Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida seeks to salvage an effort to prevent communist China from profiting off President Joe Biden’s demand for wider use of electric vehicles.
The Florida Republican noted in an email to constituents on Friday that Biden had vetoed his measure to ensure EV charging stations would be purchased only from America-based manufacturers.
Biden entered office in January 2021, pleading to build 500,000 such stations across the country. That same year, he committed $7.5 billion to the effort. But the first ones did not open until last December.
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In the interim, as Rubio noted in his email, Biden’s Federal Highway Administration last year waived requirements that the stations be purchased only in the U.S.
This made companies in China, primarily controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, the main beneficiaries of Biden’s waiver.
Rubio reported that he fought against this, pushing a resolution to prevent taxpayers’ dollars from going to overseas competitors by reinstating the Buy America regulation. He was joined in this by GOP Sens. Rick Scott of Florida as well as Roger Marshall of Kansas and Kevin Cramer of North Dakota.
The Senate adopted the resolution in November, and the House followed in January.
Yet Biden subsequently vetoed the measure.
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Last week, the Senate failed to override his veto, as Democrats largely fell in line with Biden in supporting China’s access to U.S. funding for the chargers.
The 50-47 vote was 17 short of the two-thirds needed to reject Biden’s veto.
Only four Democrats – Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Jon Tester of Montana, and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, a former Democrat now running for re-election as an independent, joined Republicans in supporting Rubio.
The Florida Republican vowed not to give up.
“I was proud to lead this common-sense effort to prevent the Biden Administration from funneling American tax dollars to Chinese EV companies. It’s disappointing we didn’t have the votes to override this veto, but this isn’t the final word, and I hope we will have bipartisan support to claw these funds back from Chinese companies in the very near future,” Rubio said in a statement.
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