", "2022", "2022-10", "Democrat", "Senate", "WI", "Tammy Baldwin", "B001230", "www.baldwin.senate.gov", "baldwin", "https://www.baldwin.senate.gov/news/press-releases", "scraper", "Washington, D.C. \u2013 Today, U.S. Senators Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), and Representatives Sean Casten (D-IL), Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), and Bill Foster (D-IL) sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo urging the Commerce Department to strengthen and enforce critical protections against the abuse of funds provided under the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) Act for stock buybacks and promising continued Congressional oversight over the Department\u2019s implementation of its commitments.\n\n\u201cWe were encouraged by the Department of Commerce\u2019s (Department) recent commitments to \u201censuring the effective, efficient and accountable use\u201d of the $52 billion Congress appropriated for bolstering our domestic semiconductor manufacturing, research, and design capacity, including making certain that awards are not used as \u201ca subsidy for companies to make them more profitable or enable them to have more cash for stock buybacks or to pad their bottom line(s),\u201d wrote the lawmakers.\n\nThe CHIPS Act provides $52 billion in funding to build and modernize U.S. semiconductor manufacturing facilities. The Department of Commerce is tasked with distributing this assistance to semiconductor manufacturers. While the legislation specifically prohibits the use of CHIPS funds for stock buybacks and dividend payments, these restrictions do not explicitly prohibit award recipients from using CHIPS funds to free up their own funds, which they can then use for those purposes.\n\nAmerica\u2019s largest semiconductor companies have spent hundreds of billions on stock buybacks in recent years. Since 2005, Intel has spent over $100 billion on buybacks. Texas Instruments has spent $48 billion on buybacks in the same period, including nearly $14 billion in the last five years alone. Qualcomm, Broadcom, and Micron have all announced $10 billion stock buyback authorizations in recent years. IBM routinely engages in multi-billion-dollar buybacks. In total, five of these companies \u2013 Intel, IBM, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Broadcom \u2013 alone engaged in nearly $250 billion in stock buybacks from 2011 to 2020.\n\nThe letter encourages the Commerce Department to strengthen and enforce commitments released by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which \u201cis working closely with the Office of the Secretary to plan for the implementation of the Department of Commerce\u2019s CHIPS Act programs.\u201d These commitments included ensuring that CHIPS funds are not used to indirectly \u201cenable\u201d buybacks, that the Department \u201cclawback funds or pursue other remedies if companies misuse taxpayer dollars,\u201d and that the Department \u201cdevelop other guardrails\u2026to maximize the public purposes of federal investments and prevent companies from seeking to evade statutory requirements.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhile the existing guidelines are a productive start, we urge and expect the Department to announce additional protections and to refine its existing guidance over the coming weeks and months. We also ask that the Department ensure all of these commitments are incorporated into any future Notice(s) of Funding Opportunity arising from the program and are supported by the resources necessary to ensure robust oversight,\u201d continued the lawmakers.\n\nFull text of the letter can be found here.\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-08T03:20:33Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.baldwin.senate.gov/news/press-releases/baldwin-colleagues-to-commerce-department-prevent-stock-buybacks-by-corporations-that-receive-chips-act-funds"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.7443251088261604, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}