WASHINGTON-Republicans, seeing potentially dividing issues in 2000 and hoping to tap into the deep pockets of Digital America, are fighting Democrats for the heart and soul of the high-tech agenda in the next century.
Days after Vice President and Democratic presidential front-runner Al Gore outlined his plan for “Building American Prosperity in the Information Age” last month, House Republicans unveiled their “e-Contract.”
Last week, Gore announced $9.5 million in federal grants to help 10 states train workers in high-tech skills. Next, the administration relaxed computer export restrictions.
For the wireless industry, picking sides can be difficult. The issues do not necessarily fit snugly into conventional political ideologies.
Republicans tend to be strong supporters of businesses and deregulation, but their tight embrace of new federalism-devolving power back to the states-works against wireless carriers that want federal pre-emption of local zoning regulations.
Democrats distrust free-market forces in the absence of regulatory safeguards. That does little for large wireless firms seeking relief from the spectrum cap and that want the Federal Communications Commission to exercise its authority to forebear from imposing common carrier rules on commercial wireless carriers.
On some issues-Internet regulatory freedom, research and development tax credits and increased high-tech research-Democrats and Republicans share similar views. Indeed, the rhetoric is at times indistinguishable.
“We must harness the powerful new forces of technology, and use them to strengthen our oldest values-to promote freedom, to educate our children and to lift our families and our nations up,” says Gore. “Today, information technology is changing the way we live, learn, work and shop-and its most lasting impact is just emerging.”
House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) gushes: “Technology has improved all our lives by giving us new conveniences that we couldn’t have imagined just a short time ago … Take a look around this room today and you see laptop computers, mobile phones and pagers that now have e-mail … That’s why we are proposing the e-Contract, to ensure that high-tech America has the freedom it needs to innovate, grow, expand and imagine.”
For intellectual firepower on high-tech policy, Republicans in recent years have relied on think tanks, like the Heritage Foundation and Progress & Freedom Foundation.
New Democrats, for their part, have a reservoir of intellectual capital in the Progressive Policy Institute.
But while conventional wisdom holds that telecommunications and technology policy cuts across party lines, it is clear Republicans and Democrats-but particularly the GOP-want to use high-tech policy to differentiate themselves politically.
“Our goal with the e-Contract is to frame the debate around a very simple question-do you want more government or more innovation?” said Armey.
And, in some cases, high-tech issues can cause conflict among party loyalists. Just ask the Clinton administration.
The Democratic White House and the GOP-led Congress last week struck a deal on Year 2000, or Y2K, computer liability legislation after months of intense lobbying and political rancor. The issue threatened to become a dangerous precedent for Gore, who needs continued high-tech backing (especially from electoral vote-rich California) and from the generous trial lawyer lobby alike.
Gore ran into a similar problem with a 1995 bill to curb frivolous class-action lawsuits against high-tech firms in which high-tech and trial lawyers butted heads.
Trailing Texas Gov. George W. Bush in record-setting presidential fund raising and in early polls, Gore can hardly afford to lose the support of the high-tech industry or trial lawyers. Trial lawyers decided not to fight E911 legislation, which gives wireless carriers limited liability protection on par with landline telephone companies.
For the first four-and-a-half months of 1999, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, communications/electronics and lawyers/lobbyists were among the top contributors to 2000 presidential candidates.
Another big campaign backer Gore does not want to alienate is organized labor. But here, too, Gore finds himself in a pickle. High-tech America again has become edgy over the lack of high-tech workers, a sore point made worse by the fact that the number of H-1B visas for skilled foreign workers reached its cap of 115,000 two weeks ago.
Congress last year passed legislation to relax visa allotments for overseas citizens with high-tech skills and could come under renewed pressure by high-tech America to enlarge the program. Organized labor would be as opposed to doing so as it was to last year’s measure. While Gore’s options are limited, Republicans-having no allegiance to trade unions-could exploit the visa issue and use it against the vice president.
Organized labor is supporting an appeal of 1996 radio-frequency radiation exposure standards adopted by the FCC in 1996, arguing new guidelines are not adequate because they do not address possible non-thermal health risks to the nation’s 75 million mobile phone users.
Some Republicans are having a field day attacking the Democratic-headed FCC’s implementation of the 1996 telecom act generally and, in particular, the E-rate discount program for hooking up schools, libraries and rural heath-care centers to the Internet. The cost of the universal-service program is passed onto consumers.
The vice president is having a tough time shedding the “Gore tax” tag, given to him because of his pledge to have all schools and libraries connected to the Internet by 2000.
Conservatives also have criticized the Clinton Justice Department’s antitrust case against Microsoft Corp. and the FCC’s close scrutiny-including negotiated imposition of conditions-on multibillion dollar telecom mergers.
But Republicans are not without vulnerabilities either.
The GOP’s sharp criticism of Clinton’s free trade policy and alleged satellite technology transfers to China (as well as U.S. counterintelligence breakdowns exploited by China) has given rise to new curbs on trade. Specifically, new laws make it harder for U.S. satellite makers to launch birds from rockets in China, Russia and Europe.
This is a huge issue for the wireless industry, which sees huge opportunities overseas in emerging markets that lack telecom infrastructure and plan to leap-frog with wireless technology to meet the communications needs of their people.
For high-tech, it’s a toss up. Some lobbyists have decided to split the difference, give to both sides, and hope for the best in 2000.
