from: Technology Daily [1]
Senate Commerce Agenda Includes Telecom, Net Taxes
By David Hatch
(Tuesday, January 23) The Senate Commerce Committee, now headed by Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, has many familiar faces in the 110th Congress.
Most of the lawmakers were on onboard last year, but there are four newcomers: Sens. Thomas Carper, D-Del.; Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.; Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.; and John Thune, R-S.D. Dakota. Klobuchar and McCaskill are newly arrived, having been sworn in this month after their election in November.
Inouye is keen on moving a series of small telecom bills rather than a comprehensive one. So far, the committee has announced a Feb. 1 hearing on the state of the telecommunications marketplace that will feature testimony from the five FCC members, including Chairman Kevin Martin -- a Republican.
Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, who chaired the committee in 2005 and 2006 and who championed a deregulatory telecom bill that stalled last year after committee approval, will be the top Republican this session.
When Congress reconvened in January, Stevens introduced legislation to expand the base of universal service fund contributors and protect the privacy of consumer telephone records.
During the 2006 debate over telecom legislation, Inouye criticized all three iterations of Stevens' bill -- even though the Hawaiian was its only co-sponsor. As the committee prepped for action last summer, Inouye submitted 31 proposed changes.
But, despite their policy differences, Inouye and Stevens have tremendous admiration for each other and consider themselves to be co-chairmen.
Last year, Inouye let Sens. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, take the lead on adding so-called network neutrality restrictions to the telecom bill.
The Dorgan-Snowe amendment, rebuffed in committee on a tie, would have prevented high-speed Internet providers from potentially blocking or degrading competing content.
Dorgan and Snowe have reintroduced a stand-alone net neutrality bill this year. Another committee member, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., is a co-sponsor.
Dorgan also is an outspoken critic of media consolidation; he already has flexed his muscle over the FCC's pending review of media ownership rules.
In December, Dorgan led a bipartisan effort urging the FCC to complete an inquiry into how television broadcasters can best serve their local communities before the agency tackles media ownership. Martin later heeded the request.
Sen. John (Jay) Rockefeller of West Virginia is now the second ranking Democrat on the committee.On Jan. 10, Rockefeller issued a list of priorities that includes developing a comprehensive broadband policy and overhauling the universal service fund, which subsidizes telecom connections in rural and inner-city areas.
Other goals include regulating violent TV content and expanding the FCC's indecency guidelines to subscription television.
Tech priorities for yet another committee member -- Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a leading 2008 presidential hopeful -- include making permanent a temporary moratorium on state and local taxes on Internet access that expires in November. The ban also would prevent localities from taxing at rates higher than those assessed by brick-and-mortar stores.
Republicans Sens. John Ensign of Nevada and John Sununu of New Hampshire, along with other panel members, share that concern. McCain and Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., have introduced legislation to impose a three-year moratorium on what they say are extraneous taxes imposed by localities on wireless phone service.
Other priorities for McCain include capping the overall size of USF and encouraging cable outlets to offer per channel pricing, known in industry parlance as "a la carte."
Another influential Republican on the Senate Commerce panel is Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi. He has returned to the GOP leadership, this time as minority whip.
Ensign will continue to push for passage of competitiveness legislation that would boost domestic research and development funding for technology and other areas. Last year's iteration had the backing of Democratic and Republican leaders.
Regarding the big picture, Ensign and his conservative colleagues want to ensure that Congress does not pursue tech-related legislation that causes unintended results.
"Whenever he can, he is going to try and rely on market forces to sort out the problems," an Ensign staffer said.
Two Republican telecom powerbrokers -- Sens. George Allen of Virginia and Conrad Burns of Montana -- lost their seats in last year's election.
Sununu has inherited many of Allen's tech priorities and already has introduced legislation tackling one of them: freeing unassigned or unused television frequencies known as "white space" for new wireless broadband services.
Carper, Klobuchar, McCaskill and Thune are relatively new to tech circles. Neither Carper nor Thune lists communications matters as key concerns on their Web sites, although Thune has offered legislation addressing information technology and tech-related health initiatives.