WASHINGTON-William Roth, R-Del., chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, will offer legislation this week or next to abolish the agency that advises the president on telecommunications policy and manages federal government spectrum.
The move is part of a broader effort to dismantle the Commerce Department, which houses the 300-person National Telecommunications and Information Administration and other units specializing in diverse areas, including technology development and standards, trade, tourism, population, oceanographic and atmospheric research, and minority business development.
President Clinton said he will veto legislation that does away with the Commerce Department.
“Nowhere is the short-sightedness of the goal to eliminate Commerce more apparent than in the area of telecommunications and information technologies,” said Larry Irving, chief of NTIA, in testimony before a joint hearing of two House Commerce subcommittees in late July.
“These are the markets of the future, both at home and abroad,” stated Irving.
NTIA was created in 1978. Prior to that, its duties were performed by a telecommunications policy office within the White House.
In recent months, Irving has tried to make the case for NTIA in public appearances and private meetings with industry. NTIA points to its role in developing policies that govern spectrum auctions ($8 billion has been raised to date), the national information infrastructure and the global information infrastructure.
Irving, moreover, has attempted to ensure that the information superhighway promoted by Vice President Al Gore does not bypass small and economically disadvantaged communities.
Efforts also have been made to expand the applications of telecommunications technologies to education and medicine.
Programs now are underway at NTIA to free up 235 megahertz of federal government spectrum for emerging wireless technologies that U.S. companies and public-safety agencies want to deploy.
If eliminated, not all functions of Commerce would be scrapped; some would be shifted and consolidated within the federal bureaucracy.
Roth’s bill, which is intended to replace a similar measure introduced in June by Sen. Spencer Abraham, R-Mich., and is estimated to save $5 billion during five years, would transfer NTIA’s federal spectrum oversight to the General Services Administration.
In contrast, the Abraham bill and companion legislation in the House penned by Rep. Dick Chrysler, R-Mich., give federal spectrum management to the Federal Communications Commission.
The FCC today regulates frequencies used by the private sector, but because it is an independent agency, Irving foresees a potential constitutional conflict with the president in regard to spectrum use for national defense and foreign affairs if the commission had oversight of government as well as nongovernment spectrum.
Under the Roth, Abraham and Chrysler bills and another introduced by Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., trade-related activities of Commerce would move to a restructured U.S. trade office.
The budget resolution passed by the GOP-led Congress in June calls for eliminating the 82-year-old Commerce Department, which employs 36,000 people.
Critics point to Commerce as the quintessential example of top-heavy government, the kind Republicans pledged to shrink after last fall’s midterm election that gave them control of the House and Senate for the first time in 40 years.
Roth’s bill refers to Commerce as “a microcosm of [an] obsolete, dysfunctional structure, resembling a loosely knitted `holding company’ of agencies pursuing unrelated missions, with no single mission or function as an exclusive province, and responsibility for its function shared with over 70 other Federal entities.”
The Clinton administration said eliminating the Commerce Department would be a big mistake insofar as undermining America’s position in the high-tech, global marketplace.
“While the department’s reach is wide, do not confuse its breadth with a lack of focus,” Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, who testified alongside Irving at the same hearing. “All of our activities have a central focus: creating jobs and promoting the long-term competitiveness of the nation’s economy.”
