Adam Bender

The Obama administration won’t stand for a cut to Rural Utilities Service broadband grants in the House continuing resolution passed over the weekend, a spokesman for the agency said. The resolution would eliminate the $13 million RUS Community Connect program, which gives grants for building broadband infrastructure and setting up community centers offering free public access to broadband. The House approved the cut in a voice vote Friday night on an amendment by Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah. The RUS spokesman referred us to a Feb. 15 statement by the White House that “the Administration does not support deep cuts that will undermine our ability to out-educate, out-build, and out-innovate the rest of the world.” President Barack Obama will veto any continuing resolution that “undermines critical priorities or national security through funding levels or restrictions, contains earmarks, or curtails the drivers of long-term economic growth and job creation while continuing to burden future generations with deficit,” the White House said. Matheson said Friday that he wanted to cut even more than the House approved. “Cuts may be painful, they may be unpopular, but given what we are up against, they are necessary,” he said. The House resolution also included provisions targeting net neutrality rules, public broadcasting and the FCC’s chief diversity officer (CD Feb 22 p1). Congress must pass a continuing resolution by March 4 to keep the federal government running. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Tuesday he will bring to the floor next week a “clean” measure that extends government funding at current levels for 30 days.

A bill by Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., would set a schedule for FCC voluntary incentive auctions of broadcaster spectrum. S-415 was introduced Thursday night and referred to the Commerce Committee. Warner’s Spectrum Optimization Act would authorize the auctions and require the FCC to start them within two years of the bill’s enactment. Within 180 days, the commission would be required to write rules “for the conduct of auctions of licensed spectrum that is voluntarily relinquished by a licensee for assignment of new initial licenses subject to new service rules or for other purposes, in which a portion of the auction proceeds are shared with such relinquishing licensees, consistent with the public interest in maximizing utilization of the spectrum.” The bill would require FCC rules to identify the initial spectrum bands eligible for incentive auctions, minimize the cost to taxpayers of spectrum transitions, and set a maximum revenue-sharing figure, “unless the establishment of such threshold would increase the amount of spectrum cleared or would increase the net revenue from the auction of such spectrum.” The measure aims to provide the auctions with a clear path and a time frame for action and to minimize costs to taxpayers, said a spokesman for Warner. The bill’s provisions could be worked into broader spectrum legislation, he said. The legislation doesn’t deal with public safety specifically, but it wouldn’t preclude the use of auction proceeds for the public safety network, he said. Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., of the Senate Commerce Committee has filed a bill that would use proceeds for the purpose. At a hearing of the committee last week (CD Feb 17 p5), Warner said he, unlike Rockefeller, supports an auction of the 700 MHz D-block.

The FCC’s net neutrality order became a small part of the larger federal budget game after the House Thursday night passed an amendment to the Continuing Resolution sponsored by Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore. Breaking mostly along party lines, the House voted 244-181 to approve the amendment. It would ban FCC implementation of net neutrality rules until the Continuing Resolution expires Sept. 30. A final vote on the CR was expected late Friday. The House also passed an amendment to cut the agency’s chief diversity officer. That position has been held by Mark Lloyd, who drew heat from the political right for what some thought was support of the fairness doctrine, which he said he never backed.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., plans to reintroduce his public safety bill after the Presidents’ Day recess, a Senate staffer said Thursday. The Lieberman bill, which was introduced last year with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., would give the 700 MHz D-block away to public safety. Two other bills in the Senate, by Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Ranking Member Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-W.Va., also aim to reallocate the D-block.

The House agreed to a 90-day extension of three Patriot Act expiring provisions, to May 27. Thursday morning, the House voted 279-143 to concur with the Senate amendment to HR-514. Earlier in the week, the House agreed to extend the provisions until December, but the Senate wanted an earlier sunset. The vote keeps alive three provisions of the President George W. Bush-era anti-terrorism act. The legislation (CD Feb 17 p13) authorizes “roving wiretaps,” allows authorities to monitor “lone wolf” terrorist suspects and allows the government to search, without judicial review, “any tangible items” of suspects in terror investigations. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, supported the Senate amendment because he didn’t want the provisions to lapse, he said before the vote. Smith would have preferred a longer expiration date, he said. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., said he opposed the straight extension because he wanted more time to work on updating the provisions. House Crime Subcommittee Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., said he promised to have hearings before the provisions expire again, on reauthorization as well as oversight of the Patriot Act as a whole. In the Senate, Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., again postponed a vote on his legislation to extend the Patriot Act provisions until December 2013. Republicans objected to the vote, so the committee will now take up the measure March 3, Leahy said. The bill “is virtually identical in substance to legislation approved by a bipartisan majority of the Senate Judiciary Committee last Congress,” he said in a written statement. “It was first announced three weeks ago that the Committee would consider this bill. Eleventh hour requests for additional briefings serve only one purpose: to delay consideration of legislation that both Republicans and Democrats believe is critical to national security.”

Good oversight doesn’t include “wholesale attacks against agencies … for political purposes,” House Communications Subcommittee Ranking Member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., told reporters Thursday. She rejected amendments to the Continuing Resolution -- debated Thursday -- that would affect FCC operations. Eshoo said at a media briefing that her priorities for this Congress include spectrum reform, overhaul of the Universal Service Fund and building a public safety wireless broadband network.

Lawmakers disagreed whether the Internet industry felt more or less certain as a result of the FCC’s December network neutrality order. At a House Communications Subcommittee hearing Wednesday, commission and Capitol Hill Republicans said the order created uncertainty, stifling investment and innovation. Democrats said the order was needed to encourage investment, and that Hill Republicans’ efforts to overturn the order would actually create more uncertainty.

Antitrust law can better protect competition on the Internet than “heavy-handed, top-down” FCC regulations, said House Judiciary Internet Subcommittee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va. At a hearing Tuesday of the subcommittee, Goodlatte supported updating antitrust laws with specific provisions on the Internet. The FCC didn’t testify but took shots from all corners on their controversial net neutrality order.

House Republicans will try to use the Continuing Resolution to stop the FCC from acting on its net neutrality order. In a speech Tuesday, House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., said he filed an amendment prohibiting the FCC from spending any money to implement the rule. Also at the NARUC meeting, Walden said he’s considering legislation to overhaul FCC process. He questioned the White House’s FY 2012 budget estimate for money that could be raised by voluntary incentive spectrum auctions.

Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., plans to reintroduce her Universal Service Fund bill the week of March 1, after the Presidents’ Day recess, a spokeswoman said Monday. She said Matsui plans to discuss the bill at Wednesday’s House Communications Subcommittee hearing. The measure would create a USF Lifeline program to subsidize broadband service for low-income Americans. The bill isn’t directly tied to net neutrality, the hearing’s topic, but is part of the “broader discussion” about expanding Internet access, the spokeswoman said.