House Lawmakers Eye Defunding FCC's Diversity Council, Barring FTC Merger Rules Update

The FCC faces a bid by Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., to defund its Communications Equity and Diversity Council as part of upcoming floor action on the Appropriations Committee-approved FY 2024 spending bill that covers funding for the commission and FTC (HR-4664). Lawmakers pursued relatively few other FCC-focused amendments to HR-4664, but several targeted halting FTC action on proposed changes to the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act premerger notification process and other recent agency actions. House Appropriations advanced HR-4664 in July with proposals to cut funding to both the FCC and FTC compared with what they got in the FY 2023 omnibus funding package. The Senate Appropriations Committee proposes increasing annual money for both agencies (see 2307130069).

House leaders are eyeing bringing HR-4664 to the floor next week once the Rules Committee decides which amendments it will allow the full chamber to consider. The committee also set deadlines for lawmakers to file amendments to the FY24 funding bill covering NTIA, other Commerce Department agencies and the DOJ Antitrust Division (HR-5893) and the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Subcommittee’s measure (HR-5894), which doesn’t include language providing for advance FY 2026 CPB money (see 2307140069). Amendments to HR-5894 are due at 1 p.m. Friday. Proposals to change HR-5893 are due at noon Monday.

Steube’s office didn’t immediately comment on his CEDC amendment. The FCC rechartered the group in June and was seeking applications for members who are women and minorities, governmental entities, broadcasters and other media distributors, minority-serving institutions and tech entrepreneurship support organizations (see 2305300075). CEDC under its previous two-year charter eyed best practices for digital upskilling, improving diverse access to capital and providing broadband to underserved populations (see 2302230060).

Rep. Seth Magaziner, D-R.I., meanwhile, is proposing an amendment that would increase the FCC’s annual funding by $1 million to address unwanted robocalls that scam senior citizens. Magaziner proposes drawing the money out of the General Services Administration’s building rental budget. Rep. Marc Molinaro, R-N.Y., seeks an amendment that would increase and immediately decrease the FTC’s annual funding by $50 million to encourage the agency to collaborate with the FCC, DOJ and Treasury Department to pursue and deter scams targeted at senior citizens.

Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, R-Wis., filed five amendments aimed at curbing FTC practices, including barring the commission from using its annual funding to “implement, administer or enforce” changes the commission has proposed since Jan. 1 to its premerger notification rules. Telecom and tech groups claim the proposal backed by Chair Lina Khan would cost billions of dollars for combining parties and won’t benefit consumers (see 2309280078). A separate proposal would prevent the FTC from using funding on its suspension of early termination to premerger notification filings. Reps. Joe Neguse, D-Colo., and Ken Buck, R-Colo., want to remove language from HR-4664 that bars the FTC from implementing 2021 actions that restored its more restrictive pre-1995 merger rules (see 2110250054).

Fitzgerald wants to ban the FTC from using its appropriation to issue “any rule defining or describing unfair methods of competition” or enforce its 2022 policy statement reasserting the agency’s FTC Act Section 5 authority to rigorously enforce the federal ban on unfair methods of competition (see 2211100046), an action he claims is inconsistent with the Clayton and Sherman acts. Fitzgerald also seeks to prohibit the FTC from engaging “with foreign enforcers as part of any merger review, investigation, or enforcement action without first seeking a waiver from the merging parties.”

Reps. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., and Scott Perry, R-Pa., offered dueling amendments aimed at changing HR-4664’s FTC funding from the $376.5 million House Appropriations proposed. Perry wants to reduce the agency’s funding to the almost $310 million it received for FY 2019 (see 1902150055). Connolly wants to fund the FTC at the $590 million level President Joe Biden proposed in March (see 2303130070). That’s a 37% increase from FY23. Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-S.C., wants to bar the FTC from conducting “outbound exchanges with” the agency’s “foreign counterparts” and hosting “an international training assistance program.”