WASHINGTON-The Bush administration, facing a $521 billion budget deficit this year, sent Congress a $2.4 trillion spending plan for fiscal 2005 that includes proposals to generate revenue through continued wireless license auctions, regulatory user fees and levies on broadcast frequencies.
The White House budget, a big election-year target for Democrats, projects $2.4 billion in revenue from the sale of wireless licenses over the next 10 years. The administration supports proposals to extend auction authority, due to expire in 2007, indefinitely.
The administration proposed an annual lease fee totaling $500 million-beginning 2007-for the use of analog spectrum by TV broadcasters. Broadcasters must surrender analog frequencies that year as part of their transition to digital technology. In the past, the powerful broadcast lobby has managed to quash fee proposals. Certain analog TV spectrum is earmarked for public-safety agencies and commercial wireless services.
Under the budget plan, the Federal Communications Commission would receive $293 million in fiscal 2005, which begins Oct. 30. Most of the FCC’s budget is paid for by regulatory user fees.
Bush’s budget includes a legislative proposal to streamline the process for reimbursing federal agencies-like the Department of Defense-whose spectrum has been transferred to the private sector. The initiative would help the mobile-phone industry secure additional frequencies from the military for third-generation wireless systems.
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration has requested $24.6 million in 2005. More than $7 million is set aside for spectrum efficiency, international spectrum planning and telecom research. At the same time, the budget plan would terminate some technology grant programs.
President Bush is keeping intact the 3-percent federal excise tax on wireless and wireline phone service. The tax, which the mobile-phone industry has criticized for years, is expected to bring in $6.3 billion this year and roughly $38 billion over the next five years.
