WASHINGTON-The GOP-led Congress this fall will tackle landmark budget and telecommunications bills as part of a legislative agenda so sweeping and historic in scope that the outcome may well determine the success or failure of the year-old Republican revolution and provide an early barometer of the struggling Democratic administration’s political strength heading into next year’s presidential campaign.
In truth, this is where everything has been heading since Republicans gained control of the House and Senate for the first time in 40 years following coast-to-coast victories in last November’s midterm election.
This is the defining moment. The Republican revolution is on a collision course with the Clinton presidency. Leaves will fall and bodies will fly in the nation’s capital this autumn.
House Republicans have finally caught their breath after racing the first 100 days of the 104th Congress to complete the “Contract with America,” the government survival guide carried everywhere by Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., that is as bold and ambitious as the Senate is cautious and deliberate.
Democrats should be finished licking their wounds, though their disorganization and lack of unifying purpose portends a long political diaspora. Still, a few have some fight left in them and would relish a spoiler role.
As productive as the House was during the first nine months of the year, that pales in comparison to what comes next. The time for posturing is over. Politics is what happens from here on out-pursuing the art of the possible to dramatically reform government programs enacted since the New Deal.
“This is a little bit like the playoffs in the NBA,” said Gingrich, a powerful force in Congress though unlikely to be mistaken for a National Basketball Association player. “We’ve had all spring. We’ve had the build-up. Now we have September and October to get something done.”
In that case, look for flying elbows and lots of muscling for position. The GOP-Congress and the Clinton administration each boast of having political leverage over the other. At any given moment, on any given issue, they are both probably right. One thing is certain: The stakes are as high for one side as the other.
Gingrich, the former back-bench bomb thrower who has become the intellectual and spiritual leader of the GOP revival, will be held accountable for a breach of the Contract.
The same goes to a lesser extent for Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole, the Republican traditionalist from Kansas who along with Gingrich and others in the party have sights set on the White House in 1996. Yes, factor presidential politics into the equation. For Republican presidential hopefuls, that means trying to be more conservative than the next guy. The reason: Ross Perot’s 19 percent electoral following and Ralph Reed’s 1.7 million Christian Coalition members are up for grabs.
Clinton is in no better position than his adversaries, prompting some observers to predict the administration and Congress-despite all the tough talk-will ultimately meet each other halfway as a matter of political survival. If they don’t, both parties could suffer to the benefit of an aspiring third-party presidential candidate like retired Gen. Colin Powell.
Republicans say voters they visited at town meetings during the August recess urged them to move full steam ahead to shrink government. Still, it remains unclear just how far Americans want the GOP to go and how much voters understand the implications of the highly complex and far-reaching changes being shepherded through Congress.
For the wireless telecommunications industry, the focus will be as much on telecommunications policy as on fiscal policy. The two disciplines have become increasingly intertwined and interdependent. Too much so, some say.
Others reply the political realities of the day make it impossible to separate the two. It is making for politically explosive debate.
The political drama on Capitol Hill will be played out in coming months, perhaps through the end of the year, as Republicans try to pass a budget for fiscal 1996-which begins Oct. 1-and a comprehensive package of spending reductions and tax cuts in a budget reconciliation bill that lays the foundation for balancing the budget by 2002. It is a balancing act that entails trimming nearly $1 trillion in spending while cutting $245 billion in taxes over the next seven years.
Clinton came back with a revised budget plan in June that would erase the budget deficit over 10 years through smaller reductions in taxes and spending.
Congress and the White House for months have been jockeying for position. The administration has threatened to veto at least half of the 13 appropriations bills progressing through Congress, including one that would effectively abolish the Commerce Department and the unit within it-the National Telecommunications and Information Administration-that advises the White House on telecommunications policy and manages federal government spectrum.
“This is not some fat and happy group of technocrats; it’s a lean, mean group of people who are trying to do their job,” said NTIA chief Larry Irving, defending the 270-person agency whose $108 million budget is being slashed.
But Republicans are not about to give ground; they’re on a mission.
Talk abounds-some call it hyperbole-about an impending “train wreck” whereby the government shuts down and defaults on its debt payments if Congress and the White House fail to reach a budget compromise.
A dangerous game is being played. A default could wreak havoc in financial markets. The government will reach its borrowing limit of $4.9 trillion next month. The debt ceiling could be raised by Congress, a valuable card that Republicans may use to keep Clinton’s veto pen in his pocket as budget legislation reaches his desk.
“I do not anticipate any horror shows,” said Bob Livingston, R-La., chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. But, “In the final analysis,” he added, “we’re going to get most of what we want.”
Joining Livingston, Dole and Gingrich in the budget debate are Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M.; Senate Appropriations Chairman Mark Hatfield, R-Ore.; Senate Finance Committee Chairman William Roth, R-Del. (succeeding Bob Packwood, R-Ore., who gave up the chair en route to resigning Oct. 1 following the Senate Ethics Committee’s vote to expel him in light of sexual harassment and other misconduct allegations); and House Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich, R-Ohio.
The Federal Communications Commission, for its part, will be lucky this coming fiscal year to get the $185.2 million it received in 1995. Surprisingly, the Senate has proved more stingy than the House in doling out money to the FCC and others.
