WASHINGTON-Popular bipartisan legislation to simplify mobile-phone taxation by state and local authorities ran into trouble last week when a nasty turf fight erupted between the House Commerce Committee and the House Judiciary Committee.
On a related front, the top ranking Democrat on the House Commerce Committee lashed out at Republicans for failing to address whether wireless Web service providers are dodging obligations to support universal service because they don’t pay anything to connect to the Internet.
On Wednesday, the House Commerce subcommittee on telecommunications passed the “Wireless Uniform Sourcing Act,” setting the stage for the full committee to consider the bill this Wednesday.
Then on Thursday, the House Judiciary subcommittee on commercial and administrative law passed a nearly identical uniform-sourcing bill, but gutted portions of the House Commerce measure that tighten up the wireless privacy law and call for a Government Accounting Office audit of Federal Communications Commission regulatory fees.
GAO, acting on a request by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), recently issued such a report.
For legislation backed by wireless carriers, local and state officials and lawmakers that was sailing through Congress, last week’s developments represented an embarrassing setback for the wireless industry. While likely not fatal, the turf squabble over the wireless uniform-sourcing bill and the delay it may entail called into question the lobbying strategy of the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association.
The House Judiciary Committee, according to a congressional source, is furious with the cellular industry for trying to bypass it by structuring the bill in such a way that enabled the Commerce Committee to claim jurisdiction over it, too.
Asked whether the cellular industry should have come to the House Judiciary Committee first with the bill, Rep. George Gekas (R-Pa.), chairman of the Justice subcommittee on commercial and administrative law, replied, “I would have preferred that.”
CTIA lobbyists, who were at a retreat on Friday, were unavailable for comment.
Under the legislation, taxation of mobile-phone calls would be streamlined by levying taxes based on a subscriber’s primary place of use, whether that be a residence or a business.
House Judiciary Committee members, pointing to the panel’s oversight of interstate commerce taxation, vehemently insisted their panel has jurisdiction over the bill.
As such, the legislation appears to have reopened wounds from previous spats between the House Commerce and Judiciary committees.
“The Commerce Committee has been trying to extend its jurisdiction for the past 40 years,” decried Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), a House Judiciary Committee member who has been highly critical of the Commerce Committee’s decision to champion the wireless uniform-sourcing measure.
“It’s clearly our jurisdiction, so our bill will go through,” said Nadler.
Ken Johnson, press secretary for House telecom subcommittee Chairman Billy Tauzin (R-La.), disagreed.
“We feel we have the jurisdiction to move forward,” Johnson stated.
CTIA was generous in its praise of Tauzin, Rep. Chip Pickering (a Mississippi Republican who is the bill’s author), Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) after the panel approved the wireless uniform-source bill last Wednesday.
But Dingell took a different approach to the wireless industry on legislation prohibiting Internet access charges.
The hulking Michigan Democrat lambasted Republicans for failing “to address a greater and more genuine threat to consumer pocketbooks. That is, the real possibility that burgeoning new Internet services, such as IP telephony, paging, Web-based wireless services and countless others on the horizon may evade the responsibility of contributing to support universal service in this country.”
Elsewhere, the House passed a different bill extending the moratorium on Internet access charges from October 2001 to autumn 2006.
Republicans, anxious to pass a slew of high-tech bills in an election year that otherwise will produce little legislation, sidestepped the more controversial issue of Internet sales taxes.
Republicans also are trying to push through legislation to repeal the 3-percent telecom excise tax and to increase the number of visas for skilled foreign workers to alleviate the labor shortage in the high-tech industry.
In addition, the GOP and the Clinton administration want to approve permanent normal trade relations with China.
Republicans and Democrats alike are courting the high-tech industry this election year, each party trying to outdo the other with a slew of high-tech legislative proposals.
