As Congressman Cory Gardner settles into his new life in Washington, the real work of growing jobs in Denver is just beginning. Sustained jobs growth will require a strong commitment to creating the environment that leads businesses, large and small, to invest in new equipment, new hires, and new economic growth.
While the nation’s unemployment rate has dropped from a peak of 10.1 percent in late 2009 to 9.4 percent in December, 14.5 million people spent the holiday season out of work. At a time when both unemployment and our budget deficit continue to grow, voters in Denver expect results from Congressman Gardner and his 434 colleagues.
The technology sector lies at the heart of our economic recovery, no matter where we live or what we do. The broadband Internet is the workplace, marketplace, and hiring hall of the future, and the Administration must implement policies that encourage robust growth in broadband infrastructure and in improving our access to it.
Alarmingly, over 10 percent of Colorado residents still don’t have access to high-speed broadband, which affects our ability to expand high-tech jobs, grow small businesses and encourage new opportunities for such remarkable services as distance-learning, remote medical care, improved government efficiency, and many others. Broadband will deliver educational and public safety benefits while promoting economic development and revitalization by providing Denver businesses access to regional, national, and worldwide markets.
President Obama recently signed an executive order to conduct a systematic review of existing federal regulations in his opinion article “Toward a 21st-Century Regulatory System.” As he put it, unreasonable regulatory burdens on business “have stifled innovation and have had a chilling effect on growth and jobs.” The President is on the right track – it makes as little sense to interfere with businesses that are playing by the rules and doing the public good as it would to let polluters or bail-out seeking banks go unchecked.
But there’s one area where the Administration needs to look towards its own policies. Last December, the Federal Communications Commission decided to regulate the Internet in the name of a doctrine called “net neutrality.” In essence, the FCC wants everything on the Internet to travel at the same speed, be it a heart monitor or a music video. It imagines a digital Lake Wobegon, in which everyone’s Internet traffic gets to be above average.
But that’s not the real world, and there regulation is a burdensome overstep. The broadband sector is an example of where the free market has worked. Cable, fiber, and wireless companies are investing tens of billions of dollars every year, and the speeds with which you can browse the Internet — like the range of applications you can put on your mobile phone — were unimaginable a few years ago. Moreover, if the Internet is a “superhighway,” then videos and the Big Websites are 18-wheelers driving past your compact car. We’re subsidizing them by letting them congest the Internet with their big bandwidth requirements. So dictating the “net neutral” approach to managing the Internet’s traffic will be good for the big websites, but not for the consumer who wants new services and more competition.
If the administration wants to follow through on its commitment to economic growth and job creation, these net neutrality regulations need to be re-examined before they do lasting damage to the economy. Telling the cable, fiber, and wireless companies how to manage the networks they built with their shareholders’ money is a step away from job creation, economic growth, and a sustainable, innovative marketplace for consumers and businesses.
Let’s focus instead, as the President said, on investment that makes broadband available for all Americans. As President Obama and Congressman Gardner look toward policies that will boost not just in Colorado but the nation’s economy as well, they should be building partnerships with the industries that are bringing us the future, and not tying their hands while they try to do so.
Dr. Everett Ehrlich is president of ESC Company, an economic consulting firm, and former Under-Secretary of Commerce for President Clinton. EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an online-only column and has not been edited.
