Democrats Enlist Silicon Valley Executives for ‘Innovation Agenda’
STANFORD, Cal. -- Silicon Valley heavyweights advised some Cal. House Democrats how to spread U.S. broadband, in the first of a series “Innovation Roundtables” around the country including Minority Leader Pelosi (Cal.). Details were sketchy in a news conference after the nearly 3-hour, closed meeting Mon. at Stanford U. involving about 20 senior corporate executives, financiers, industry association leaders and university managers, and Pelosi and 3 colleagues from the San Francisco area, Reps. Eshoo, Lofgren and Miller, who’s policy chmn. of the House Democratic Caucus. “This was an A-list of Silicon Valley,” Lofgren said.
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Miller is organizing a series of such meetings, the next in Seattle and others in D.C., Boston, Austin, St. Louis, N.C. and elsewhere, Pelosi said. The goal, Congress members said, is a broad innovation policy package to resume U.S. public investment in research and education and maintain U.S. competitiveness internationally -- and Pelosi said, with enough Republican support to pass Congress. “We're living off the seed corn” of previous decades,” AeA CEO Bill Archey said, echoing Miller’s theme that recent innovations stemmed from govt. commitments to research and education in the 1950s-1970s.
Business participants said during the meeting that the U.S. has fallen in world broadband rankings, despite President Bush’s 2004 campaign goal of universal, affordable high-speed access, because steps weren’t set out clearly enough, Pelosi related. The country must be sold on the “many, many public benefits,” including bolstering education and national security, Rep. Eshoo said.
Pelosi applauded “the outside validation that has been given our ideas today.” But Semiconductor Industry Assn. Pres. George Scalise and Silicon Valley Leadership Group CEO Carl Guardino said participation wasn’t based on support for Democrats. Others listed as participants by AeA, which publicized the event, included Cisco CEO John Chambers, AeA CEO Bill Archey, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner John Doerr, U. of Cal. Provost MRC Greenwood and Stanford U. Pres. John Hennesy.
Keeping the meeting private resulted in members of Congress doing more listening than talking, Miller said. “If the press were there, it would be a completely different meeting,” Scalise said.