WASHINGTON-Expanded spectrum auction authority and other telecommunications legislation are about to get caught up in a high-stakes budget battle between the Clinton administration and the GOP-led Congress that might not get settled until Christmas.
The House and Senate late last month passed sweeping bills to balance the budget by 2002, prompting an immediate veto threat by President Clinton. Clinton opposes Republican plans to cut spending in social programs like Medicare and welfare and to dismantle the Commerce Department (in the House bill only).
Commerce is home to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which advises the president on telecommunications policy.
Yet, both sides agree on squeezing $14 billion from the airwaves over the next seven years. In all, the Republican budget would trim $1 trillion and cut $245 billion in taxes over that period. The House and Senate bills now head to a conference committee, which will attempt to forge a single piece of legislation.
“The more the American people see of this budget the less they like it,” said Clinton.
Republicans have threatened not to pass legislation raising the impending debt ceiling, preventing the United States from paying back money it borrowed unless Clinton signs the Republican budget. A default on U.S. obligations could jolt the financial markets.
“He would be wise to think twice about vetoing the balanced budget and jeopardizing long overdue revolutionary change,” said Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., speaker of the House.
Meanwhile, much of the federal government continues to operate on stop-gap funding a month into the new fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, because most of the 13 appropriations bills-including the one that funds the Federal Communications Commission-have not been signed into law.
House and Senate bills would raise the $14 billion by giving the FCC more freedom to sell wireless licenses.
Broadcast and public-safety spectrum would be exempted from the broadened auction authority. The wireless telecommunications industry urged Congress to auction digital TV channels, but the powerful broadcast lobby killed an attempt by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Larry Pressler, R-S.D., to put advanced TV frequencies on the auction block.
The Senate budget bill, though, gives the FCC an opportunity to draw up a plan for auctioning digital TV channels. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., led an unsuccessful effort to add to that bill a provision requiring the FCC to auction all spectrum, an action he and others believed would net $35 billion over seven years.
Current auction authority, which began in 1993 and runs through 1998, generally limits competitive bidding to commercial, subscriber-driven wireless services like paging, cellular, personal communications services and specialized mobile radio. The FCC, however, retains the discretion to use lotteries or comparative hearings to issue licenses. By enhancing the FCC’s auction authority and extending it through 2002, private wireless spectrum could be sold.
Business, industrial and transportation users of internal radio communications systems would prefer to pay a spectrum user fee rather than have to bid for licenses, but FCC Chairman Reed Hundt has shown no inclination to experiment with alternatives to an auction program.
Private wireless interests lobbied Congress to set aside 45 megahertz for their use that would be subject to spectrum fees. Though that effort failed, the Clinton administration has recommended that roughly that amount of spectrum be designated for public safety, industrial and other private wireless systems.
The House budget reconciliation bill, meanwhile, would chop in half the two-year voluntary negotiation period governing the relocation by PCS operators of fixed microwave licensees from the 2 GHz band.
Despite the combative rhetoric, the White House and Congress are said to be not that far apart on broad budget objectives. The posturing by both sides is purely political. Republicans could decide to hold the line, not compromise with the White House during the conference, and dare the president to veto the legislation with the prospect of the U.S. defaulting on its debts.
But that strategy could backfire if Clinton calls the Republicans’ bluff, vetoes budget legislation, and can convince the American people the GOP’s seven-year plan is mean-spirited.
But Clinton could just as easily find voters (with the help of Republicans) accusing him of being an obstructionist, a result not apt to help his re-election chances.
One scenario has the president taking a hard line while the budget reconciliation bill is in conference, vetoing the bill that emerges, and negotiating with Republican leaders only after he’s got some political mileage out of the debate.
That would keep lawmakers in town beyond Thanksgiving, when they want to adjourn.
