BEFORE YOU VOTE LOCALLY REPUBLICAN PLATFORM 2016

• R E P U B L I C A N P L A T F O R M 2 0 1 6 •
cal progress, not a meddlesome monitor. We want
to create a business climate that rewards risk and
promotes innovation, a learning system that gives
Americans the skills needed to seize the opportunities
of the 21st century, and an international order
that maintains a fair and open global market for
America’s goods and services. We intend to advance
policies that protect data privacy while fostering
innovation and growth and ensuring the free
flow of data across borders.
Together, broadband and good ideas have
become the 21st century engines of American ingenuity.
Innovation, by its nature, is disruptive. In
challenging legacy forms of business, innovation
creates new jobs, gives access to new markets,
opens opportunity to underserved populations, and
expands consumer choice. Government must give
America’s innovators the freedom to create and, on
their merits, succeed or fail.
Our agenda includes balanced protections
for intellectual property, explained elsewhere in
this document. We intend to facilitate access to
spectrum by paving the way for high-speed, nextgeneration
broadband deployment and competition
on the internet and for internet services. We
want government to encourage the sharing economy
and on-demand platforms to compete in an
open market, and we believe public policies should
encourage the innovation and competition that are
essential for an Internet of Things to thrive.
Government must keep pace with the technology
deployed in the private sector. There is an urgent
need to modernize the federal government’s
legacy systems and to recruit the skilled technical
personnel who can advance the adoption of innovation
in the public sector. At the cost of billions, the
current Administration has done little to advance
our goal of universal broadband coverage. That
hurts rural America, where farmers, ranchers, and
small business people need connectivity to operate
in real time with the world’s producers. Almost ten
million Americans have given up wired broadband
connections in just the last two years alone, and millions
more have never been connected in the first
place.
We encourage public-private partnerships to
provide predictable support for connecting rural
areas so that every American can fully participate
in the global economy.
The public-private partnerships between
NASA, the Department of Defense, and commercial
companies have given us technological progress
that has reduced the cost of accessing space and
extended America’s space leadership in the commercial,
civil, and national security spheres. The
entrepreneurship and innovation culture of the free
market is revitalizing the nation’s space capabilities,
saving taxpayer money, and advancing technology
critical to maintain America’s edge in space and in
other fields.
To protect our national security interests and
foster innovation and competitiveness, we must
sustain our preeminence in space by launching
more scientific missions, guaranteeing unfettered
access, and ensuring that our space-related industries
remain a source of scientific leadership and
education.
Building the Future: America’s Electric Grid
Our nation’s interstate electric transmission
system has long been a catalyst for developing and
delivering low cost energy while spurring economic
growth throughout the United States The grid is
aging, vulnerable to cyber and terrorist threats, and
unprepared to serve our energy needs of tomorrow.
It should not take seven to ten years to plan and
construct a transmission line. We support expedited
siting processes and the thoughtful expansion of
the grid so that consumers and businesses continue
to have access to affordable and reliable electricity.
Start-up Century: Small Business
and Entrepreneurship
A central reason why the 20th century came
to be called the American Century was the ability
of individuals to invent and create in a land of free
markets. Back then they were called risk-takers,
dreamers, and small business owners. Today they
are the entrepreneurs, independent contractors,
and small business men and women of our new
economy. Their innovation drives improvement and
forces long-established institutions to adapt or fade
away. Many of them are so young they remember
little if anything of the last century because dy-
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