WASHINGTON-As the telecommunications reform marathon of 1995 nears the finish line, the great political race of 1996 is taking shape before a restless American electorate.
Political theater at its best. Judgment time for the rocky Republican Revolution and the clumsy Clinton administration.
In 1996, the year 435 congressional seats, 33 Senate slots and the presidency are up for grabs, telecommunications issues in the second session of the 104th Congress will struggle for lawmakers’ time and attention in the aftermath of the impending passage early this year of the most sweeping overhaul of telecommunications laws in the nation’s history.
But the handful of telecommunications items that may materialize this year on the political radar screen and in the courts-such as auctions, foreign ownership, resale, regulatory reform, digital wiretap funding, affirmative action and public safety microwave relocation-could prove explosive and significant for the wireless telecommunications industry.
Besides potentially shaping every telecommunications policy initiative, campaign 1996 could impact the leadership and membership of key committees.
Already, a fight is shaping up between Democrat-turned-Republican Billy Tauzin (R-La.) and Mike Oxley (R-Ohio) to succeed retiring telecommunications subcommittee Chairman Jack Fields (R-Texas).
Tauzin, who recently decided against running for Senate, is said to be House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s (R-Ga.) personal choice for the post. He later could assume the chairmanship of the powerful Commerce Committee that Rep. Thomas Bliley (R-Va.) now heads.
But Oxley, a senior member of the Commerce Committee and influential telecommunications policymaker who failed to keep liberalized foreign ownership guidelines in the House-Senate telecommunications compromise, is expected to battle Tauzin for subcommittee leadership and to continue pressing for removing trade barriers that keep overseas firms from owning more than 25 percent of American wireless carriers.
In the Senate, Commerce Committee Chairman Larry Pressler (R-S.D.) is expected to continue overseeing the telecommunications agenda. Donald McClellan, majority counsel to the communications panel, said Pressler may address telecommunications trade and FCC reform this year.
Pressler recently was leveraged by Robert Dole (R-Kan.), Senate majority leader and Clinton’s likely opponent in November, to revisit the volatile issue of TV broadcast auctions after Dole complained of a multibillion “spectrum giveaway to broadcasters” in the telecommunications reform bill.
What is almost certainly assured is that Republicans-who seized control in 1994 of both the House and Senate-will not lose their majority this year.
Yet it is unclear whether Gingrich, who reshaped the telecommunications bill to the liking of the seven regional Bell telephone companies, will be able to maintain the fierce loyalty of the 73 freshmen House Republican foot soldiers.
A stir within the Republican Revolution may be brewing and hard-liners could retaliate if they conclude Gingrich, whose popularity has slipped during the budget debate and the two government shutdowns, has conceded too much to congressional Democrats and the White House on telecommunications and other policy matters.
President Clinton, meanwhile, is gaining steam for a return trip to the White House. With a Democrat in the Oval Office and Republicans in both houses, telecommunications policymaking will continue to be subject to partisan tensions that some say don’t exist.
The courts, meanwhile, will grapple with FCC bidding rules, pioneer’s preference license fees and public safety microwave relocation.
