In The Arena Republican Leaders Need to Upgrade Their Tech Agenda

Erik Telford is the founder of Right Online, the nation’s largest tech gathering of conservatives and libertarians. He is acting president at the Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity.

The stars have aligned to bring an array of decades-overdue tech policy battles to a head in 2015. While the new Republican-led Congress is understandably focused on high-profile issues like health care and energy, it’s missing the opportunity to act on some of the most crucial policy challenges for the future of the United States economy.

The GOP can’t afford to get bogged down on a narrow agenda — it must lead on a pro-growth, pro-technology vision for the future. Not only would a broader embrace of the tech agenda help move the country forward, GOP leadership on the issue would help the party capture more support from Silicon Valley — which is increasingly becoming a player in U.S. politics. In 2008, I started a conference called Right Online, which has become the nation’s largest gathering of conservative and libertarian techies, and I’ve seen firsthand how the GOP has unfortunately ceded leadership on tech issues to Democrats, even when the tech sector — focused as it is on entrepreneurship and low regulation — should be a Republican bastion.


In order to bring back Silicon Valley, GOP leaders must make tech issues a top priority in the new Congress and pursue an ambitious agenda in a number of key areas. Here’s what I think they should embrace:

Congress vs. FCC on Internet Regulation

The topmost issue for House and Senate Republicans should be urgent legislative action to avert the pernicious consequences of the administration’s recent overreach at the Federal Communications Commission. Their misuse of an antiquated law, written 80 years ago, will reduce a market-driven engine of economic growth and innovation to an old-fashioned, heavily taxed and regulated “public utility” — called the “nuclear option” for the devastating impact it will have on private investment.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, without releasing the content of this sweeping overhaul to the public, succeeded in ramming his rule change through the commission on a 3-2 party line vote, resulting in the reclassification of broadband under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. After five failed legislative attempts to achieve so-called net neutrality, and courts twice shutting down executive actions by ruling that the FCC lacks regulatory jurisdiction, reclassification represents a radical approach — opposed even by many of net neutrality’s strongest proponents, like the NAACP, the Communications Workers of America and a coalition of 42 minority groups.

Congressional Republicans are left now with little recourse. Without a two-thirds vote in both houses, any attempt to overturn the FCC’s regulation will fail to overcome President Barack Obama’s veto, as would also likely be the case with efforts to defund the agency’s enforcement of any new potential rule.

In the Senate, Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-S.D.) and ranking member Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) are working behind the scenes on a compromise that would legislatively pre-empt the FCC. Provisions of the bill are still under discussion; the alternative to a sensible compromise would be dire. If the FCC’s use of the nuclear option is not thwarted by Congress, it will have devastating long-term effects on investments and innovation and spur a protracted legal fight that creates an environment of major regulatory uncertainty. The challenge for Republicans is to craft an agreement that avoids opening the door to heavy-handed government intervention that could further jeopardize Internet freedom down the line. Conservatives are already up in arms over a discussion draft written by Thune that most think ceded too much ground before Democrats are even in the game. Nonetheless, a deal should be doable and would be a major achievement.

Modernizing the Communication Act

The Communications Act of 1934 was enacted in an era when landline telephones and terrestrial radio represented the pinnacle of communications technology. The last piecemeal update came nearly 20 years ago, with the Telecommunications Act of 1996, in an age of dial-up Internet in which having an AOL email address made you an early adopter. In failing to update this legislation, Congress has allowed the very policies meant to accelerate innovation to instead become a roadblock. The 1992 Cable Act is also aging badly.

Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), chairman of the Communications and Technology Subcommittee, spearheaded an attempt in the 113th Congress to rewrite the 1934 law. Their efforts languished, and any hopes of momentum in the new Congress are being held hostage by the uncertainty surrounding the fight over Internet regulation at the FCC.

Congressional Republicans have an opportunity to implement transformational change that would unleash tremendous economic growth by jettisoning all the outdated regulatory silos and forcing the integrated companies offering voice, video, data and advanced services to compete with each other on price, quality and convenience regardless of whether they are using fiber, coaxial, copper or radio waves to reach customers.

