Taxes
Taking R&D To The Max (And Orrin)
Sens. Orrin Hatch R-UT and Max Baucus D-MT are expected to reintroduce legislation Monday to permanently extend the research and development tax credit. The senators will offer a Senate version of H.R. 835, introduced in the House by Reps. Nancy Johnson R-CT and Robert Matsui D-CA. Hatch and Baucus are both senior members of the Senate Finance Committee, the panel with primary jurisdiction over tax bills. The tax credit has generally received extensions of just one year at a time since being created in 1981. Supporters, including much of the high-tech industry, say this uncertainty has made it difficult for companies to plan and invest in long-term research projects.

Contributions
CapNet To Educate Hastert
In a sign that the Beltway technology community wants to become as active in politics as Silicon Valley, the Information Technology Association of America and the Capital Network (CapNet) political action committee are planning a fundraising event for House Speaker Dennis Hastert R-IL April 27. "The Speaker has not been that engaged in the past on high-technology issues and we want to talk to him about that," said ITAA President Harris Miller. CapNet also has pushed back its formal launch from April 20 until early summer in order to find a place to hold the event.

Campaigns
TechNet's George W. Push
Silicon Valley Republicans are wasting no time getting to know potential presidential candidate Gov. George W. Bush R-TX. The Valley's political action committee, TechNet, will send a team to Texas March 25 to work with Bush political strategist Karl Rove and campaign finance strategist Jack Oliver on developing a fundraising plan that would include the backing of many prominent high-tech executives. The team includes Lezlee Westine, TechNet's Republican political director and Floyd Kvamme, principal at venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers. (Kvamme's son Mark Kvamme, chairman of the board of USWeb/CKS, backs Rep. John Kasich R-OH's presidential bid.)

Taxes
Beier: Beware
The United States would send the wrong message to its trading partners if the Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce fails to do its job, a key administration adviser said Monday. With controversy surrounding the composition of the panel studying Internet tax issues, the body has yet to meet despite an impending deadline for its recommendations to Congress. If the inertia continues, the lack of progress could have an adverse impact on international debate over Internet tax issues, said Vice President Al Gore's chief domestic policy adviser, David W. Beier.

Y2K
Wheels Of Justice
Rep. Tom Davis R-VA is hoping that more Democrats will sign on to his Y2K liability bill once it starts rolling through the House Judiciary Committee next month. Although a handful of moderate Democrats are cosponsoring H.R. 775, there has not been a groundswell of support from that side of the aisle. Clinton Administration opposition, and the impression that the legislation could limit the right of individuals to sue, have also played a role. Davis told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Thursday that he expects the Judiciary Committee to hold a hearing on H.R. 775 on April 13, with a vote to follow shortly. Cosponsor Rep. Cal Dooley D-CA said conflict in the Senate over Y2K liability also is scaring off some of his colleagues.

Y2K
Commercial Message
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain R-AZ says he is negotiating with Sen. Christopher Dodd D-CT to develop a Y2K liability bill more palatable to Senate Democrats and "wayward" Republicans. "We cannot afford a party-line vote," he told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Thursday, adding that the sticking points include limits on punitive damages and parameters for class action lawsuits. "The committee of oversight is the Commerce Committee," McCain told National Journal's Technology Daily. "That will be the bill that will go to the floor." Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch R-UT has introduced his own Y2K liability bill, S. 461. Hatch is holding off on a committee vote on his bill to generate more Democratic support; Sen. Dianne Feinstein D-CA, the bill's cosponsor, is the only Democrat signed on.

Y2K
So Close, And Yet So Far?
The federal government is not likely to meet the March 31 deadline for Y2K readiness, but it will come close, according to the most recent study of federal agencies' progress compiled by the Office of Management and Budget. The report found that 79 percent of federal mission-critical systems were Y2K-ready by the end of January in its eighth report on federal progress. A spokesman for the White House's Y2K council said that 90 percent would be prepared by the deadline, two weeks from now. Sen. Robert Bennett R-UT, the Senate's lead Y2K watcher, said that 90 percent is nice, but it's not close enough to claim a total victory. "With this problem, if you're 10 percent non-compliant, you're non-compliant," Bennett said at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce meeting Thursday."

