Rockefeller Hopes FY2012 Budget Deal Includes Spectrum Act
Spectrum legislation could become part of the budget deal for fiscal-year 2012, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., told us Tuesday. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has mentioned that as a possibility, so Rockefeller hasn’t talked to Reid about separate floor time for his legislation S-911, Rockefeller said. Congress has been trying to make a deal on debt ceiling legislation that must pass before Aug. 2 or the U.S. will default on its obligations. Meanwhile, Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, said he’s hoping the FCC will work on 700 MHz interoperability.
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Integrating the spectrum bill with budget legislation “would be perfection” because it “would get us past the floor” and the House, Rockefeller said. The senator has said he wants to pass his bill, which includes reallocation of the 700 MHz D-block to public safety, before the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Rockefeller hopes his entire bill written with Ranking Member Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, would be included in the budget deal, he said. “If you think about it, it does reduce the deficit by $10 billion, and it’s wildly popular, and it’s very hard to be against it."
Meanwhile, Begich and Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., are talking to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski about interoperability on the 700 MHz band, Begich told us. Begich and Wicker have prepared an amendment to Rockefeller’s spectrum bill, but the FCC might be able to act on interoperability without a statutory requirement, Begich said. “We've seen some potential positive movements that [the FCC] may be able to do” through regulation, Begich said. “So we're working both sides."
The Senate Commerce Committee cleared the Rockefeller bill earlier this month in a bipartisan 21-4 vote (CD June 9 p4). S-911 is appealing to Democrats and Republicans and has a strong chance of passing this summer, said Rick Boucher, former Democratic chairman of the House Communications Subcommittee, in an interview. The bill addresses two “urgent needs,” setting up a public safety network and releasing more spectrum through voluntary incentive auctions, Boucher said. The current emphasis on deficit reduction is “another positive” for the spectrum legislation, “because it does produce revenue,” he said.
There remains an “unresolved division” between the House and Senate on what to do with the D-block, said Boucher. Boucher and the House Commerce Committee last year supported a D-block auction, but Boucher said he doesn’t “think that unresolved issue … is troublesome enough that it’s going to prevent the whole measure from moving forward."
There is growing skepticism in Congress about the accuracy of the Aug. 2 deadline set by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, and a deal could be delayed until September, said a lobbyist familiar with budget and appropriations process. At that point, Congress would likely set deficit reduction goals for each committee to accomplish by the end of the year, the lobbyist said. The House and Senate Commerce Committees’ bills likely would include spectrum auctions because they raise significant revenue for the U.S. Treasury, the lobbyist said. After committees each have cleared bills, they would likely be sewn together into packages resembling budget reconciliation bills for the House and Senate, the lobbyist said.
The Congressional Budget Office hasn’t yet scored the Rockefeller bill, but $10 billion is the amount the senator has estimated it would raise. Senate Communications Subcommittee Ranking Member Jim DeMint, R-S.C., who voted against the bill in committee markup, has said he fears the proposal would increase the deficit by $2.8 billion and take $14.5 billion off the table for deficit reduction. S-911’s “auction elements … are very attractive to the debt ceiling folks,” said MF Global analyst Paul Gallant. “But it’s less clear whether the spending items relating to public safety would hitch a ride as well or get pared back in some way.”