WASHINGTON-As the junior Democratic senator from Massachusetts, John Kerry’s record is one of deftly straddling the fence on telecom and high-tech issues by backing bills benefiting Big Wireless while championing the causes of consumers and small business.
It was Kerry, whose brother Cameron works for a Boston law firm that represents AT&T Wireless Services Inc. and other wireless entities, who joined Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) in May 2002 in co-sponsoring legislation to delay the 700 MHz auction. It was Kerry who several months later that year urged the Federal Communications Commission to allow the re-auction winners of bankrupt NextWave Telecom Inc.’s licenses to cancel their bids. These were measures sought by the nation’s wireless giants.
Yet, it was the same John Kerry who two years ago sought to intervene on behalf of small Massachusetts firms that use ultra-wideband technology. The geoscience companies feared the FCC’s UWB ruling would hurt them. In 2000 and 2002, Kerry made himself a co-sponsor of pro-consumer Internet privacy bills.
In 2000, Kerry again hit a populace note by partnering with late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) on a bill offering tax credits to telecom companies that provide high-speed Internet service to low-income urban and rural areas. The bill was a hit with tech vendors too.
That Kerry, a New Democrat, has managed to perform such a balancing act on the telecom and high-tech fronts, could create problems for President Bush at a time when cutting-edge companies are still struggling and jobs are being exported overseas.
Last week, the administration was lambasted in the conservative editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal over its approach to U.S. broadband deployment, whose success or failure is directly linked to job creation and industrial productivity. The paper called the administration’s stewardship of high-speed Internet development a “broadband fiasco.”
Adding fuel to the fire were remarks by Bush’s top economic advisor, N. Gregory Mankiw, who called overseas outsourcing a “good thing” and downplayed America’s $125 billion trade deficit with China as a major culprit in the disappearance of U.S. manufacturing jobs.
At the same time, the Bush administration has aggressively pursued measures to foster the growth of wireless broadband services and frontally addressed other key Internet-related issues.
Kerry has sought to exploit the controversy over overseas outsourcing of U.S. jobs, a practice known as “offshoring” increasingly embraced by wireless and other tech sectors to reduce costs. Various academics and economists, like Bush’s economic adviser, also applaud the benefits of outsourcing.
Kerry said as president he would support tax breaks to entice companies to keep jobs in the states and close tax loopholes that encourage firms to hire workers in foreign countries.
Last November, Kerry introduced a measure to shine light on a growing trend among U.S. companies to use call centers in India and other countries. “Consumers should have the right to know where they are calling, and those that prefer to use American companies should have the right to do so,” Kerry said.
Kerry’s centrist tack on tech policy poses a challenge for telecom and high-tech firms. Wireless and other tech sectors generally benefit from tax cuts, deregulation and other Bush economic policies, but some have quietly grumbled they’d like to see more creativeness, enthusiasm and vision for a tech sector struggling to recover and to return as a major engine of economic growth in the United States.
Telecom and tech firms pour billions of dollars into political campaigns. Given the new presidential dynamics of Kerry’s Democratic frontrunner status, whom will those companies support? When it looked as if Bush’s foe would be former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean (D), it was a much easier call for tech executives.
Not so with Kerry, whose tech history does not necessarily match the Northeast liberal label Republicans want voters to affix to the Massachusetts lawmaker.
In July 1999-when dot-com optimism abounded before the Internet bubble burst early the next year-Kerry touted pro-growth policies of the Information Age at a National Press Club event.
“The New Economy requires that we rethink some of our traditional approaches toward public policy,” said Kerry. “Heavy-handed regulation, burdensome trade barriers, and bureaucratic approaches just aren’t working anymore, especially for high-tech and biotech companies and in the fields of education and worker training. Government need neither control nor abandon; there is a third way that forges new public-private partnerships to address a broad range of social and economic pressures that we will face in the new economy.”
In a 2001 op-ed Kerry and Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) co-authored, the lawmakers transformed the technology issue into tabletop talk many Americans could relate to.
“As we work to craft policies that will help grow our economy and continue raising the standard of living for Americans, we seek to partner with the private sector to encourage investments in infrastructure, work force and research our country needs to succeed in the 21st century,” the lawmakers said. “One of those investments must be in the physical infrastructure that connects us with technology and information now available in the 21st century.”
