WASHINGTON-The U.S. Senate Thursday finally passed an $820 billion omnibus spending bill that included funding for the Federal Communications Commission for fiscal-year 2004, which started Oct. 1.
The bill must go to President George W. Bush for his signature, but because work is well under way for the FY ’05 budget that is expected to be sent to Congress next week, the White House is expected to accept the measure.
Congress cut $7 million from the FCC’s FY ’04 budget request, which means some commission priorities will have to be scaled back, said FCC Managing Director Andrew Fishel earlier this month.
The legislation includes a ban on accepting money from outside groups for travel to trade shows and an alteration in the politically controversial media-ownership caps. The FCC in June voted to raise the media-ownership cap to 45 percent from 35 percent. Congress lowered this number to 39 percent.
Until the bill is signed by President Bush, the FCC will continue working under a continuing resolution, which kept FCC funding at FY ’03 levels, but Fishel said Jan. 15 that due to inflation and cost-of-living salary increases, the actual money available for commission initiatives has decreased from last year.
Getting the bill passed by the Senate became a battle of wills. Before the Senate went home last year, it was widely assumed the bill would pass, but filibuster threats blocked that from happening. Even when Congress returned last week for the State of the Union speech, the Democrats in the Senate were unwilling to give the Republicans this victory so they stalled for two more days before finally passing the bill by a vote of 65 to 28. What finally tipped it for the Democrats-besides fearing either a government shutdown or a messy political reality of working on last year’s budget after this year’s was delivered-was more than $10 billion in special provisions.
“It is time to move on,” said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, reported the New York Times. “You can do the best you can.”
