Posted on 09/07/2008 9:00:07 AM PDT by airedale
With over two decades in the Senate, John McCain of Arizona has developed quite the resume with respect to technology legislation. BetaNews' Ed Oswald takes a look at where McCain stands on some of the most high-profile issues.
Perhaps simply because he is 72 years of age, Sen. John McCain is often the brunt of jokes that presume he knows little or nothing about modern technology, consumer electronics, or the Internet. Yet McCain's record tells a different story.
As a 22-year veteran of the US Senate, including six years spent as chairman of the Commerce Committee and having also chaired its Science Subcommittee, the senior senator from Arizona has taken leading positions on a multitude of technology-related issues. Legislation authored or sponsored by McCain has had significant impact on this country's citizens, and among the most important of the technology causes he championed has been the digital television transition.
An architect of the DTV transition
The nation's switch from analog to digital TV was supposed to be inevitable, but Congress had a terrible habit of postponing it indefinitely. This habit quite literally (and the photographs exist to prove it) made Sen. McCain red with fury. The process of finally setting a hard date finally started in 2004, when McCain cleverly tied the need for a transition to the need for first responders to have access to uniform public safety frequencies in the event of an emergency.
McCain's push to make the transition a reality was driven by a desire to free analog frequencies so they could be used by public safety officials. In 2005 he attempted to move up the transition date by two years to April 2007.
He used the backdrop of 9/11 to argue why responders needed to get their hands on the spectrum faster, but his amendment failed to move past committee. Detractors argued that the media industry would have not been ready for the switch. Still, the design of the FCC's spectrum auction, which had intended to reserve the D-block for use by first responders, was inspired in large part by McCain.
A proponent of tax policy as a business incentive
The subject of taxes plays a large part in the Senator's plans for the presidency. Among his technology policy proposals are many pro-business policies to bolster innovation.
McCain supports the use of risk capital to enable corporations to continue to obtain investment in innovation, and would endeavor to keep capital gains taxes low. In addition, he favors making permanent the Research and Development Tax Credit permanent, which is periodically reinstated and which Congress just as periodically lets elapse. That credit, say supporters, would enable US businesses to create as many as 140,000 more jobs per year, though it was allowed to elapse once again last year.
As president, McCain would also take steps to keep the Internet tax-free, a position he has held since legislation proposing Internet taxes and surcharges first surfaced about a decade ago.
A proponent of new, private technology initiatives
Often departing from the Bush administration's position on the environment and energy, Sen. McCain has taken some progressive stances, often citing his roots in his native Arizona.
In the effort that first brought him together with then-Democrat, now-Independent, Sen. Joseph Lieberman (Conn.), McCain co-authored the Climate Stewardship Act in 2003, the Senate's most innovative effort to date in helping businesses to curb greenhouse gas emissions. As of today, that bill remains under deliberation in Congress, though the basic cap-and-trade system received accolades early on from Sen. Joseph Biden, and later from Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
In this "cap-and-trade" system, companies would be dealt certain emissions limits on various carbons, like trading cards. They would then be allowed to trade up, lifting caps on emissions of some gasses over a given period, in exchange for stronger emissions caps for other gasses.
President Bush expressed disapproval for the concept from the beginning, supporting instead a system that gave more lenient, but stable, emissions caps across the board. Too stringent caps, Mr. Bush argued, would give production advantages to overseas competitors. In April 2008, Mr. Bush appeared at first to reverse himself on this issue, until an agreement between the administration and Congress revealed that the cap-and-trade sections had been quietly removed.
Most recently, Sen. McCain proposed a contest to award the developer of a more efficient car battery to power hybrid and electric cars.
$300 million would be given to the winner, to be paid by the taxpayer. On top of that, a $5,000 tax credit would be offered to those who purchase hybrid vehicles. While some of his opponents have dismissed it as a "gimmick," some experts say tax credits would be a more viable solution than taxing gas guzzling vehicles.
A supporter of telco immunity, until time to vote
Where Sen. McCain did side with the President, at least in principle, was with regard to his support for amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, enabling limited, so-called "warrantless wiretapping." Sen. Obama showed early opposition to those amendments, as did Sen. Joe Biden and Sen. Hillary Clinton; though among these Democrats, only Obama eventually changed his position to support a compromise.
This support apparently did not translate enough into a "yea" vote: When it came time to vote on the bill, John McCain did not show.
A supporter of simplified merger review
While ostensibly, Sen. McCain has taken a strong public stance in favor of enforcement of antitrust legislation, back in 1999, he co-authored a proposal to strip the Federal Communications Commission of its power to review telecommunications mergers.
Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and John Ashcroft (R-Mo., prior to serving as US Attorney-General), joined McCain in introducing a bill which would have allowed such mergers to only require Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission review. It would have also given tax breaks to larger telecom service providers who sell their assets to smaller ones, as a means of promoting diversity in service ownership.
That bill ended up dying in 2002, after McCain attempted for the final time to introduce it to the chamber.
An advocate for protecting intellectual property
Sen. McCain also holds strong positions on what has become another hot-button issue in technology: intellectual property and patents. He supports providing more resources to the US Patent Office, in the form of more staff at the agency -- which would help to expedite patent reviews. It also seems that McCain could be open to curtailing patent lawsuits, which he claims stifles innovation.
The senator would also work to ensure that intellectual property is protected worldwide, advocating agreements with other nations that would help protect the interests of US IP rights holders, including keeping the rights to their work when sold or produced overseas.
Joe Lieberman — State or Homeland Security
Duncan Hunter — Defense
Sarah Palin - Energy Czar
Carly Fiorina - Technology Czar
Works for me.
He apparently is firmly against spell checkers... :D
He’s a nanobot guy - the more nanobots the better...
McCain was on the campaign trail. He's not opposed to the broad use of warrantless wiretapping and recuction in court oversight on snooping to figure out which of us is a good do-bee, and which are not.
Are you kidding?
The woman hasn't even worked since she was fired from HP.
You know his views if you have enough votes in Congress you can eliminate things that he feels are Constitutional rights. This is based upon his recent comments about the Second Amendment.
Actually that was Barack Obama who said that. He felt that even if he could ban all guns, he couldn’t get enough votes in Congress to do so.
As a 22-year veteran of the US Senate, including six years spent as chairman of the Commerce Committee and having also chaired its Science Subcommittee
oh oh but mccain doesn’t care about the economy! Obama said so!
22 year Navy vet and a Scooter driver, ya, Id say he is tech savvy.
Scooter = A4
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