The Senate shouldn’t “shirk its duty to reexamine carefully and critically” three Patriot Act sections expiring Friday, said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. In a floor speech Tuesday, Leahy urged colleagues to support his amendment with Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., to S-1038 by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. The Reid bill would extend the provisions until June 2015, without making any changes to surveillance law, but the Leahy-Paul amendment would add privacy and other protections for U.S. citizens. “Without a single improvement or reform, without even a word that recognizes the importance of protecting the civil liberties and constitutional privacy rights of Americans, the underlying bill represents a missed opportunity,” Leahy said. Meanwhile, the Obama administration backed Reid’s bill. In a statement late Monday, the Office of Management and Budget said “it is essential to avoid any hiatus in these critical authorities.” The Senate on Monday agreed 74-8 to limit debate on a procedural motion to start debate on S-1038. The vote capped at 30 hours additional debate time on the motion. After the Senate vote on the motion, expected Tuesday night, there could be debate and votes on the Leahy amendment and others. That could be followed by another motion to limit debate, and then a final vote on the bill. The House is waiting for the Senate to pass its bill, said a spokeswoman for Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va. In the meantime, the House Rules Committee voted to provide same-day consideration authority for a Patriot Act item, said a spokeswoman for Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier, R-Calif. “That means whenever we receive something from the Senate, it can be considered on the House floor on the same day it’s reported from the Rules Committee.” Usually, the House must wait one day, she said.
The House would cut the broadband loans program at the Rural Utilities Service under fiscal 2012 budget legislation moving through the Appropriations Committee. The panel’s Agriculture Subcommittee late Tuesday approved an agriculture bill that counts the RUS program among its cuts. House Communications Subcommittee Ranking Member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., slammed the proposed cut. USTelecom and the NTCA supported giving $22 million to the loans program under an amendment submitted by Rep. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo. At our deadline, the subcommittee voted not to adopt the Lummis amendment.
Congress should be vague in legislation authorizing voluntary incentive auctions at the FCC, said commission and outside economists and consultants at a Technology Policy Institute lunch Monday. While the economists opposed forcing broadcasters and other holders to give up their spectrum, they said it’s not a good idea also to make the repacking process voluntary. Some urged the FCC to address competition in auction rules due to increasing consolidation in the wireless industry.
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, wants to make her telecom aide, Brian Hendricks, an FCC commissioner, a Hutchison spokeswoman told us late Friday. Hendricks would replace FCC Commissioner Meredith Baker, who’s leaving for a job at Comcast. Hutchison is the ranking member of the Commerce Committee.
They have separate public safety bills, but Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said they want to work together. Late Thursday, Lieberman and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., re-introduced a bill (S-1040) to give the 700 MHz D-block to public safety. A Lieberman spokeswoman said he wants to work with Rockefeller, working on a bill (S-911) to do the same. Rockefeller and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, are in tentative agreement on draft comprehensive spectrum legislation, and they plan to mark it up the week of June 6 (CD May 20 p11). Rockefeller said he’s “glad that Senators Lieberman and McCain share my sense of urgency, and I look forward to working with them to pass a public safety communications bill this Congress.” The Lieberman/McCain bill would require the FCC to make rules on interoperability and roaming, and coordinate with the National Institute of Standards and Technology to develop equipment standards. The bill would provide up to $5.5 billion for construction and another $5.5 billion for maintenance of the public safety network. The funding would come from commercial auction of 15 MHz between 1675 and 1710 MHz; the AWS-2 H Block and J-Block; the AWS-3 band; and the 1755-1850 MHz band. Any leftover revenue would go toward reducing the national deficit. The bill also extends the commission’s auction authority until 2020. Unlike the Rockefeller bill, it doesn’t authorize voluntary incentive auctions. S-1040 was referred to the Commerce Committee. The Senate Commerce Committee plans to circulate the latest draft of the Rockefeller-Hutchison’s bill a week before the markup, a GOP committee aide said. The changes are “not large in quantity,” but “are significant in policy terms,” the aide said, declining to elaborate. The committee scheduled a markup for June 8, but an agenda hasn’t been announced, the aide said.
