Revitalizing the Economy: Harnessing Technological Innovation for Growth

Both major parties converge on the underlying goals here (federal R&D investment and universal broadband) more than partisan rhetoric suggests. When the executive branch proposed the FY2026 cuts described above, Republican and Democratic appropriators agreed with each other more than they disagreed with the White House. The live fight isn't whether to build broadband, it's how: Republicans generally favor the 2025 technology-neutral, deregulated BEAD approach as faster and cheaper; Democrats generally argue the forced restart delays households getting connected and drops standards that mattered. The Innovation Party's delta: take the Republican-coded position on build-out speed and technology neutrality, but keep the Democratic-coded insistence on accountability reporting: not a split-the-difference compromise, but a specific claim that speed and accountability were never in tension, so there's no reason to pick only one. On R&D funding specifically, the delta is less about disagreeing with either party and more about institutionalizing what Congress, on its own, already proved it would defend: treating a proposal to gut NSF/NIH/NASA funding as something that shouldn't have to be re-fought from zero with each new administration.