When we spoke, Ballmer had just returned from a whirlwind day of briefings on Capitol Hill, where he met with the House Select Committee on Modernization and the Problem Solvers Caucus, as well as Representative Steny Hoyer, the No. 2 Democrat in the House, and Representative Kevin McCarthy, the chamber’s top Republican. He also sat down with Denice Ross, the chief data scientist in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. On the Senate side, he briefed around 25 senators — all of them Democrats, despite his best efforts to assemble a bipartisan audience.