Is it time the Federal Communications Commission be overhauled?
Not in the disappearing (non)sense that Gingrichites from the Progress & Freedom Foundation advocate. The new-age digital libertarians have it completely backwards.
In the future, why not have national communications and information policy made at a fully funded and fully staffed cabinet-level agency?
In other words, formalize the political relationship among the FCC, White House, Commerce Department, USTR and other federal agencies that evolved in the Clinton administration under former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt and that continues to this day under FCC Chairman Bill Kennard.
Sound outrageous? Think about it.
Hundt wasn’t the first FCC chairman to march in lock step with his master. All of his predecessors did it. Hundt’s joined-at-the-hip relationship with Clinton-Gore was blatant. He was unapologetic about it. Why? Because, with White House backing, Hundt achieved much of what he set out to do. It may have not been possible without the White House. In the end, Hundt turned the FCC-White House connection into an ugly art form. But he got results on big-ticket items while making many enemies along the way.
No doubt, under current law, the cozy relationship between the executive branch and this “independent agency” is unsavory.
At the same time, one has to ask what forces (other than political kinship) brought the FCC and White House so close during the past five years. More to the point, is this unholy alliance necessarily bad for national telecom policy?
For sure, efforts to foster deregulation and competition domestically (’96 telecom act) and internationally (’97 WTO telecom agreement) and the transforming transition from analog to digital technology have been on roughly parallel tracks. This has required close coordination between the White House and many federal agencies.
Telecom-info issues have become so big, so political and so intertwined with major domestic and international policies that the FCC has become paralyzed.
Some might argue it’s simply a matter of leadership. Maybe. But perhaps the current legal and organizational structure of the FCC is simply inadequate.
Clearly, telecom-information policy cannot be made in a vacuum in the future.
Today, telecom-info services and goods boast one-seventh of U.S. economy (a figure that only will grow), and occupy an increasingly big chunk of exports.
More big government, you say? Not really. Just a very big industry, one better left to sound, coordinated government policy than to the vagaries of the market in the next century.
