As if you didn't have enough from me on these pages or Jim Hock here. Now, you have our "other" partner Tom Galvin spouting off in eWeek. He waxes about whether the Democratic Congress will follow through on the promises that they made eight months ago and put some real dollars into a pro-tech agenda....
Fresh off authorizing a 10-year investment of $33.6 billion in critical competitiveness areas, with patent reform on the fast track and little opposition to extending an expiring ban on Internet connection taxes, lawmakers seem to be thinking of technology this year as a priority—rather than an afterthought—on a crowded federal agenda....
....authorizing investments is an easy business, an abstract nod to the deep pockets of Silicon Valley. Appropriating those funds for next year and the next nine years is a much trickier and riskier enterprise. That bruising battle is still to come when the budget committees begin to hammer out just how much of the authorizations in Public Law 110-69, the America Competes Act, will actually be spent.
"If they don't follow up with the money, it's just talk," said Tom Galvin, a partner at Washington's 463 Communications, which counts among its clients Sun Microsystems, Cisco Systems and Technet, the politically savvy CEO network. "There's going to be a push for Congress to put its money where its mouth is."
Tom is also "circumspect" on patent reform:
"There are still a lot of divisions within various industries. I don't see it happening without a major breakthrough compromise. Otherwise, they're just playing kick the can."
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