Stevens Won’t Split Up Telecom Bill, He Says
Senate Commerce Committee Chmn. Stevens (R-Alaska) swore he won’t section off the video franchising portion of his bill to ease its passage -- perhaps as an amendment to another bill. “We're going to deal with our bill as it is. We've got to get it to conference,” Stevens told media after a Progress & Freedom Foundation lunch. “Absolutely not,” Stevens said firmly, when a reporter asked if he'd consider attaching his bill to an appropriations bill: “This bill is going to be considered on its own merits.”
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Stevens pitched the bill hard on the Senate floor Thurs., stressing its $1 billion in funding for first responders. The money, authorized in the deficit reduction bill in Dec., would fund first responder training, coordination and gear. “This is money they absolutely must have,” Stevens said, emphasizing other points: The bill’s benefits for consumers by offering competition to cable, a broader Universal Service Fund (USF) base and incentives for broadband deployment.
“Some senators have prevented full debate on this issue on the Senate floor,” Stevens said: “It is time now for the Senate to allow the debate to start.” In a Thurs. afternoon release, House Commerce Committee Chmn. Barton (R-Tex.) backed Stevens. Legislation passed in the House, some of which is incorporated in the Senate bill, will “greatly expand consumer choice, especially for TV programming and likely lead to lower prices for many communication services,” he said.
Net neutrality advocates are blocking the bill from consideration before the Nov. election, Stevens told the press. “If this bill goes down because of net neutrality, I believe the people who've blocked it will pay a terrible price,” he said. Voters will be angry if they don’t get a law that cuts video costs and boosts video competition, he added: “That’s why they don’t want it up before election… They know it will harm them if they block this bill.” There’s no net neutrality problem and the issue is “destroying” the bill, he said, voicing frustration at pro- regulation arguments. “There’s no way you can appease the people who say there’s a net neutrality problem,” Stevens said: “It’s a fetish.”
Stevens thanked Sen. McCain (R-Ariz.) for endorsing the telecom bill in a speech this week to the Northern Virginia Technology Council. McCain, largely absent from the bill’s drafting, decried mandated net neutrality. “I and others remain hesitant to regulate the Internet without concrete examples of network operators blocking or suppressing access to content or applications,” McCain said in prepared remarks. Congress should consider tax incentives or municipal broadband systems to boost broadband competition, he said.