Blackburn, Walden Eye Reauth-Focused 2017 Agenda for House Commerce

Don't expect NTIA reauthorization to be a vehicle for other policy proposals such as spectrum allocation legislation and vehicle-to-infrastructure grants, House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., told reporters Wednesday, rejecting inclusion of measures that subcommittee Democrats raised last week (see 1702020065). House Commerce Republicans continued to lay out an agenda for 2017 during a meeting with reporters Wednesday, focused heavily on NTIA and FCC reauthorizations, starting with NTIA and then moving to FCC action.

“I’m not so sure that getting into policy issues is something that you want to do there,” Blackburn said of NTIA reauthorization. “When you do a reauthorization, my thought is to do it narrowly and to set the parameters, to look at that organizational structure so that everyone understands the purpose and the mission and then you allow organizational leadership to address some of the different issues.”

Blackburn is in the process of delegating policy topics to certain subcommittee members, she said. Subcommittee Vice Chairman Leonard Lance, R-N.J., will lead efforts on encryption and cybersecurity, she said, as expected (see 1701260046). Another member will “take the lead on Lifeline,” she said. “We will certainly give Lifeline a good look. … I think all of us would say we want Lifeline to meet the needs of those that have a need and we want to make certain that waste, fraud and abuse of the program is rooted out.”

“Authorizations will be a priority,” agreed Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., the former subcommittee chief who sat beside Blackburn during Wednesday’s meeting. “We’ll move to FCC after we do NTIA,” Blackburn said. Tuesday evening, House Digital Commerce and Consumer Protection Subcommittee Chairman Bob Latta, R-Ohio, named by Walden to head the newly named subcommittee last month, likewise held a Q&A (see 1702080078)

During last week’s NTIA reauthorization hearing, as Blackburn recounted during a taping Tuesday of C-SPAN’s The Communicators (see 1702070074), former officials “came in and said, ‘Look, the agency needs to be focused on helping the federal government with their utilization of spectrum and how they go about using that spectrum. They need to concern themselves with siting of towers and the way we deploy broadband and expand broadband.’” The former officials raised the issue of wireless, she added: “We need to think of wireless also, and the coverage you can get, and especially as you think about 5G.”

Broadband Focus

Another longer term plan for 2017 involves broadband expansion legislation, Republican lawmakers told reporters. “We hear from our county mayors that this is something [that] to them the primary infrastructure issue of this decade,” said Blackburn.

The GOP lawmakers affirmed they would press for any infrastructure proposal, as President Donald Trump has urged, to include broadband provisions. “I think our approach will be different than a BTOP [Broadband Technologies Opportunity Program] approach,” Blackburn said, referring to the stimulus under the Obama administration. “I think you’re going to see more of the legwork done on the front end. I look at this as it is our opportunity to close what I have called an opportunity divide.” She referred to anecdotes of students having to drive 15 or 30 miles to get to a McDonald’s or a library to get internet access to do homework or research. “There’s going to be some work on the maps, there’s going to be some work on the assessments,” she said. “And we are going to work with the FCC.” Expect cost-benefit analysis and fiscal responsibility, she added. The Trump administration officials “have said nothing precise, at this point, and I give them credit for kind of holding their powder and not being precise or prescriptive on what an infrastructure bill is going to be,” Blackburn said of broadband’s inclusion. But she cited the Senate confirmation hearing of commerce secretary nominee Wilbur Ross, who called broadband essential. “Hopefully we’ll have more news coming from them soon,” Blackburn said.

Walden brought up the Form 477 filings that companies submit with broadband coverage data, which “maybe don’t actually reflect where coverage is and isn’t,” he said, promising future oversight on the topics. “So these are issues I know the FCC shares our concerns over.”

Blackburn echoed what she told us Tuesday on net neutrality. “Let’s let the FCC go in and do what are able to do and make the first move on that,” she said Wednesday. “Then we’ll be able to revisit that situation [legislatively]. But I think we allow them to take those first steps.” After the FCC acts, “one of the opportunities that we will have as a legislative body is to take an action that will move forward on some principles, some definitions and make certain that we don’t end up in a situation again, where we have agency overreach and agency that decides they want to go off script, if you will, and move into areas where maybe they don’t have authority,” she said.

She declined to say as much on using the Congressional Review Act process to dismantle the FCC ISP privacy rules. She told us Tuesday she backed the tool’s use and that a resolution may be likely as soon as Monday. “It’s certainly an option,” she said Wednesday. The FTC generally has handled privacy and has that “depth of knowledge,” she said. “As we go through the necessary reforms, we may want to say, ‘OK, we’re putting something over in somebody else’s sandbox and something in someone else’s sandbox.’”

