The Senate is hoping to vote soon on a long-delayed bill to boost the U.S. semiconductor industry and improve competitiveness with China amid a worldwide chip shortage.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo has focused on the stalled bill for months. In a new Yahoo Finance interview on Friday, she vowed that it's going to get done this month, in spite of setbacks in recent days.

“It's going to get to the president's desk this summer,” she said Friday during an interview from her office between yet another round of outreach to lawmakers. She quickly added a second promise that “there'll be a lot of ups and downs between now and when it does.”

Congress has only a few weeks left before the August recess, and Raimondo says she expects that action on the bill will begin soon in the form "a vote next week” — a target date that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is pressing for, too.

"Time's up and it's time to take a vote," Raimondo said. (Video of the full Yahoo Finance Presents interview between Secretary Raimondo and Yahoo Finance's Julie Hyman will be available soon).

Biden officials have been arguing for months that this is must-pass legislation for the U.S. economy; a version of the bill even passed the Senate in June 2021. Raimondo and other administration officials spent both Wednesday and Thursday on Capitol hill for closed-door meetings with lawmakers to try to get the bill over the finish line.

It would be ‘really inexcusable to vote no’

A 'slimmed down' version of the bill appears set to include around $52 billion to provide new subsidies for semiconductor manufacturers such as Intel (INTC) to spur investment in the U.S. The bill is also likely to authorize another $200 billion that would go out in the form of tax credits to boost U.S. scientific and technological innovation more broadly as part of the effort to compete with China.

Intel recently postponed the groundbreaking on a key Ohio semiconductor factory because of delays with the bill. Company CEO Pat Gelsinger has even warned that production might migrate to Europe if the issue isn’t resolved soon.