If all Congress does before leaving town for the year is approve fiscal 2006 funding for the Federal Communications Commission and other government agencies it will be a victory.
Partisan politics have overtaken policy-making to a degree not witnessed since the Clinton impeachment proceedings, likely meaning further delay and confusion for wireless-related issues and broader telecom matters staring at Congress, regulators and the White House.
Senate Democrats beat Republican colleagues to the punch with their own version of the nuclear option by forcing the Senate into secret session to get answers from the committee investigating intelligence on Iraq’s weapons capability leading up to the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. It is at the heart of the politically charged CIA leak investigation that has led to the indictment of former White House aide Scooter Libby and suddenly made Catherine Martin-who worked with Libby in Vice President Cheney’s office during a critical period in 2003-as much a high-profile media figure as her husband, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin. Indeed, Libby’s trial could require testimony from Catherine Martin.
The Martins most certainly qualify as a Washington power couple. Up to now, it has been all Kevin Martin. A former FCC commissioner aide, Martin previously was special assistant to the president for economic policy, served on the Bush-Cheney transition team, among other titles.
In one fell swoop, Catherine Martin has earned equal time.
Republicans and Democrats also are spewing venom at each other over another White House personnel matter, President Bush’s nomination of Samuel Alito, Harriet Miers’ successor, to the Supreme Court. Never mind that two FCC vacancies remain unfilled, weakening the FCC chief’s hand.
The Libby and Alita matters are so important to both political parties as to outweigh any single piece of legislation that heretofore was no doubt crucial to survival of the republic and peace in our time.
As such, as if getting a bill through Congress isn’t difficult enough, it will now be especially hard for lawmakers before year’s end to get a hard date for the return of analog broadcast spectrum, to create a new technology-based emergency alert system and to advance telecom reform legislation. These are just a few issues important to readers of this newspaper. Many more pieces of legislation affecting other industry sectors and rank-and-file Americans could fall by the wayside as well.
But it’s not an entirely bleak picture. The Senate Commerce Committee passed an E-911 bill for VoIP providers, a measure with similarities to wireless E-911 legislation that in five years has not led to widespread deployment of location- based 911 wireless service in the U.S. And on the business front, Sprint Nextel did a deal with four cable TV giants. Now that’s entertainment!