“Privacy provisions were over at the FTC” before Title II reclassification of broadband by the FCC, said Walden. “If Title II were to go away, automatically the privacy protections go back to the FTC.”

Telecom Rewrite?

Wednesday was the 21st anniversary of the signing of the Telecom Act but Blackburn resisted any bigger immediate overhaul effort. “I don’t know if we’ve got enough bandwidth, if you will, to do it this year,” she told us Tuesday. “That might be something that is there for next year. It is definitely on the to-do list, to look at that. Media ownership rules, there’s some things there that probably could use a little bit of a revisit and a review.” The faster Congress can process agency reauthorizations, “the sooner we’ll be able to get to a telecom rewrite,” she said. Walden sought to begin an update process throughout 2014.

Lance also spoke on telecom Wednesday, at an event hosted by Digital Liberty on the Telecom Act anniversary. “Extremely able, a very active legislator,” Lance said of Blackburn. “This bodes well,” he said of Walden and Blackburn atop the committee leadership on policy, expressing his own interest “in being aggressive.”

When the act was signed, “did we ever think we would be snapping, tweeting, updating?” Lance asked, citing “regulatory silos for a different era” as part of the statute. “The act today only stands to create more confusion than clarity and slow innovation rather than igniting it.” The subcommittee “will see to it that that’s changed,” Lance said, urging achievements this Congress. “Let’s put a Communications Act update on that pedestal.” He said they should “advance this cause” in 2017.

Lance was followed by a panel of speakers largely supportive of an overhaul: Americans for Tax Reform Federal Affairs Manager and Digital Liberty Executive Director Katie McAuliffe; Free State Foundation President Randolph May; Phoenix Center President Larry Spiwak; TechFreedom Policy Counsel Tom Struble; and American Enterprise Institute scholar Roslyn Layton, who helped during the Trump transition FCC efforts.

"Wouldn't it be nice if our legislation had automatic updates?" said Layton, urging sunset clauses for new legislation. "The transition team is kind of an automatic update process." She referred to a series of meetings at the FCC that helped create a picture of the agency, lamenting predominance of lawyers over economists there. The act helped create the agency structure, she said. "Various bureaus defined by technologies -- it can take weeks for decision-making to go on," she said. "There's nothing in the Ten Commandments that says, 'Thou shalt have an agency that looks like this.'"

Encryption Questions

Blackburn sees encryption as a tough topic not producing immediate answers, she said during The Communicators’ taping. “We’ve got to look at both encryption of the data and encryption of the devices,” she said. “We don’t want the devices to be weakened. Working with law enforcement and the different intel agencies, we have to come to some kind of understanding of what this is going to be.” She compared the inquiry to “fighting a forest fire” where “you get something put out in one place and it’s going to pop up in another.” The inquiry will take many conversations, she said, saying a solution can't be delivery- or technology-specific and with protections for consumers’ virtual identities. “We have to find a way to work with law enforcement on this so that the data they need is data they can have access to,” she said. “It is also going to stem over into the Internet of Things, with in-home systems that record conversations or log conversations or home operating systems. And so I think this is going to take us a little while to work through. But let’s do it right.”

Although her subcommittee doesn’t address data security directly, Blackburn cited past efforts on the topic with Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., and said she hopes those can move forward. “I would be encouraged if we were able to move privacy, data security legislation pieces,” she said. “Then I would like to see us come to a resolution on some things within encryption and with cyber.”

Blackburn also sought to reassure tech industry backers of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Those tech officials will see that Trump “understands technology and the ecosystem that revolves around technology-based products,” she said. “The creation of those, the sale of those, the use of those involved in trade, components that are involved in trade. I think he also understands the need for a well trained workforce.” She pointed to Ross' goals, which likely will involve tech. “The tech community is going to end up being very pleased with that,” she predicted. “They should not think that they’re dealing with a House or a Senate or administration that is technology averse because indeed we’re not.” She also pointed to changes in tech, noting the moves from such entities as Amazon and Yahoo to create original content. Tech and content creators were typically at odds in the past but now may have “shared goals,” helped along by the administration, she said.

The FCC broadcast TV incentive auction has “come to a natural conclusion and it’s been a real success,” Walden told reporters Wednesday, citing a news release from Fox Television stations on its spectrum sale (see 1702080081). “We’ve kind of run the traps now on broadcast spectrum, if you will,” Walden said. “Now everybody’s pointing to the higher spectrum, which really points to NTIA, which really points to government spectrum.”

Walden spoke in favor of the subcommittee’s work over his tenure: “We did some really remarkable work along the way, culminating in the most recent auction. But over the course of time, not only did we make more spectrum available and generate more revenue for taxpayers, we implemented some of the final recommendations of the 9/11 Commission with FirstNet, although that still needs oversight, obviously, in its implementation. But I think we moved the ball forward on innovation and communication.”