House Dems introduce own spectrum bill, say Republicans shut them out

Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee announced their own spectrum bill on Tuesday, just hours after the introduction of the Republican version, accusing the Republicans of excluding them from negotiations.

Ranking member Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said negotiations ceased on Oct. 4, and that Republicans ignored repeated requests from Democrats to renew the talks. 

According to the office of Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif), the ranking member of the Communications and Technology subcommittee, they first received a copy of Rep. Greg Walden's (R-Ore.) spectrum bill on Tuesday morning when he introduced it.

Like the Republican version, the Democratic bill includes incentive auctions of broadcast spectrum and allocates the D-block of spectrum to public-safety agencies.

Under the auction plan, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) would sell off spectrum that currently belongs to television broadcasters, splitting some of the revenue with the stations that choose to participate.

The spectrum is potentially worth billions of dollars to wireless carriers, which are struggling to meet the growing data demands of smartphones and tablet computers.

One difference from the Republican bill is that the Democratic version allows the FCC to designate some television broadcaster spectrum for unlicensed use. Tech companies such as Google and Microsoft have pushed for more unlicensed spectrum, which does not belong to any one company and can be used for technologies such as Wi-Fi.

The Communications and Technology subcommittee is scheduled to mark up Walden's spectrum bill on Thursday.

"Although we are still hoping for bipartisan action on this critical issue, today we are laying out what we believe is the best path forward to resolve this problem," Waxman said in a news release. "This legislation has garnered broad support from governors, mayors, the public safety community, public interest groups, and others, and I hope our Republican colleagues will join with us to pass this legislation and send it to the White House.” 

Eshoo also expressed hope that lawmakers can craft a compromise bill. 

"While there continue to be key policy differences with the approach taken by the Majority, I remain hopeful that Thursday’s Subcommittee markup will provide an opportunity to debate these differences and finally reach a bipartisan compromise,” she said.

The Senate version of the spectrum bill, S. 911, cleared the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee in June but has not come up for a vote in the full Senate. There was speculation that the deficit-reduction supercommittee would include spectrum language in a possible deal before those talks collapsed. And President Obama included spectrum provisions in his jobs bill, though Congress has not acted on them.  

---