Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said...
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said the “best thing” about Wednesday’s committee hearing on E-rate “will be Ed Markey on the committee,” during an interview at the Capitol. Markey, a Democrat, was sworn in as a senator Tuesday…
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after winning the Massachusetts special U.S. Senate election to fill the seat vacated by Secretary of State John Kerry, a term that ends in 2015. Hill aides said it’s likely Markey will be named to the Senate Commerce Committee but he had not been formally named at our deadline. A committee spokesman had no comment Tuesday. Rockefeller told us he started pulling the strings to get Markey on the Senate Commerce Committee “a year and a half ago.” Markey is “a natural for it. He’s the E-rate guy in the House,” said Rockefeller. Rockefeller brushed off recent suggestions by House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., that the FCC should seek to cap USF funding. “Chairman Walden has made a career out of making life miserable for me -- but I'm still smiling,” Rockefeller told us. Rockefeller, the original author of the E-rate program, said he was unconcerned by Walden’s recent letter urging FCC acting Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn to implement a cap. “What they do on E-rate in the House is not going to go in the Senate, so he is free to do whatever he wants.” Walden had urged Clyburn to cap the overall fund at current levels and refer any USF expansion proposals to the Federal-State Joint Board on “whether to adopt expansion proposals and, if so, how to implement them within the cap,” according to the letter (CD July 16 p3). Clyburn previously circulated an NPRM ahead of Friday’s commission meeting tied to President Barack Obama’s proposal to modernize the E-rate program to ensure that schools and libraries are connected through broadband of at least 100 Mbps with a target of 1 Gbps (CD June 7 p7). The Senate Commerce Committee’s E-rate hearing is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. in 253 Russell. Scheduled to testify at the hearing are Sheryl Abshire, chief technology officer at Louisiana’s Calcasieu Parish School System; Linda Lord, state librarian at the Maine State Library; Patrick Finn, senior vice president-public sector at Cisco Systems; and James Coulter, co-founder at TPG Capital.