What does a new Speaker mean for the tech sector?

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) will likely be the next Speaker of the House. He has a major opportunity to build a real relationship between Silicon Valley and Washington, DC, bring Congress into the 21^st century and help the institution focus on innovation and growth. McCarthy is from California and ran a small business before pursuing elected office. He also makes regular trips out to Silicon Valley and other tech hubs and is fluent with social media. 

We look forward to gaining a fuller understanding of his positions on issues of importance to the tech sector, because McCarthy’s existing stances on important tech policies is largely unknown.

{mosads}To our knowledge, McCarthy hasn’t introduced legislation, amendments, or called for a hearing on any technology topics. He hasn’t taken any public stand on a technology issue whatsoever, although he is co-sponsoring a congressional hackathon at the U.S. Capitol in late October, which sends a positive signal. Coming to Silicon Valley and talking about Uber is easy. What is hard is getting Washington to engage on these issues. And these issues need urgent legislative attention. Where is Speaker McCarthy on patent reform, copyright reform, TPP, and occupational licensing reform?

The group we co-founded, Lincoln Labs, recently released a report explaining how to reduce the mountain of regulatory detritus that currently holds back true economic growth in the United States. Our study documents how poor policies out of Washington and across the country, by both parties, are stifling our innovative potential. The World Bank recently released a report that ranks the United States as 46^th in ease of starting a business, behind Jamaica, Afghanistan and Russia. As economic growth continues at an anemic 2 percent per year, we need new direction on how to support small businesses and entrepreneurs.

The 21^st century should be America’s best. Unfortunately, too many in both parties, consciously or unconsciously, accept an America in decline and close their eyes as our economy is ravaged by abuse from regulators and incumbent firms stifling the creative destruction process. We hope that when McCarthy is elected Speaker of the House, he can shake the Chamber of its inaction and begin taking concrete steps to promote innovation.

The tech community must not be content to allow our future be merely a discussion on how to redistribute a shrinking pie, instead it’s time to create growth through innovation. Partisan gridlock is no excuse to not act on innovation. In fact, it’s more of an incentive; innovation policy is often bipartisan and able to pass an otherwise intransigent Congress. We hope that McCarthy will encourage House leadership and committee chairs to take a serious look at how they can act as pioneers in creating a new epoch of American economic growth. To date there hasn’t been a great deal of attention or political will expended on this idea.

The election of a new Speaker provides the opportunity for a reboot in leadership and vision on the issues most important to growing the American economy in the 21st century. We hope that a Speaker McCarthy will bring more substantive attention to the regulatory issues that hold back innovation.

Speaker McCarthy could be the leader American innovators need to grow the economy, but there is tremendous work to be done. Congress can and should take the lead on reducing barriers to entrepreneurial activity across the board. Fostering permission-less innovation across the country is an achievable goal; we hope McCarthy will be the leader we need to make it a reality.

Abrams, Ginn and Johnson are founders of Lincoln Labs, a conservative-libertarian technology group.