U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Friday that the U.S. House of Representatives will soon introduce a bill to boost U.S. competitiveness against China and increase federal spending on semiconductors as the Biden administration seeks to boost domestic chip production. At her weekly briefing, she said the House legislative package was "very close to being ready."

"The House legislation would strengthen our investment in chips, strengthen our supply chain and change our research capabilities, among many other key provisions," Pelosi said in a letter to her Democratic colleagues.

The announcement comes hours after Intel announced $20 billion for two new fabs in Oregon, a project that could benefit from federal funding for years to come.

The U.S. Senate passed the American Innovation and Competition Act last year, which included $52 billion to increase U.S. semiconductor production and authorized $190 billion to strengthen U.S. technology and research to compete with China in the CHIPS Act ). The bill includes $39 billion in production and R&D incentives, and a $10.5 billion implementation plan that includes the National Semiconductor Technology Center, the National Advanced Packaging Manufacturing Program, and other R&D programs to help the semiconductor industry amid a global shortage of chips Nearly $52 billion in grants and incentives has won bipartisan support, including U.S. President Joe Biden.

But progress on the bill has stalled since it was approved in the Senate last June, even though the House approved a bill with similar elements. In November, Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced an agreement to resolve differences between the House and Senate in order to come up with a unified legislative package.

The Biden administration is pushing for more than a year to persuade Congress to approve funding to help boost U.S. chip production as shortages of key components used in cars and computers have exacerbated supply chain bottlenecks. Efforts to ease the chip shortage were also made last year through a number of measures, including meetings with tech industry executives and allies to discuss the topic and requesting semiconductor customer data from a number of major global suppliers.

Biden said earlier this week that soaring inflation was "related to the supply chain" and that the U.S. could afford to be self-reliant on the computer chips needed to make cars. "I want to see Congress pass this bill immediately and get it to my desk," he said. "For the sake of our economic competitiveness and our national security, let's do this."

At an event at the White House on Friday with Intel CEO Henry Kissinger, he praised Intel's just-announced $20 billion investment plan and made a case for Congress to act.

Kissinger told Reuters in an interview ahead of a White House news conference that without government funding, "we would still start construction on the Ohio plant, it just wouldn't happen as fast and it wouldn't progress as fast."

He also emphasized that Intel's initial $20 billion investment in 1,000 acres in New Albany is the largest in Ohio's history and will create 3,000 jobs. There are eight fabs in total across the project, and the final investment could grow to $100 billion, the largest in Ohio's history.