Thursday, November 16, 2006
Washington, D.C.
 

  Information II Location II AeA Contact || Photos

Speaker Elect Nancy Pelosi, accompanied by Congressman George Miller, soon to be the Chairman of the Education and Workforce Committee in the House, and Anna Eshoo, Congresswoman from Silicon Valley and probably Ms. Pelosi’s closest friend, came to AeA’s offices and the David Packard Conference Center on November 16, 2006, at 5:30 p.m.  It was a standing room only crowd of approximately 100 high-tech leaders, including executives and government affairs professionals from Cisco Systems, Electronic Arts, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Intuit, Microsoft, Motorola, Philips, QUALCOMM, Research in Motion, Sun Microsystems, Symbol Technologies, Symantec, Texas Instruments, Xerox, and Yahoo!

Ms. Pelosi was greeted with a long standing ovation by the audience and noted, “this is my first public appearance off Capitol Hill since the election.  And I am proud to be at AeA.”

The main thrust of her talk, though not the only one, was the Democrat’s competitiveness agenda known as “The Innovation Agenda.”  She talked extensively about the role of AeA providing the intellectual stimulus for that agenda, including saying, “Bill Archey gave us the legitimacy to go forward with our ideas.”

Some key points made by Speaker Elect Pelosi:

• U.S. Competitiveness – she wants to pass competitiveness legislation early next year but said, “I don’t want it to pass with just 230 votes.  I want the issue of competitiveness to be truly bipartisan.  I want 350 votes to make this a real mandate that the country can get behind.”
   
• In looking back at the past year on the issue of competitiveness she talked about the Democrats’ efforts to get a bill passed and said, “we tried to do this in a way that doesn’t have bipartisan obstacles.  We can’t understand why it was not taken up—it’s so obvious—it’s about the future.”
   
• In her meeting with the President she explicitly mentioned competitiveness as one area where the new Congress could work with the President given his American Competitiveness Initiative which he introduced in his State of the Union address this past January.
   
• In speaking with the 42 new members of the Democratic Caucus she said the overwhelmingly biggest concern of those new members was the “exodus of jobs leaving their districts.”
   
• In referring again to competitiveness and education she said, “nothing brings more money to the Treasury, not tax credits, nothing, more than does the education of the American people.”
   
• Energy and the Environment – She emphasized that, “when we talk about energy, talk about the environment, we are market oriented.”
   
• Broadband – she told a funny story about how the making available of broadband for every American made it into the Democrats’ Innovation Agenda.  In the draft of that agenda they said broadband would be available for every American in 10 years.  She then spoke with Larry Page, co-founder of Google, who said “ten years, why not two?”  Ms. Pelosi then noted “so we put in 5 years.”
   
• Sarbanes-Oxley – Ms. Pelosi said “we put it in writing in our Agenda that we are going to revisit Sarbanes-Oxley.”
   
• The first 3 things the new Congress will do – she was quite clear about what the first priorities will be:
   
  1. New Ethics Standards - AeA believes the Democrats are going to forbid the acceptance by a member of the House of any gifts regardless of the monetary value.  There will be other changes that won’t require legislation but rather changes in House rules.
      
  2. Civility –  “We are going to write civility into our rules.”  She emphasized that although the Democrats were essentially left out of the legislative process they were not going to do that to the Republicans when they take over the House.
      
  3. Pay as you go – The Democrats are going to emphasize a return to not-too-many years ago when the budget act was in effect and new programs and initiatives had to be funded on the basis of new revenues or other programs having to be cut or reduced so as not to increase the deficit.
      
• Immigration – Ms. Pelosi noted that Rep. Zoe Lofgren, also from Silicon Valley, will be chairing the subcommittee on immigration and has been and will be going around the country specifically talking about skilled worker visas.  She noted that there are few people in the country who understand the immigration issue and particularly its legal underpinnings than does Zoe Lofgren.

One other note – We are having a lunch today with the chief of staff to the new Chairman of the House Science Committee, Bart Gordon, Democrat from Tennessee.  On November 30 we will also be hosting the chief of staff to the new Majority Leader, Steny Hoyer, at a luncheon at AeA.

AeA David Packard Conference Center
601 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
North Building, Suite 600
Washington, DC 20004
(Directions)
 

John Palafoutas
Senior Vice President, Government and Congressional Affairs
601 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
North Building, Suite 600
Washington, DC 20004
Phone: 202.682.4451
Fax: 202.682.9111

PRESS CONTACT:

Anne Caliguiri
Director, Communications
601 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
North Building, Suite 600
Washington, DC 20004
Phone: 202.682.4443
Fax: 202.682.9111

This page was last updated on 11/20/06.  
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