No Senate Floor Time for Telecom Bill Until Sept.—If Then
Pessimism dogs the Senate telecom bill (HR-5252) as a shortened session’s legislative days dwindle, lawmakers hedge votes and leadership support is scant for the controversial, complex measure, Hill sources and lobbyists said. Sept. would be the earliest the bill could see floor time, Hill sources said, and even then only if major arm twisting could line up the 60 votes needed to avoid filibuster.
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One sign the bill’s sidelined is that, 2 weeks after committee approval, it remains in rough form (CD June 29 p1), said a source. “It could have taken them a day,” the source said: “That’s a pretty strong signal that things aren’t moving.” But a committee spokesman said staff, while handling other committee business, are working hard for a proper weave of amendments that eliminates errors.
Chmn. Stevens (R-Alaska) acknowledged it will be a tough trek. “We do a lot of work sometimes and it never gets to the floor,” he told reporters Tues. Of the telecom bill, he said: “I am not sure it is going to get to the floor because of filibusters and not because of the bill itself. We will see. Whether it gets to the floor depends on whether or not we can get an agreement to get it to the floor.”
Stevens spoke after the committee vote of streamlining the bill, but not before it reaches the floor. “Every time I slim something down I lose a vote,” he told reporters. The streamlining is likely to occur in conference with the House, assuming the Senate passes the bill, lobbyists said. Some see a scenario in which a slimmed-down bill with franchising and Universal Service Fund (USF) provisions is tacked onto an omnibus spending bill.
The “elephant in the room” is net neutrality, lobbyists said. “There’s no way any bill is going through without some type of net neutrality provision to placate members of Congress who feel strongly about the issue,” a lobbyist said. Sen. Wyden (D-Ore.), for instance, immediately put a hold on the telecom bill when it was approved to protest its lack of “clear language” barring bias on Internet access. The bill’s “Internet bill of rights” says subscribers are entitled to access applications and attach devices without interference from network operators. But it doesn’t go so far as to bar specifically discrimination by network operators, as pro-net neutrality proponents want.
“I'll do everything in my power to block this major communications legislation unless it ensures that net neutrality is preserved,” Wyden said Fri. in a speech on the Senate floor. The Internet otherwise would be changed “forever for the worse,” Wyden said, accusing major communications companies of “spending millions of dollars so that they can make billions of dollars when they implement a 2-tiered system online.”
The argument isn’t over shortage of bandwidth, but “who’s going to call the shots in this country about content on the web,” Wyden said. The Senate should insist that the Internet be kept from discrimination, he said: “We have done that in the area of taxation. I and other colleagues have said we're not going to allow multiple and discriminatory taxes on the Internet. We ought to make sure that it’s done in this area as well, so that consumers don’t get walloped with unnecessarily high prices and deteriorating service.”
Senate Minority Leader Reid (D-Nev.) strongly backs net neutrality, condemning the telecom bill for failing to ensure the “Internet remains the open and vibrant forum for expression, debate and communication that it was designed to foster.” And Sen. Dorgan (D-N.D.) plans to offer a bill (S- 2917) he co-sponsored with Sen. Snowe (R-Me.) as an amendment should the telecom bill reach the Senate floor, a committee spokesman said.