Cantwell Eyes Post-Recess Progress on Spectrum Bill; Potential GOP Converts Skeptical

Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., remains optimistic that she can get enough panel members on board with her Spectrum and National Security Act (S-4207) during the August recess to open a viable path for the stalled measure during the waning days of this Congress. Three Senate Commerce Republicans who are also senior members of the Armed Services Committee and are seen as potential converts on S-4207 told us just before the chamber recessed that they remain highly dubious about the measure.

Cantwell wants Senate Commerce to bring back S-4207 for a vote in September, if possible, citing “some progress” in behind-the-scenes talks with other senators. “People are a little more positive” about the bill as of late July than they were after Senate Commerce most recently pulled it from a mid-June panel meeting agenda amid continued GOP misgivings (see 2406180067), she told us. Senate Commerce’s late July consideration of the Proper Leadership to Align Networks for Broadband Act (S-2238) turned into a proxy fight about the fraught negotiations over S-4207 (see 2407310048).

Cantwell said she wasn’t sure whether the situation was so “positive that we don’t have to do” a proposed follow-up meeting with Commerce and the Armed Services Committee members (see 2407110049) on S-4207 changes that led Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and Biden administration-appointed military leaders to back the measure in June. Biden administration officials briefed some senators affiliated with the panels in early June (see 2406120058). Those senators are now “hearing directly from” DOD in favor of the measure, Cantwell said: “I’m confident that with DOD being more vocal about their interests, we can get somewhere” on the bill.

“I don’t want to reveal what our strategies are” for reaching a bipartisan deal on S-4207 “because there are some people who just want to do nothing,” Cantwell told us. “They could care less whether millions of people don’t” have access to affordable connective program funding, one of the telecom priorities she wants to pay for via the bill. There remains “a fight between” Senate Commerce ranking member Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and dual Commerce-Armed Services member Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., over whose approach to spectrum policy will win out among panel Republicans, Cantwell said. Their chief disagreement has been over whether the FCC should auction portions of the 3.1-3.45 GHz band and other DOD-controlled frequencies.

Fischer Seeks 'Changes'

Senate Armed Services ranking member Roger Wicker of Mississippi, another of the dual panel Republicans, told us before the recess he hasn’t been involved in recent ramped-up DOD communications with lawmakers in favor of S-4207 and believes the item is now on the back burner. Fischer and fellow dual panel Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska also said they hadn’t heard about DOD support rising for the measure. Wicker in June cited Cantwell’s lack of communication about behind-the-scenes revisions of S-4207 as a major reason he couldn’t support the bill at that time (see 2406110079).

Fischer, who is Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee ranking member, told us nothing has changed with S-4207 that would lead her to support it. “There are changes that have to happen” to S-4207 “to keep this country safe,” she told us. Fischer is pushing Cantwell to include additional amendments to protect incumbent military spectrum that didn’t make it into a revised June version of the bill, lobbyists told us. Fischer said she also still questions whether Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman C.Q. Brown has signed off on S-4207, which bill supporters claim. JCS didn’t immediately comment.

“There needs to be a lot more due diligence and organization” in the S-4207 process than has happened so far, Sullivan said. “I think there can be a resolution to” the disagreements that have hindered progress on the bill so far, but it’s something “you have to work through both the private sector and DOD.” He said he isn't aware of rising DOD backing for S-4207, but “if that’s the case, it would be an important component” because it’s strategically important that the military “have enough spectrum capacity so it can continue to be the most lethal force in the world.”

Wicker, a past Commerce chairman, doubts Cantwell will succeed with another push to advance the measure once lawmakers return in September given it would need to occur during the “last few days left of legislative business.” House Communications Subcommittee ranking member Doris Matsui, D-Calif., is also pessimistic about the path forward. “We’ll see what happens once we get back in September, but I don’t think anyone has any energy at this point” to make another push on spectrum legislation this year given the lack of progress in negotiations in recent months, she told us.