Taxes
The Thirty Percent Solution
Rep. Lee Terry R-NE has introduced H.R. 749, that would repeal legislation that attached a $30 fee to the cost of domain name registrations. The money generated from the fee, which accounted for a full 30 percent of the $100 registration charge, went to the Internet Intellectual Infrastructure Fund. The National Science Foundation dropped the fee in March 1998 in response to a suit brought by a group of domain name holders.

Telecom: Internet Access
No Fees, Please, FCC And GOP Agree
A bicameral group of Republicans Thursday fired off a letter to the FCC to make sure its chairman, William Kennard, stays true to his word that his agency will not regulate the Net as long as he's the FCC chief. The letter drafted by House Policy Chair Christopher Cox, CA, urges Kennard to keep the Internet unregulated and free of per-minute on-line access charges. Lawmakers are getting swamped with e-mail from consumers concerned about possible charges.

Telecom
Back In CLEC
The Federal Communications Commission voted Thursday to require local phone companies to be more accommodating to competitors that want to tap into local networks to offer competing phone and data services. The FCC expanded its rules regarding collocation, which allows competitive local exchange carriers to physically put telephone switching equipment inside buildings owned by the Baby Bells. This equipment allows competitors to offer high-speed data services, such as digital subscriber lines, over existing phone networks. Also Thursday, the FCC ruled that long-distance companies must publish their rates on the Internet.

Export
Control Panel
A coalition of computer companies have sent a letter to President Bill Clinton urging him to loosen controls on the export of high-performance computers. "Updating export controls, as needed, is an important factor in ensuring they will remain effective and meaningful," the Computer Coalition for Responsible Exports wrote in a letter dated March 15. But the group's timing could not be worse. Congressional Republicans have seized on what they view as President Clinton's vulnerability on foreign policy, particularly the administration's policy on technology transfers to China. "To come in and talk about the relaxation of technology transfers when we're saying Clinton is lax on current transfers... it undercuts our argument," one congressional Republican leadership aide said.

Exports
Majak's Bottom Line On MTOPS
A Commerce Department official said Tuesday that the threshold for reviewing high-performance computer exports would need to be more than doubled to keep up with advancing technology. Assistant Secretary for Export Administration Roger Majak said that the Clinton Administration is still in the process of evaluating how much to raise the performance level of high-performance computer exports subject to government review. However, "it's safe to say we will have to raise the [level] over 4,000-5,000 MTOPs [millions of theoretical operations per second] in order to avoid controls kicking in on the next generation to come to market," he said.

Encryption
The Secret Of NIST
The National Institute of Standards and Technology, a unit of the Department of Commerce, inadvertently posted cryptographic algorithms on its Web site; an action that could be seen as a violation of the Clinton Administration's own export laws. NIST, a major player in the development of a new encryption standard, published the source code of a cryptographic algorithm as an appendix to a technical paper in early March. The paper, which discusses the high-powered Decorrelated Fast Cipher cryptographic method, was written by a group of French cryptographers in preparation for an international conference sponsored by NIST.

Privacy
Spitting Out Spam
In another sign of the trend of states introducing legislation dealing with electronic records and information privacy, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer D is pushing a package of legislation in the statehouse in Albany. The first of the two measures would ban the sale or exchange of personal information without the "affirmative consent of such consumer." The second proposal, an anti-spam provision, would make New York the latest state banning the transmission of unsolicited e-mail advertisements unless the source is clearly identified by postal address, telephone number, and a response address to request the termination of further e-mail. A spokesman for Spitzer's office said the measures were sparked by privacy concerns over recent reports of ID numbers in Microsoft software and Intel's Pentium III microprocessor.

Business
Drop Your Weapons
Sen. Chuck Schumer D-NY, who helped lead the fight in the House for passage of the assault weapons ban, introduced legislation Tuesday to require gun dealers who sell their wares on-line to register with the federal government. "The Internet has quickly become an unregulated market for those looking to buy guns without any questions asked," Schumer said. "Many would-be owners who would find themselves blocked from buying a gun from a reputable dealer can instead merely turn on their computer, point and click, and have a gun shipped directly to their door without background checks."