Cruz Warns Against Spectrum Language in FY 2026 NDAA
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, warned Wednesday that a provision in the FY 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (S-2296) would give the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman authority to veto commercial use of the lower 3 and 7/8 GHz bands. Cruz told an NTIA spectrum symposium (see 2509100051) that he will fight that provision in Section 1564 of the bill. “To be clear, this is not consultation or collaboration on spectrum management,” Cruz said.
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“If this becomes law, it would be a further upending of the nation’s spectrum policy, jettisoning Senate-confirmed civilian management in favor of marching orders from the defense industrial complex.” The spectrum was already carved out for DOD in the pipeline bill, he said. “We never agreed to give DOD veto power over spectrum auctions or to sideline NTIA as the spectrum management authority.” Cruz added that President Donald Trump has made clear he opposes the provision.
Six months ago, no one thought Congress would be able to create a spectrum “pipeline,” Cruz told the symposium. He said he told House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., months ago that the bill would include spectrum. “The speaker literally laughed out loud at me,” Cruz said. “We had about a thousand battles to get it done.”
The DOD and intelligence community “fight ferociously to protect their spectrum. They don’t like giving up any of it,” Cruz said. Final negotiations took place on the Senate floor with members who wanted to carve out multiple exceptions, “and I didn’t want to give any.” Cruz ultimately agreed to carve-outs, but only if the pipeline was 800 MHz rather than 600. “I’d like to say there was a process of careful analysis of the spectrum that was available -- it wasn’t at all,” he said. “I pulled it out of my ass.” Cruz said he expects the upper C-band auction to break the records set by the initial one, which ended in early 2021.
The language should be removed from the NDAA, Free State Foundation President Randolph May said in a blog post Wednesday. “This is not a matter of supporting the military and its mission,” he said. “Congress cannot properly restrict a president's executive authority by handing over final decision-making authority to his subordinates.”