CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
July 8, 2008 – 3:50 p.m.
McCain to Lay Out Market-Oriented Technology Policy
By Adrianne Kroepsch, CQ Staff
Few presidential candidates have had as much experience with technology topics as John McCain , though you wouldn’t know it by looking at his presidential campaign Web site or listening to his stump speeches.
The Arizona Republican ran the Senate panel that deals with telecommunications policy for years and he counts several powerful telecommunications lobbyists and executives as campaign advisers. But McCain is eight months behind Democratic rival Barack Obama in laying out his technology policy priorities as a presidential candidate.
That is about to change.
Michael Powell, former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, is drafting a technology agenda for McCain that the campaign expects to release this month. While Obama backs legislative initiatives to promote network neutrality, diversity in media ownership and consumer privacy, Powell said McCain would take a more typically Republican market-oriented approach.
Powell said the highlights of McCain’s technology agenda will include proposals to:
• Lower capital gains taxes to encourage large companies to invest profits domestically.
• Develop an immigration policy that would allow skilled technology workers to remain in the U.S. and an education policy that would produce more engineering and computer science graduates.
• Promote free trade and open global technology markets.
• Create a permanent research and development tax credit. Such incentives are typically renewed every year by Congress.
McCain’s upcoming policy statement is expected to serve as a rejoinder to Obama’s technology platform. The Democrat supports “network neutrality” rules that would require broadband providers to treat most Internet traffic the same, while McCain does not. Obama also wants to draw a line on further consolidation it the media industry, which legislation backed by McCain has encouraged.
“Those issues are in the weeds,” Powell said. “They’re the FCC issues. A lot of the FCC’s issues aren’t ‘president of the United States’ issues. I understand how people want to talk about them, but some of it is inside baseball.”
One issue that underscores the difference between the candidates’ approaches to technology is high-speed Internet deployment.
The issue is the single telecommunications topic that has risen to the presidential level during the Bush administration. In 2004, President Bush called for nationwide broadband access by 2007, but the federal government put few resources behind the mandate. The U.S. has continued to slip lower in international rankings of broadband penetration, even as businesses struggling with rising energy prices look to Internet access as a way to cut transportation costs.
McCain to Lay Out Market-Oriented Technology Policy
McCain unveiled a broadband strategy he called the “People Connect Program” during a Kentucky speech in April. Under the plan, the federal government would provide tax breaks to bring high-speed Internet to small towns. Loans also would be made available.
Obama’s plan would hinge on retooling an existing government subsidy program known as the Universal Service Fund (USF) to bolster broadband deployment. The fund — supported by a levy on telephone bills — subsidizes phone service in rural areas. It has grown exponentially in recent years and is currently being overhauled by the FCC. Congress may revisit the fund in 2009.
McCain is an outspoken critic of the USF program, calling it inefficient and complaining that it lines the pockets of the phone companies. Obama would demand that the program transition to supporting broadband instead of voice communications on a certain date.
Courting the Communications Sector
Both presidential candidates are actively wooing the technology industry via Washington surrogates.
From his vantage point on the Senate Commerce, Science and Technology Committee, which he led as chairman from 1997 to 2001 and from 2003 to 2005 and has served as a member since he came to the Senate in 1987, McCain has seen the rise of the Internet, cable and wireless industries, the bursting of the dot-com bubble and the breakup of the old telephone monopoly.
McCain participated in drafting the 1996 Telecommunications law (PL 104-104), which remains the nation’s primary telecom law. McCain was among just five senators, and the only Republican, who voted against the bill on the floor. He contended the bill was too regulatory and instead advocated opening the local and long-distance telephone markets with fewer restrictions.
McCain also has been a leading champion of legislation that would encourage cable providers to offer channels to customers on an “a la carte” basis, instead of forcing them to buy bundles with stations they may not want.
Despite McCain’s long history with such issues, Obama has said far more about them during the campaign. The Illinois senator is not a Commerce panel member, but his use of technology to campaign and his embrace of Silicon Valley — including a broad technology agenda speech at Google’s Mountain View, Calif., headquarters in November — have positioned him as the more tech-savvy candidate.
The communications and electronics sector has contributed $10.3 million dollars to Obama’s campaign, including $220,289 from telephone utilities, during the 2008 election cycle, according to a Center for Responsive Politics analysis of Federal Election Commission data released June 2. McCain raised $2.4 million from the sector, including $365,955 from telephone utilities, during the same period, according to the analysis of contributions by political action committees and individuals employed in the sector.
In late June, McCain operatives sat down with more than two dozen technology and media executives, including chiefs of Apple Inc., Intel Corp., Hewlett Packard Co., Microsoft Corp., Texas Instruments and Time Warner Inc. Obama’s campaign will do the same in early July.
“Most recognize that the technology community is closely tied to innovation and economic growth,” said Ralph Hellman, vice president of the Information Technology Industry Council (ITIC), a technology industry lobby. “Both candidates want to be on the shining side of that. They are looking to out-tech each other.”
The candidates have different strengths, but ITIC ranks both as pro-technology.
McCain to Lay Out Market-Oriented Technology Policy
McCain posted a 90 percent rating over 10 years of voting on technology issues, according to numbers soon to be released by ITIC. The group says Obama has participated in six key technology votes during his brief Senate tenure and voted pro-technology five times.
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