With the heavy focus on job creation and innovation in the President’s SOTU address last week, it was no surprise that several priority issues for the IT industry also received a shout-out from the President as key National priorities.
Consistent with the sentiment on Capitol Hill, the President emphasized the need for tax reform. While it was reassuring to hear his call for a lowering of the corporate tax rate, he also called for this to be offset by closing “loop-holes.” The devil is always in the details of the definition of a “loop-hole,” as this term has frequently been used to refer to tax incentives that help U.S. companies compete globally.
The President also reiterated the need for a bipartisan effort to finalize the Columbia, Panama and Korea trade agreements. Keeping with the innovation theme but taking efforts to steer clear of hot-button term like the H-1B visa, the President renewed the call for immigration reform that keeps “talented, responsible young people” in the U.S. to meet our critical workforce needs. As timing would have it, the H-1B cap for FY 2011 was met on Friday, just days after the speech.
And in what might have seemed like a direct nod to SIIA and some of its members–who were in New York discussing the transition from “wired to wireless” at the Information Industry Summit (IIS)–the President called for wireless connectivity to be provided to 98 percent of the country over the next five years. Given the discussions at IIS re: the tremendous growth in the wireless market, this would provide even more demand for mobile applications and content delivery over the next five years.
With the dust now settled on the SOTU, we’ll continue to keep you posted as these and other key priorities play out in the weeks ahead.
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