Senate GOP Eyes Weekend Action on Reconciliation Package With 800 MHz Pipeline
Senate GOP aides said Friday afternoon that chamber leaders aimed to hold an initial vote Saturday on a motion to proceed to the chamber’s combined budget reconciliation package, which includes the Commerce Committee’s revised proposal for an 800 MHz spectrum pipeline and restoration of the FCC’s lapsed auction authority through Sept. 30, 2034 (see 2506060029). Senate Commerce Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, secured backing last week for the spectrum proposal from a pair of Armed Services Republicans after he strengthened the original proposal’s carve-outs excluding the 3.1-3.45 GHz and 7.4-8.4 GHz bands from potential FCC auction or other reallocation (see 2506250054).
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The office of Senate Commerce ranking member Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said Friday afternoon that former Biden administration FAA Administrator Michael Whitaker, Biden-era FAA Deputy Administrator Katie Thomson and former US Airways pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger oppose the Senate Commerce spectrum reconciliation language. The trio cited misgivings about the measure’s requirement that the FCC sell 100 MHz from the 3.98-4.2 GHz upper C band, which is close to altimeters that use the 4200-4400 MHz band. “Current legislative proposals to auction off additional spectrum in the upper C-band without proper mitigations in place would pose an unnecessary risk to aviation safety,” Whitaker said in a Cantwell news release.
Meanwhile, Senate Budget Committee Democrats said Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough again cleared a revised version of Commerce Republicans’ reconciliation proposal for a voluntary freeze on enforcing state-level AI rules in a way that backers claim no longer directly threatens jurisdictions’ eligibility for funding from NTIA’s $42.5 billion BEAD program (see 2506230043). Cantwell had indicated to reporters Thursday that the parliamentarian’s office was asking Cruz to again revise the AI language. Cruz’s office insists the proposal now conditions jurisdictions’ eligibility only for a new $500 million AI-related BEAD allocation in exchange for complying with the enforcement pause on state laws.
Senate Budget Democrats said the parliamentarian’s office found that the AI “provision does not violate” chamber rules for reconciliation measures not to be subject to the usual 60-vote cloture threshold “as long as the [enforcement pause] conditions only apply to the new $500 million provided by the reconciliation bill.” The Senate AI law pause is an apparent alternative to language in the House-passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act (HR-1) that would impose a 10-year federal preemption of such statutes (see 2505220064).