Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo (R‑ID) and Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D‑OR) released a joint statement in August to support extending the CHIPS and Science Act’s advanced manufacturing investment tax credit. The credit is set to expire for projects that begin construction after December 31, 2026. Industry groups want it extended and expanded, possibly as part of a year-end tax package. 

Since it became law in 2022, the credit’s official cost has almost tripled, and a permanent extension could cost between $125 billion and $325 billion in total. The credit primarily funds projects for a few large firms, and most of the investments would likely have happened anyway. 

Extending the CHIPS Act credit would also provide new subsidies for the AI data center buildout that lawmakers are otherwise trying to curtail. Efforts to limit data center construction through new restrictions or special taxes are economically destructive and should be opposed, but data centers shouldn’t be subsidized either. For lawmakers concerned about AI subsidies, the easiest thing they can do is let the CHIPS Act tax credit expire.

The Trump administration has initiated the federal purchase of stakes in 41 companies across numerous industries, including energy, minerals, drones, computing, and semiconductors. This is an aggressive and troubling foray into socialism, as Cato scholars are documenting in the Restoring Free Enterprise project.

If extended, federal ownership of these firms will likely end in stagnation, inefficiency, and financial failure. Consider Amtrak. Congress created the passenger rail firm in 1970 expecting it to “become self-sufficient and operate as a private entity without subsidies within a few years.” But five decades later, government-owned Amtrak is as inefficient as ever and consumes vast subsidies, as I discuss in a new Cato study. 

One of our American heroes is Henry David Thoreau, born in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1817, and died there in 1862.

Note his short life: 44 years. I am 83, having been saved, as most of us have many times over, by the modern medicine that one of Trump’s ministers wants to abandon. Nowadays I find myself calculating the appalling shortness of life in former times. Some of the greats lived long—Socrates, Milton, Euler, Goethe, Twain, Borges, and your own Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis. They lived long enough, at any rate, to explore fully the range of their astonishing talent and craft. 

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President Trump wanted his own sovereign wealth fund. When the White House realized it would require congressional action, the administration went ahead and started building an ad hoc portfolio anyway, one deal at a time. Section 1051 of the Senate’s fiscal year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act would reward the administration for its opaque and legally dubious equity operation. It would give the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital a dedicated account and express authority through 2037 to buy stakes in suppliers of critical minerals, materials, chemicals, and batteries.

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The American people are eager to see the Iran war end. They showed no mercy in delivering that message in the midterm elections last week. Despite all the post-election spin, even the president and the vice president both validated voter frustration with the war and its impacts here at home. Now, having delivered a clear mandate, voters expect Congress to act.

Yet, as Congress returns to finish out the year, members are debating whether to push for an end to the war in the lame duck or wait until the new Congress begins in January. Acting now, especially while the president continues to hold off on resumption of major combat operations, is the most advantageous option for Congress. The biggest single point of leverage Congress holds over the president when it comes to the war is money, and money is the hottest item on the table, captivating the bulk of Capitol Hill’s attention from now until Christmas. 

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