At the same time, Congress-despite yet another Clinton veto warning-is counting on the FCC to implement a telecommunications reform bill that would require scores of new rulemakings and increased oversight.
Moreover, Congress and the White House want to raise $14 billion over the next seven years from expanded spectrum auctions. The FCC has raised more than $8 billion to date primarily from selling narrowband and broadband personal communication services permits, but that revenue does not count toward the $14 billion. That leads to two questions: First, what spectrum will generate the $14 billion? Second, can the FCC stay out of court long enough to hold more auctions?
Both questions are the subject of intense debate. It’s what has come to be known as spectrum politics. Lawsuits challenging the stalled auction for 493 entrepreneur block PCS licenses are set for oral argument Sept. 28. The litigation was prompted by the FCC’s removal of female and minority incentives in auction rules after the Supreme Court ruled in June to curb affirmative action.
Dole and Rep. Charles Canady, R-Fla., have introduced legislation to eliminate race and gender preferences. Canady, chairman of the House Judic
iary subcommittee on the Constitution, will hold a hearing later this week and another one on Oct. 18 on ending affirmative action.
As far as whose spectrum should be sold, the refrain of the government and private sector goes something like this: “Don’t auction you. Don’t auction me. Auction the fellow behind the tree.”
Broadcasters claim government airwaves can produce the $14 billion. The Clinton administration replies that broadcasters overstate the availability of usable government spectrum. Besides, who is going to tell the Pentagon and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to surrender their pool of frequencies?
The cellular industry fears that unless new digital TV channels (6 megahertz) are auctioned the government cannot raise the $14 billion and will resort to assessing spectrum user fees throughout the telecommunications industry. For the paging industry, the combination of free and flexible use of digital TV spectrum means potentially new competition.
The House appears less willing than the Senate to take on the powerful broadcasting lobby. Private wireless licensees are looking to lawmakers to set aside the 1710-1755 MHz band for them. They’ve given up on FCC Chairman Reed Hundt and the other four commissioners insofar as acquiring more spectrum.
But all eyes are on telecommunications reform; the legislation would maintain and expand a deregulatory wireless framework established in 1993 by lawmakers and extend that policy throughout the entire industry to spur competition among local telephone companies, long-distance carriers and cable TV operators. It translates into a sweeping overhaul of the Communications Act of 1934. And more.
U.S. District Judge Harold Greene would be forced to cede his stewardship of the 1982 consent decree that broke up AT&T Corp. and created seven regional Bell telephone companies subject to restrictions on lines of business they could enter such as manufacturing, information services and long-distance service. The court removed the information services ban several years ago.
Bell cellular carriers would not be restrained from providing long-distance wireless services and would be able to compete on par with other cellular companies not subject to that constraint if legislation goes the distance.
The legislation also would override the Justice Department’s finding that AirTouch Communications Inc., spun off from Pacific Telesis Group in April 1994, is not subject to the 1982 judgment.
Bills have passed both chambers and are headed to a House-Senate conference, which must reconcile differences between the two versions. Key lawmakers in the negotiations from the House likely will include (at a minimum) Commerce Committee Chairman Thomas Bliley, R-Va. (chief sponsor of the bill), telecommunications subcommittee Chairman Jack Fields, R-Texas, Mike Oxley, R-Ohio, John Dingell, D-Mich., and Edward Markey, D-Mass.
In the Senate, top conferees are expected to be Commerce Committee Chairman Larry Pressler, R-S.D. (chief sponsor), Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, Ernest Hollings, D-S.C., and Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii.
It is possible that Judiciary Committee members from both houses could join the conference, despite the fact that neither bill has a role for the Justice Department regarding regional Bell entry into the long-distance market.
There is no telling how influential Packwood would have been in his role as chairman of Commerce subcommittee on communications. He and John McCain, R-Ariz., voted against the Pressler bill. Packwood’s successor has not been named yet.
Pressing budget business could delay consideration of telecommunications reform until October.
President Clinton, consumer groups and the long-distance industry argue the legislation would stymie competition rather than enhance it. The White House wants the Justice Department involved in the transition from regulation to competition in the telecommunications industry.
The wireless telecommunications industry is fighting for the survival of an amendment in the House bill, co-sponsored by Scott Klug, R-Wis., and Thomas Manton, D-N.Y., that would create a national antenna siting policy.
“It’s going to be hard to keep intact,” conceded Thomas Wanley, director of legislative affairs at the Personal Communications Industry Association.
An estimated 100,000 antenna sites need to be erected for the roll out of PCS, but there is worry (based on experience) the process will get mired in bureaucratic delays. Local zoning regulations differ from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and health and environmental concerns raised by communities are not always based on scientific fact. This has created big headaches and frustration for wireless carriers.
Counties, states and municipalities are waging a fierce fight to thwart the measure. The Senate telecommunications bill does not include a companion antenna siting provision and the new Republican majority has been keen on embracing a federalist approach to legislation.
Next month, the House Commerce subcommittee on oversight and investigations will examine competition in the wireless telecommunications industry. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, chairman of the panel, failed to get a switched wireless resale law inserted in Bliley’s telecommunications bill and he now appears to have shifted his strategy on the issue.
