Good oversight doesn’t include “wholesale attacks against agencies … for political purposes,” House Communications Subcommittee Ranking Member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., told reporters Thursday. She rejected amendments to the Continuing Resolution -- debated Thursday -- that would affect FCC operations. Eshoo said at a media briefing that her priorities for this Congress include spectrum reform, overhaul of the Universal Service Fund and building a public safety wireless broadband network.
Adam Bender
Adam Bender, Senior Editor, is the state and local telecommunications reporter for Communications Daily, where he also has covered Congress and the Federal Communications Commission. He has won awards for his Warren Communications News reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists, Specialized Information Publishers Association and the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing. Bender studied print journalism at American University and is the author of dystopian science-fiction novels. You can follow Bender at WatchAdam.blog and @WatchAdam on Twitter.
The House agreed to a 90-day extension of three Patriot Act expiring provisions, to May 27. Thursday morning, the House voted 279-143 to concur with the Senate amendment to HR-514. Earlier in the week, the House agreed to extend the provisions until December, but the Senate wanted an earlier sunset. The vote keeps alive three provisions of the President George W. Bush-era anti-terrorism act. The legislation (CD Feb 17 p13) authorizes “roving wiretaps,” allows authorities to monitor “lone wolf” terrorist suspects and allows the government to search, without judicial review, “any tangible items” of suspects in terror investigations. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, supported the Senate amendment because he didn’t want the provisions to lapse, he said before the vote. Smith would have preferred a longer expiration date, he said. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., said he opposed the straight extension because he wanted more time to work on updating the provisions. House Crime Subcommittee Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., said he promised to have hearings before the provisions expire again, on reauthorization as well as oversight of the Patriot Act as a whole. In the Senate, Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., again postponed a vote on his legislation to extend the Patriot Act provisions until December 2013. Republicans objected to the vote, so the committee will now take up the measure March 3, Leahy said. The bill “is virtually identical in substance to legislation approved by a bipartisan majority of the Senate Judiciary Committee last Congress,” he said in a written statement. “It was first announced three weeks ago that the Committee would consider this bill. Eleventh hour requests for additional briefings serve only one purpose: to delay consideration of legislation that both Republicans and Democrats believe is critical to national security.”
Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., plans to reintroduce his public safety bill after the Presidents’ Day recess, a Senate staffer said Thursday. The Lieberman bill, which was introduced last year with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., would give the 700 MHz D-block away to public safety. Two other bills in the Senate, by Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Ranking Member Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-W.Va., also aim to reallocate the D-block.
Lawmakers disagreed whether the Internet industry felt more or less certain as a result of the FCC’s December network neutrality order. At a House Communications Subcommittee hearing Wednesday, commission and Capitol Hill Republicans said the order created uncertainty, stifling investment and innovation. Democrats said the order was needed to encourage investment, and that Hill Republicans’ efforts to overturn the order would actually create more uncertainty.
House Republicans will try to use the Continuing Resolution to stop the FCC from acting on its net neutrality order. In a speech Tuesday, House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., said he filed an amendment prohibiting the FCC from spending any money to implement the rule. Also at the NARUC meeting, Walden said he’s considering legislation to overhaul FCC process. He questioned the White House’s FY 2012 budget estimate for money that could be raised by voluntary incentive spectrum auctions.
Antitrust law can better protect competition on the Internet than “heavy-handed, top-down” FCC regulations, said House Judiciary Internet Subcommittee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va. At a hearing Tuesday of the subcommittee, Goodlatte supported updating antitrust laws with specific provisions on the Internet. The FCC didn’t testify but took shots from all corners on their controversial net neutrality order.
The White House estimated that it can raise nearly $28 billion from spectrum sales, including voluntary incentive auctions of broadcasters’ spectrum, but the budget it released Monday gives little detail on how it arrived at the figure. President Barack Obama’s fiscal 2012 budget proposed legislation providing authority for voluntary incentive auctions and estimated that spectrum auctions, “along with other measures to enable more efficient spectrum management,” will produce $27.8 billion over the next 10 years. The budget will face scrutiny particularly from House Republicans, who want to spend about $100 billion less in fiscal 2011 than Obama, said a telecom lobbyist.
Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., plans to reintroduce her Universal Service Fund bill the week of March 1, after the Presidents’ Day recess, a spokeswoman said Monday. She said Matsui plans to discuss the bill at Wednesday’s House Communications Subcommittee hearing. The measure would create a USF Lifeline program to subsidize broadband service for low-income Americans. The bill isn’t directly tied to net neutrality, the hearing’s topic, but is part of the “broader discussion” about expanding Internet access, the spokeswoman said.
House Republicans aren’t on a “quest” to take back broadband stimulus money already obligated, said Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore. He has a draft bill (CD Feb 10 p7) to speed the return of unused and misused money provided under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. After a hearing on the draft Thursday, Walden told reporters his goal is to set up “safeguards” to ensure that problems with broadband stimulus programs are found and to hasten the return of money to the U.S. Treasury.
A push to give the 700 MHz D-block to public safety gained steam Thursday. Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King, R-N.Y., introduced bipartisan legislation (HR-607) with Ranking Member Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and five others. President Barack Obama called for D-block reallocation in a speech the same day. (See separate report in this issue.) But key members of the House Commerce Committee said they support a commercial D-block auction.