At ITI’s inaugural Tech and Policy Summit on January 31 in Washington, DC, three members of the 118m Congress has outlined their priorities for technology and innovation legislation for the next two years.
Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., and Reps. Suzanne Delben, D-Wash., and Darin LaHood, R-Ill. They will continue policies that support national security, research and development and other technical assistance, he said Advances, such as digital commerce.
Sen. Young intends to devote some of his time to implementing the new Congress Chips and the Law of Science – This lawmaker was instrumental in passing bipartisan legislation last year.
“I look forward to investing in our people. Much of Chips and Science Act is an investment in human capital [and] skills,” Sen Young said. “It really excites me.”
“When you’re talking about economic growth and technological progress or competitiveness, you’re also talking about national security,” Sen Young said. “We’re going to invest in space through tech hubs, and we’re going to invest in people through skills and next-generation technology.”
Reps. DelBene and LaHood continue to focus their energy on the Digital Trade Caucus — a bipartisan group co-led by two representatives.
“We are working to engage and engage more members,” Rep. LaHood said Tuesday “We are just trying to educate people about the importance of digital [and] E-commerce and some of the issues that are there.”
He emphasized that the caucus aims to ensure the nation has “the strongest e-commerce system in the world”. But the caucus co-chairs must start by educating their peers and the public about what digital commerce means.
“A lot of people think it’s about a few tech companies that care about digital commerce, but it’s really about everything,” Rep. Delben said. “Every sector of our economy depends on digital commerce and data flows.”
“People don’t really think about what digital commerce means,” he said. “But it’s really the foundation for the way our economy works.”
The co-chairs are working closely on changing US tax policy to include digital commerce in the new Congress.
“We need to come up with a model,” Delben said. “Tax policy has typically focused on physical presence and physical products, and we need to update it to reflect the way our economy works.”
When Rep. DelBen launched the Congressional Digital Trade Caucus in 2017, he wanted to ensure that nation’s governments work together to set global trade rules – not follow them.
“We can’t set the international rules if we don’t do a good job of setting the rules here at home,” Rep. Delbene said at the ITI summit.
