It is by no means coincidental some-if not most-major wireless legislation enacted by Congress the past decade has been tucked inside bulging budget bills aimed at balancing the nation’s off-kilter checkbook. Indeed, in seemingly counterintuitive fashion, great strides in wireless policy have not tended to occur in telecom legislation.
These budget-cutting bills have names both obscure and obvious. Take the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 for starters. The nearly 700-page measure authorized spectrum auctions, transferred federal government spectrum to the private sector and largely deregulated the mobile-phone industry at the state level-though controversy about the latter is as heated today as it ever was. Democrats, who controlled Congress back then and fought back Republican efforts to legalize competitive bidding during the 1980s, took credit for the market-based licensing approach.
With billions of dollars suddenly available via wireless license sales, soon began a trend in the mid-1990s to fund pet projects with auction dollars. It was truly a bipartisan effort.
Four years later, in the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, the 105th Congress expanded auction authority, laid the foundation for this June’s third-generation wireless auction and thought it set the stage for digital TV and other lofty objectives by calling for the return of valuable 700 MHz broadcast channels upon completion of the transition to DTV.
That brings us to today and the 2005 budget bill, now at the White House for President Bush’s signature. This go-round, Congress said it really means it this time: Analog TV broadcast signals must go dark by Feb. 18, 2009. Period.
Helping make this and a lot more possible is, of course, auction receipts. The new budget bill, like others before it, makes sure of it. First, lawmakers extended auction authority another four years. There’s more.
The Congressional Budget Office, projecting a $337 billion federal deficit that doesn’t include costs of military activities in Iraq and Afghanistan and post-Hurricane Katrina expenditures, said $2.8 billion of the $25 billion expected from auctions the next five years is already spent. It will go to the departments of homeland security, commerce and transportation.
When you look at the details and do the math, you will see billions of anticipated auction dollars not yet spoken for. They will be-all of them-probably by the time Congress passes the next bill to lower the budget deficit. It’s one big political pipedream.
