The House Commerce Committee was expected to approve on Tuesday legislation to nullify the FCC net neutrality order, paving the way for a floor vote. At our deadline, the committee hadn’t yet voted on H.J. Res. 37, a joint resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act. Democrats and Republicans were expected to split along party lines. The parties locked horns throughout a bitterly divisive markup that began Monday afternoon (CD March 15 p2) and also took up a bill to overturn Environmental Protection Agency greenhouse-gas rules. House GOP leaders have said the net neutrality resolution could reach the House floor this month. A companion resolution in the Senate hasn’t moved out of the Commerce Committee, but House passage would move it straight to the Senate floor. The Senate could also discharge the bill from committee before House passage with the support of 30 senators. Republicans have secured Democratic support for the resolution only from two House Blue Dogs. The measure needs a simple majority in each chamber.
Wireless tax legislation under consideration by Congress could provide a launching point for future tax reform, even if it won’t reduce already high taxes on wireless imposed by state and local governments, said panelists at a Hill briefing Monday sponsored by the DCI Group. The House and Senate, on a bipartisan basis, are considering identical bills (CD March 11 p19) to impose a 5-year moratorium banning new discriminatory taxes on wireless. The bill doesn’t go far enough, but the idea is to immediately cease the growth in taxes and then deal with the problem, said National Black Chamber of Commerce President Harry Alford. Alford supports the bill and will testify Tuesday at a hearing on the wireless tax bill in the House Judiciary Courts Subcommittee. It’s easier to stop new taxes than to take money away from the government, said Scott Mackey, an economist with KSE Partners. The legislation would provide a “time out” allowing supporters of wireless tax reductions to “hopefully work with the states,” Mackey said. The tax issue should be a “low-hanging fruit” for policymakers, unlike intercarrier compensation, a “much less clear-cut issue,” said Joseph Miller, policy counsel for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. Mackey said the average U.S. consumer pays 16.3 percent of their wireless bill for wireless taxes and fees, compared to 7.4 percent average on sales tax. And wireless taxes and fees are growing at a rate three times faster than sales tax, Mackey said. The taxes have a disproportionate impact on low-income and minority communities, run counter to government efforts to increase wireless deployment, and hurt businesses by raising their costs, he said. Alford said the taxes hurt the poor because their budgets aren’t as flexible to bill increases. States are treating wireless like cigarettes and other luxury items, “when in fact it’s a necessity,” he said. It makes no sense to impose high taxes on wireless when IT is a major contributor to the national GDP, added American Consumer Institute President Steve Pociask.
A pair of moderate House Democrats supported the joint resolution of disapproval to overturn the FCC net neutrality order. Reps. Dan Boren, D-Okla., and Collin Peterson, D-Minn., joined Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., and subcommittee Vice Chairman Lee Terry, R-Neb., on a letter that was circulated among House members Monday supporting the legislation. House Commerce began a markup of the resolution Monday afternoon, but the body put off the vote until Tuesday morning.
The Senate Commerce and Judiciary committees clashed over jurisdiction concerning privacy. Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Ranking Member Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, sent a letter late Thursday to Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Ranking Member Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa., about a new Judiciary subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law. Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., chairs the subcommittee. Rockefeller and Hutchison said they “are concerned about the description” of the subcommittee “on the Judiciary Committee website and are puzzled insofar as the jurisdiction described appears to be beyond the scope of the Judiciary Committee under the Senate Rule XXV.” The Commerce Committee leaders said Judiciary can consider some aspects of privacy, but shouldn’t duplicate their committee’s efforts. Commerce has concentrated on protecting consumer privacy, and it has a hearing this month on the Commerce Department’s and FTC’s privacy plans, they said. And “several members” of the committee plan to introduce “comprehensive privacy legislation,” Rockefeller and Hutchison said. A Judiciary aide said the committee is reviewing the letter. “The Judiciary Committee has worked on privacy related issues -- criminal, civil and consumer protection -- for decades,” including data privacy legislation by Leahy, the aide said. “We've also coordinated with the Commerce Committee on these issues for decades. Chairman Leahy is looking forward to continuing that coordination, and also to working with Senator Franken on these important issues.”
Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., is undaunted by a likely presidential veto of any bill to overturn FCC net neutrality rules, he said in an interview for C-SPAN’s The Communicators. The House Communications Subcommittee chairman isn’t worried about the lack of industry support either, he said. Walden outlined plans to aggressively pursue other communications issues once net neutrality is resolved.
The House Communications Subcommittee approved a bill to overturn the FCC net neutrality rule from December, over protests by Democrats. Dividing by party Wednesday afternoon, the committee voted 15-8 in favor of a joint resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act authored by Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore. Democrats held up the vote by flooding the markup with seven amendments. Walden rejected them because he said resolutions under the CRA statute are not subject to amendment. In a new development, GOP-sought witness RapidDSL admitted to slowing Netflix on its network. A Netflix spokesman said, “Consumers should be able to receive what they want over the Internet."
A bill to give Congress the final sign off on major regulations issued by federal agencies divided Democrats and Republicans at a House Courts Subcommittee hearing Tuesday. The bill, if enacted, would preclude the need for the Congressional Review Act process that Republicans are using in their effort to overturn FCC net neutrality rules. “Unaccountable agencies” are making “regulation after regulation” to the detriment of the economy, said subcommittee Chairman Howard Coble, R-N.C. Agencies only have rulemaking authority because Congress delegated it to them, he said. HR-10, the Regulations From the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act, would give power back to voters by giving elected officials final say over major rules, he said. Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers, D-Mich., said giving lawmakers a “personal stake” in agency rulemakings “is totally the wrong direction in which to go.” Subcommittee Ranking Member Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., said the bill is purely political and that Congress has a plethora of tools at its disposal if it disagrees with an agency rule, including committee oversight and the Congressional Review Act.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., blamed T-Mobile and Sprint Nextel for the controversy over building a national public safety network. Before the Senate Democrats’ policy lunch Tuesday, the Commerce Committee Chairman told us that the D-block is a controversial issue “because the people who just want to buy spectrum space for themselves like Sprint and T-Mobile are against it,” he said. “That’s why we have voluntary givebacks for auctions and we solve all their problems.” Net neutrality, like the D-block, is another “one-sided argument” that is tough to explain to other legislators, Rockefeller said. Asked about the House including a rider in its budget to stop the FCC from acting on net neutrality rules, he said: “They're wrong once again. It’s amazing.”
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., isn’t surprised that more companies haven’t supported Republicans’ efforts to overturn FCC net neutrality rules, he said at a media briefing. The House is moving ahead full steam anyway, he said. NCTA and CTIA late Monday joined AT&T in offering support for the FCC order, with NCTA’s CEO saying the order may promote investment and job creation.
AT&T accepted an invitation from Democrats to testify at Wednesday’s net neutrality hearing of the House Communications Subcommittee, said a spokeswoman for Ranking Member Henry Waxman, D-Calif., of the parent Commerce Committee The carrier, the only large ISP planning to testify at the hearing, is expected to stick to previous statements supporting the FCC’s net neutrality order. The committee’s Republican majority said it will mark up a GOP joint resolution of disapproval of the order immediately after the hearing and Republicans are reserving their right under the Congressional Review Act to reject amendments.