Immigration Reform

The urgent need to address the talent deficit in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields has been a top policy priority for the tech industry. Despite being a rare area of common ground between industry, the administration and the GOP-controlled Congress, progress has been blocked by Obama’s use of the issue as a bargaining chip in the debate over comprehensive immigration reform.

The Republican Congress should champion this issue, and the House has taken the first step by passing H.R. 1020, the STEM Education Act of 2015. This legislation would make more H-1B visas available to foreign graduates of U.S. universities with advanced degrees who are now in America, allowing us to capitalize on the investment we have already made in their education, and address America’s gap of having only one qualified candidate for every three available positions in these sectors.

By bringing stand-alone high-skilled immigration reform to a vote in the Senate, Republicans can force Obama into the uncomfortable position of having to explain his willingness to grant amnesty to 5 million undocumented immigrants through executive action, while at the same time robbing the tech sector of urgently needed talent by forcing foreign STEM students to return to their home countries. It’s hard to imagine the president actually vetoing this important bill he supports over political tactics.

Intellectual Property

This is a policy realm that embodies the axiom that politics makes for strange bedfellows — revealing alliances and exposing fissures that defy partisan lines and traditional political allegiances. Emails made public through the Sony hack have revealed a partnership between Republicans in Hollywood in the debate over copyright protections, while the looming issue of overhauling the patent system has led to internal divisions in both parties.

Both of these issues are likely to arise in the new Congress, and Republicans should proceed with caution.

Under intense pressure from his top tech-industry crony — Google — Obama has declared patent abuse to be one of the “biggest problems” his administration is dealing with. Looking to score a quick legislative win that will shake off the “do nothing Congress” label and prove to the media that they can work with the president, Republicans may embrace legislation that is ostensibly directed toward “patent trolls” but would actually dramatically curtail the legitimate property rights of inventors and innovators and intrude on well-calibrated rules of civil procedure. Tackling genuine litigation abuses is a worthy endeavor, but this is an area in which Congress needs to go slow and work toward broad consensus.

The intelletual property-intensive industries comprise nearly 35 percent of our gross domestic product — twice that of health care — and our constitutionally enshrined patent rights contribute $5 trillion to the economy and account for roughly 40 million jobs. Accordingly, this legislative endeavor should be subject to the level of scrutiny that it deserves.

And when it comes to copyright protections, any meaningful attempts to crack down on skyrocketing piracy problems have been stymied by the stigma that remains from the ghost of the Stop Online Piracy Act and the PROTECT IP Act. Here, Congress would do best not to rush toward legislative solutions but to use its oversight and investigatory powers to shine spotlights on the most serious criminal bad actors and to educate the public on successful voluntary initiatives like the Copyright Alert System, which informs consumers when they are downloading infringing material, and WhereToWatch.com, which makes it easy to find legal content.

The best focus for copyright legislation is to modernize the U.S. Copyright Office itself, which still uses paper forms and suffers a significant backlog.

The Path Forward

A series of other meaningful issues left unresolved by the previous Congress will inevitably arise in the coming months. Tackling corporate tax reform, which can spur tremendous economic growth in the tech sector, will force a contentious showdown with Obama — while the battle over forcing online vendors to collect state and local sales tax is a fight that will divide the Republican caucus. Issues such as the Sony hack underscore the need for action on cybersecurity efforts, and the continued controversy over the National Security Agency surveillance has forced a debate over needed updates to privacy laws.

Obama has suffered intense scrutiny, and rightfully so, over a tech policy agenda that has been driven largely by his Silicon Valley donors, including the FCC’s pending nuclear option at the behest of Google and Netflix, who would benefit from regulations guaranteeing them zero-cost access to customers.

Congressional Republicans would be wise to avoid falling into this same trap, steering clear of any efforts that unfairly benefit one ally at the expense of perverting the free market — such as the federal prohibition of online gambling being sought by GOP megadonor Sheldon Adelson.

An effective tech-policy agenda will embrace America’s identity as a nation of innovators, understanding that freedom is the decisive factor that cultivates prosperity for all. These ideas are not new to Republicans. It’s simply time to put them into practice.