Cruz: No Changes to Senate Spectrum Deal; Guthrie Open to 7.4-8.4 GHz Exclusion

Cruz complained during a Punchbowl News event Wednesday that Senate Armed Services member Mike Rounds, R-S.D., and others involved in the deal talks have since aired grievances about the proposal language via reporters, rather than speaking to him. Rounds countered Cruz's claims in a Wednesday interview. Senate Commerce ranking member Maria Cantwell of Washington and other committee Democrats called Wednesday for the panel to hold a markup session on the reconciliation proposal. Cantwell echoed Armed Services members’ spectrum reconciliation concerns in an interview earlier this week.

“The deal's done” on Senate Commerce spectrum language, Cruz said during the Punchbowl event. “We cut a deal [on] the Senate floor, [and that language] is in the bill,” including an 800 MHz spectrum pipeline and exemptions for the 3.1-3.45 GHz and 7.4-8.4 GHz bands (see 2506060029). “We cut a deal, [and] this is exactly the deal we cut,” he said. “It’s interesting [that] a couple of my colleagues keep running to” reporters to raise new objections, but “none of them have said a damn word to me.”

Cruz indicated that President Donald Trump also backs the Senate Commerce language as written, citing a phone conversation in which he quoted Trump as saying, “‘This is an incredible deal. How did you get such an amazing deal?’” Cruz credited Trump with helping overcome DOD intransigence on reallocating some military-controlled spectrum after the Senate Commerce chairman “spent the last three months making the case at the White House [that] this is the right thing to do.”

Guthrie told us there are “no red lines” for him ahead of negotiations to bridge differences between Senate Commerce's spectrum reconciliation proposal and what the House included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (HR-1) when the chamber passed it last month (see 2505220064). “There's not anything that we can't sit down and negotiate over,” Guthrie said. Senate Commerce's 800 MHz pipeline requires sales of some specific bands. HR-1 proposes a 600 MHz pipeline with no instructions.

Guthrie is willing to accept Senate Commerce's proposal to specifically exempt the 7.4-8.4 GHz band, he said. House Commerce’s report accompanying its part of HR-1 said it “directs that the frequencies between 7.25 GHz-8.4 GHz [be] excluded from the 600 megahertz” pipeline, something that critics argued doesn’t carry statutory weight like exclusionary language would. “I want that [bandwidth] protected, whether we do it in report language, a classified annex, or specifically in the bill,” Guthrie said. Cruz and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton, R-Ark., “have agreed to [the statutory exemption], and that's something I can personally live with.”

Rounds: No 'Big Modification'

Rounds, who last week indicated there were new wrinkles immediately before Senate Commerce released its reconciliation text (see 2506050064), countered after the Punchbowl event Wednesday that his aides have “been working with [Cruz’s] staff … on a daily basis” on changes to the band exemptions language. The deal Cruz and others reached last week is “still an effective agreement, [but] they released their language before it had been approved by our team,” Rounds told us. He's not seeking “a big modification" but wants to make "it clear that other people can’t infringe upon” DOD-controlled bands.

“Part of the original agreement in principle [said] nothing was getting infringed on [those bands] until 2034, [but] apparently some of the private-side folks who are being impacted by this appear to think that they were going to be expected to move into and share DOD space, so that clarification has to simply be perfect,” Rounds said. “I'll wait before I pass judgment on whether we've got a problem or not until after [Cruz’s] staff has had an opportunity to actually share it with the senator.”

Also on Wednesday, Cantwell and other Senate Commerce Democrats pressed Cruz to “schedule a markup of the [reconciliation proposal] instead of fast tracking these significant policies through a partisan floor process,” in part citing concerns about the spectrum language. Cantwell earlier in the week latched onto reports of Rounds’ and others’ concerns about the Senate Commerce proposal. Cruz’s office “said they were going to protect [DOD] spectrum, [but] the language doesn’t do that,” Cantwell told us.

Cantwell said she and other Democrats still prefer “our language” from the Spectrum and National Security Act, which she unsuccessfully pursued during the last Congress as panel chair (see 2409170066), because it had support from NTIA and military officials during the Biden administration. “I’m convinced [Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth] either doesn’t know anything about spectrum or he’s just abdicated his responsibility” by signing off on Cruz’s plan, Cantwell said.

AI Moratorium Opposition

In their letter to Cruz, Cantwell and other Senate Commerce Democrats also urged him to drop language from the reconciliation bill that would require governments receiving funding from the $42.5 billion BEAD program to pause enforcing state-level AI rules, an apparent alternative to HR-1’s 10-year federal preemption of such laws. They said the proposed AI moratorium “tramples” states' rights and holds BEAD “hostage.”

Senate Commerce Democrats cited a memo from House Freedom Caucus conservatives asking Senate Republicans to drop the AI moratorium language. “The federal government should not prevent states from being able to regulate artificial intelligence for the next 10 years, something Congress is still actively investigating and does not fully understand,” the caucus memo said.

Cruz's office pushed back Wednesday, asking in a statement where “was this enthusiasm for markups from the Democrats as they labored over Build Back Broke, the gaslighting Inflation Reduction Act, or the COVID Exploitation Act in early 2021? [Senate Commerce's] text makes historic investments in the Coast Guard, FAA, and NASA while turbocharging our economy through new spectrum auctions. If Democrats don’t want to help the Coast Guard secure the border or fix the air traffic control system, then they are voting against the very priorities the American people demanded.”

Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told us Tuesday that they’re drafting amendment language to strip the moratorium text from the Senate reconciliation package if it survives the Byrd rule, which allows the Senate parliamentarian to exclude budget-package provisions that are deemed extraneous. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., is also preparing an amendment to kill the moratorium provision. He said previously he would call a point of order on the bill, which could lead to votes on the specific provision. Sens. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Rand Paul, R-Ky., are also opposed to the AI moratorium.