U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra and California Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, got a walk-through of the Palo Alto foundry, as well as AT&T’s pitch on how it hopes to use the facility to spur innovation, fuel start-ups and create jobs. AT&T is the latest carrier to set up digs in the Bay Area, a list that includes Sprint and Verizon Wireless, as well as overseas carriers, including Vodafone, which earlier this month inaugurated a Redwood City facility.

Chopra said the site, which is designed to allow AT&T to more easily partner with small companies, is an example of how technology jobs created in one place can spill over to other parts of the country.

“In today’s information-driven economy, products and services can connect from anywhere and to anywhere,” Chopra said, as he wrapped up his tour of the facility. “Job creators need not wait for job opportunities locally.”

For her part, Eshoo praised AT&T’s work at the facility, even if she has been a vocal opponent of the company’s proposed $39 billion deal to buy T-Mobile USA.

As for her opposition to the deal, even that is not necessarily set in stone.

“I think there is work to be done on it,” she told AllThingsD. “Some of the problems, at least that I have with it, and some others about the merger, is not a newer AT&T that you experience here, but the older one. It’s up to the DOJ, I think, and the company, to work on that.”

The key thing, she said, is to create an environment with competition that creates new businesses.

“I want to see new companies being born every split second of every day,” Eshoo said. “We have the capacity to do that in this country. If anyone doubts it, they should just come here and visit this and so many other places in the Valley.”

Chopra steered clear of commenting on the T-Mobile deal, instead talking about his priorities when it comes to mobile technology and jobs, including freeing up spectrum and speeding development of a public safety-oriented wireless network.

Eshoo, too, was happy to talk about the need to free up more wireless spectrum, an issue upon which she and AT&T are in agreement.

Meanwhile, since it can’t get all of the regulators and lawmakers to come to it, AT&T has also launched an ad blitz in D.C. to make its case for the merger.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said at a hearing Thursday that he will put his weight behind a “net neutrality” bill introduced by Reps. Edward Markey, D-Mass, and Anna Eshoo, D-Calif. The bill would prevent Internet service providers from blocking or prioritizing legal content on the Web.

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“We are deeply concerned that the Department of Justice may be considering a preemptive lawsuit to block Yahoo’s nonexclusive online advertising agreement with Google,” the letter says. “If such action were taken, we believe such an unprecedented [lawsuit] would detrimentally affect the online advertising market and electronic commerce. … We believe that robust competition serves the public interest but if the DOJ blocks this agreement we fear that the threat of additional scrutiny may chill future agreements. Similar agreements are commonplace in many industries and standard among Internet companies.”

Well, not exactly, as Norman Hawker of the American Antitrust Institute points out. “Contrary to the letter, similar agreements are not commonplace because industries with this level of concentration are not commonplace,” Hawker said. “If you ignore the economic text when you read the words, you can easily be misled into thinking the agreement is harmless. Read in context, however, the words of the agreement explain how Google could easily acquire Yahoo’s paid-search business.”