111st Congress printable version
 
Eradicate Barriers to Innovation
  • Enhance existing intellectual property laws to provide greater protection to one of America's most valuable economic resources
  • Promote patent reforms that ensure patents continue to provide strong incentives for innovation and economic growth
  • Eliminate patent fee diversion to ensure funds are available to modernize the Patent and Trademark Office and increase the number of examiners so that U.S. entrepreneurs receive swift, precise responses to secure their intellectual property
  • Promote legislation that will enhance America's competitiveness by improving student achievement and encouraging students to pursue and graduate with degrees in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields
  • Reform H-1B visas and retain highly skilled workers and students, particularly in STEM fields
  • Encourage aggressive enforcement of existing intellectual property laws and cooperative investigation between private industry and the Department of Justice, FBI and other agencies
 
Eliminate Barriers to Trade
  • Renew Presidential Trade Promotion Authority so that consumers and producers may both continue to benefit from barrier-free trade in IT products and services, especially over the Internet
  • Ensure that new trade agreements require foreign governments to adequately protect U.S. intellectual property rights, provide transparency in the regulatory process, protect companies from unfair trade practices, and take effective enforcement action against piracy
  • Expand the Information Technology Agreement that was created in 1997 to remove tariffs on high tech products
  • Support the completion and adoption of additional Free Trade Agreements, boosting American jobs and economic competitiveness
 
Improve Quality of Life through Technology
  • Support effective data security legislation that both deters cyber crime and maximizes the protection of privacy without imposing unnecessary burdens on industry
  • Ensure that next generation broadband products and services are delivered to all Americans through sound spectrum policies that maximize efficiency of this scarce resource
  • Urge passage of legislation that will drive the adoption of an interoperable health information network and facilitate industry-wide interoperability standards
  • Promote widespread deployment and use of broadband technology by minimizing regulation on innovative new Internet services
  • Reform Universal Service program to ensure the delivery of communications services to rural America while eliminating waste, fraud and abuse
  • Promote teleworking to strengthen families, improve homeland security preparedness and reduce highway congestion
  • Support biotech and nanotech industries and promote a mechanism or process of technology transfer to the commercial marketplace
  • Allow more Americans to enjoy the digital revolution by ensuring that the hard date for completing the DTV transition is not extended
 
Strengthen the Economy through Sensible Fiscal Policy
  • Accelerate and rationalize depreciation schedules for technology and broadband equipment to encourage deployment of products and services
  • Encourage the private sector to develop energy efficient data centers, software and appliances, as a way of reducing both energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions
  • Promote a permanent R&D tax credit
  • Protect exciting new broadband and digital technologies and services from premature government regulation; instead encourage enforcement and market-based solutions
  • Make permanent the Internet Tax Moratorium
  • Repeal the regressive Federal Excise Tax on telecommunications services
  • Promote a sensible tax policy for interstate communications services and technologies by eliminating the discriminatory tax policies imposed by some state and local governments
  • Reduce the Sarbanes-Oxley Act's compliance burdens and impacts on small companies and mitigate unintended consequences of the Act that are impacting innovation and contributing to capital flight