Technology & Innovation

America is the world leader in innovation and creativity.  Indeed, many of our nation’s Founders were inventors and authors.  Perhaps that is one of the reasons they had the incredible foresight to include incentives for innovation in the text of the Constitution.  America’s geniuses such as Thomas Edison, the Wright Brothers, Alexander Graham Bell, Samuel Morse, George Washington Carver, and many others have made brilliant use of those incentives and have delivered some of the world’s greatest products and services.

More recently, the explosion of the Internet and the boom of small businesses and entrepreneurs that have sprung up utilizing this tremendous medium have ushered in an exciting new era of advancement for business, science, and communications.  Technologies, like broadband, are important to creating a bright future. Broadband has the potential to provide affordable, fast access to the Internet for consumers and small businesses. Broadband is particularly important to those in rural communities, like the Sixth District, because it providesbusinesses and consumers with access to markets and services all over the world. I believe that technology and innovation will continue to create new jobs and opportunities and will lead America out of its current economic distress. Technology will also help us solve many of the pressing problems our nation currently faces.  We need to make sure that the federal government’s efforts are focused on creating incentives that encourage innovation and eliminating unnecessary red tape and regulation as well as excessive taxation and other policies that hinder innovation.  

In addition, we need to protect our nation against cyber attacks, so that individuals and businesses alike continue to have confidence to rely on the Internet for doing business.

Actions

• I serve as the chairman of the House Republican Technology Working Group (HRTWG), which keeps Members of Congress informed about the latest developments affecting the technology industry and provides advice to congressional leaders on technology policy.  To learn more about the goals of the HRTWG, please click here. To view our accomplishments during the 112th Congress, please click here.

• I serve as co-chairman of the Congressional Internet Caucus, which is dedicated to educating Members of Congress about policies affecting the functioning, protection and advancement of the Internet.

• I supported the America Invents Act (H.R. 1249), which has become law and which reforms our patent laws to ensure that patent holders have more certainty with regard to their patent rights, includes reforms to discourage frivolous patent litigation, and keeps U.S. patent laws up to date with the 21st Century economy.

• I support efforts to enforce our nation’s intellectual property laws to ensure that those who steal the intellectual property of others are prosecuted.  I also believe that technology can provide some of the most effective solutions to help protect intellectual property.

• I support efforts to make spectrum, which is a limited resource, available for innovative uses and to ensure that it is being utilized as efficiently as possible by those who are granted licenses to use it.  A successful spectrum policy will promote exciting new products and services in a wide variety of industries, from telecommunications and social media to transportation to farming applications.

• More and more, American innovators are looking to expand the markets for their goods and services overseas.  I support free trade – as long as it is fair trade – with other nations, which encourages job growth within the U.S.

• I serve on the House Republican Cybersecurity Task Force, which is appointed by the Speaker of the House and which works to coordinate the House of Representatives’ efforts regarding cybersecurity.  Cyber attacks have the potential to bring down our nation's economy, expose our most sensitive information, and even seriously injure or kill American citizens.  We must work to safeguard our information infrastructure. Congress must tackle this problem in an innovative manner that allows for dynamic solutions to this dynamic problem and that avoids static, one-size-fits-all mandates from the federal government.