Sens. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, reached a tentative agreement on draft comprehensive spectrum legislation that would give the 700 MHz D-block to public safety, a GOP committee staffer told us Thursday. Due to a scheduling conflict for Hutchison on May 25, the Senate Commerce Committee won’t mark up S-911 until the week of June 6 when the Senate returns from Memorial Day recess, the staffer said. Rockefeller and Hutchison, the committee’s chairman and ranking member respectively, reached consensus after a meeting Wednesday afternoon to discuss the scheduling conflict, the staffer said. There have been changes to the bill since the draft circulated last week, the staffer said. The substance of those changes is unclear. Rockefeller has been pushing the bill hard in recent days (CD May 18 p5) and had originally sought to mark up the public safety bill before Memorial Day.
Not one Capitol Hill proposal to renew Patriot Act sections expiring May 27 sufficiently protects U.S. citizens from government spying, civil liberties advocates said Thursday. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., on Wednesday introduced a much scaled-back alternative to the extensions bill approved in March by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Expiring Patriot Act sections relate to roving wiretaps, lone wolf attacks and Section 215 orders to obtain “any tangible thing.” House lawmakers will vote next week on an extension bill, but it was unclear Thursday on which proposal.
The House Communications Subcommittee plans a May 25 hearing on creating an interoperable public safety network, the Commerce Committee said late Tuesday. The hearing is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. in Room 2322, Rayburn House Office Building. A markup in the Senate Commerce Committee scheduled the same day may not happen because Ranking Member Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, has a scheduling conflict, Hill and industry officials said. The committee never circulated an agenda for the markup, but it had been expected to include the public safety bill (S-911) by Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va. While S-911 would give the 700 MHz D-block to public safety, House Commerce Committee members have either supported a commercial auction or refused to take a position. While the Rockefeller bill may have GOP support from Hutchison, it may “still be a heavy lift to pass a bill on the Senate floor and enact it into law this Congress, given all the difficult technical, political, commercial, budgetary, and operational issues that must be resolved,” Stifel Nicolaus wrote investors Wednesday. “The planned AT&T/T-Mobile merger is a further complication, as it would eliminate T-Mobile as a spectrum buyer and lower AT&T’s need -- thus reducing auction projections.”
Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., is the new ranking member of the Senate Communications Subcommittee, as had been expected (CD April 25 p1), the Commerce Committee announced Wednesday. DeMint replaces Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., who left in the wake of controversy over an affair. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, is more senior than DeMint, but she kept her post atop the Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries and Coast Guard. DeMint is considered a rising GOP star and could be in line to replace Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, atop the full Commerce Committee when she retires at the end of 2012. DeMint opposed the FCC’s net neutrality decision and last year said (CD Dec 22 p5) he intends to prevent “the FCC or any government agency from unilaterally burdening our recovering economy with baseless regulation.” DeMint introduced a bill in 2010 and in 2005 to limit new FCC regulations, but failed to move it through the Senate. This year, DeMint has a bill to cut off funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (S-492). As part of the subcommittee swap, Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., replaced DeMint atop the Aviation Subcommittee, while Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., took Thune’s job atop the Subcommittee on Surface Transportation and Merchant Marine Infrastructure, Safety and Security. Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., who was not previously ranking on any subcommittee took Wicker’s post atop the Consumer Protection Subcommittee.
Additional legislative language on rural areas could be added to the public safety bill by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va. Sens. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Mark Begich, D-Alaska, are working on language to ensure that rural areas will be integrated into the nationwide network, a Senate aide said. The committee plans to vote on the Rockefeller bill (S-911) by Memorial Day and has scheduled a markup for May 25.