New administration in D.C. requires some fancy footwork from local representatives
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Trump’s return to Washington is creating a new landscape to navigate for four Democrats who represent Silicon Valley. Joe Garofoli of SF Chron breaks down some careful maneuvering from reps Khanna, Liccardo, Lofgren, and Mullin, below.
The last week of Joe Biden’s presidency and the first week of Trump’s second term highlight how those representing Silicon Valley are often caught in an awkward place — they want to support an industry that provides high-paying jobs for their constituents and tons of tax revenue (and political contributions), but also play a role in regulating it.
Days before he left office, Biden warned of a “tech-industrial complex that could pose real dangers for our country,” including an “avalanche of misinformation and disinformation.” He said “unless safeguards are in place, (artificial intelligence) could spawn new threats to our rights, our way of life, to our privacy, how we work and how we protect our nation,” and that an “oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy.”
Five days later, several of those oligarchs were seated front and center at Trump’s inauguration, including Tesla, SpaceX and X leader Elon Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Apple CEO Tim Cook. Several of them individually or through their companies gave $1 million to fund Trump’s inaugural.
The next day, Trump signed an executive order revoking Biden’s 2023 action that sought to reduce the risks AI poses to consumers, workers and national security. The day after that, Trump, standing next to Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and Open AI CEO Sam Altman, announced a $500 billion project to build infrastructure across the country to power AI computing.
But three Democratic House members who represent Silicon Valley, while being solid Trump opponents, either disagree with Biden’s assessment or, as longtime San Jose Rep. Zoe Lofgren told me, “I don’t know what Biden meant by that, honestly. I mean, it was a phrase that was not explained.”
Rep. Sam Liccardo, who was just elected to the House after serving two terms as mayor of San Jose, opposes the tone of Biden’s remarks.
“Tech-bashing has become a favored sport for both parties, and to be sure, some of it is deserved. But it has become increasingly counterproductive, anti-competitive and self-defeating — particularly in a moment when we desperately need innovation to tackle our biggest challenges,” Liccardo said.
Rep. Ro Khanna, who bills himself as “Silicon Valley’s congressman,” said Democrats face political danger by seeming out of touch with the tech world.
“Silicon Valley is the ultimate swing state,” Khanna told me. Not in terms of votes — the region overwhelmingly supports Democrats — or money, for while some of its high-profile CEOs have donated to Trump, Democrats (including Khanna) continue to pull millions in campaign contributions from the region.
What Khanna is referring to is more of a vibe. And he worries that Democrats too often fall into a “narrative just to demonize any success.”
“We don’t want to become the party that doesn’t understand the future. We don’t want to become the party that doesn’t understand the American spirit of growth and dynamism. We want to be the party that’s going to make that growth and dynamism possible for every community.”
Rep. Kevin Mullin, whose Peninsula-based district contains Meta, YouTube and tons of biotech companies, said “President Biden was not wrong” in his warning about the accumulation of wealth and power. Mullin said he was “alarmed, but not surprised” at the “pretty blatant kissing of the ring” by tech oligarchs at the inauguration.
“I’m candidly of two minds here. You want these companies to be successful: These are major job generators, major revenue generators for the state, for the country. But you also want a coherent policy that brings some level of restraint to their power,” Mullin said.
It’s not surprising that these House Democrats would push back against their party’s erstwhile leader for calling out their districts’ dominant industry. Not only have voters overwhelmingly supported them for years, but so have donors. Khanna’s top two donors in 2024 were employees of Google and Apple. Lofgren’s top donors last year were Google employees. LinkedIn co-founder and Reid Hoffman hosted a fundraiser for Liccardo during his campaign. Mullin has major tech headquarters and their employees in his district.
But Khanna, a member of the House Progressive Caucus, doesn’t shy away from calling for higher taxes from some of the people who supported him.
“We need higher taxes on people who are very wealthy,” he said.
Lofgren and her Democratic cohorts aren’t surprised that tech CEOs flocked to the inauguration.
Instead of focusing on Trump or the tech oligarchs, she said she tries to focus on the needs of “the regular people” in her district.
“All the people that are employed (in the tech industry), obviously they don’t want their employers to go belly-up. I mean, it’s their jobs. So that does matter, but that doesn’t mean that the companies get what they want all the time, either,” she said.
Khanna was confused by Trump’s announcement last week of a $500 billion plan to build infrastructure to power the nation’s growing AI companies, the continuation of a plan that began under Biden. The announcement didn’t clarify what the federal government’s role or investment would be.
“I don’t understand what’s new about it,” Khanna said. “These companies were trying to do it anyway. What is Trump’s role?”
Liccardo remains optimistic about working with Republicans to help the industry. One idea that might appeal to Republicans reticent to make new investments as they aim to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget to pay for Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy, is to reinstate a provision in the tax code that enables companies to deduct their investments in research and development — which would be a boon to tech firms.
While Trump has promised to be the “crypto president,” Liccardo would like to see specific guardrails for the industry.
“We need to create a regulatory framework that ensures that transactions can happen in a legal way without constant threat of litigation,” Liccardo said.
Mullin also would like to revive the research and development tax deduction, but he wants the corporate tax rate raised from 21% to 35%, where it was before Trump took office. And he doesn’t fear blowback from tech companies for saying so.
“They exhibited great growth during that period when they were paying 35%, so I’m not concerned about that,” Mullin said.
Read the whole thing here.
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