The prior installment with source citation is here.
After the Patriot Act allowed government officials to obtain vital private data from persons and from all U.S. businesses — i.e., even people headed to the U.S. Patent Office to try to file a new patent before others find out — our growth dropped.
When you cannot have privacy, you cannot even profit from your own ideas. This helps to explain some of the drop, although the worst is seen in 2009, implicating the Great Recession which had been caused by government actions.