It is not an understatement to say The Progress & Freedom Foundation’s plan to abolish the Federal Communications Commission within three years and replace it with a smaller office in the executive brance, was greeted with skepticism from the Washington press corps last week.
Perhaps my colleagues heard the voices of angry white men who, with intellectual and political firepower, want to reduce the agency of 2,000 employees at 1919 M Street to rubble. Indeed, the Foundation should be taken seriously. It has close ties to House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., who has made no secret of his desire to zero out the FCC in the near future.
FCC Chairman Reed Hundt, a Democratic Clinton appointee, said some of the ideas espoused by the Foundation (like privitizing spectrum), are being put into action today. But Hundt disagreed with their philosophy.
“The public interest has a huge stake in the communications revolution and private interests should not own 100 percent of the action,” he said. “The Congress and the public want and need us to write fair rules of competition, collect still more money from spectrum auctions and protect consumers from monopolies.”
Edward Markey, D-Mass., head of the House telecommunications subcommittee before the GOP took over Congress this year, was more direct. He called the plan unrealistic and naive, saying it is “completely disingenuous to suggest that private negotiation between huge telecommunications behemoths and small upstarts would result in anything approximating the public interest.
“It’s just a pat on the back for bigness,” said Markey, who won approval for an amendment to House telecommunications legislation that guarantees the FCC funding to implement reforms.
How much funding is another question, which House telecommunications subcommittee Chairman Jack Fields, R-Texas, will answer when FCC reauthorization is taken up this summer.
Jeffrey Eisenach, president of the Foundation, conceded the unlikelihood of the proposal going anywhere this year. But he believes he’s planted the seed. Like most heartfelt debates in this town, this one has some curious aspects. Are the authors of the Foundation’s plan merely dispassionate intellectuals who want to build a better mouse trap?
Let’s see.
Common Cause, a government watchdog group, says the Foundation gets money from AT&T Corp., BellSouth Corp., long-distance carriers, Cox Cable Communications, Intel Corp., Scientific Atlanta, Siemens Corp., Turner Broadcasting System and General Electric.
If the issue is the FCC’s $185 million budget, note that if Congress increases regulatory user fees, the agency will be fully self-funded next year.
Critics of the FCC say the computer industry became successful without government oversight. What they fail to point out is that Microsoft Corp., the huge software developer, spends a lot of quality time with the Justice Department.
On the other hand, the knee-jerk response that the Foundation’s vision is far-out and loony is not fair either. The FCC was not preordained from above, though people are used to having it around. Remember, folks looked upon auctions as heresy in the 1980s.
They are today’s true believers.
