More bad news for Sen. Steven’s struggling telecom bill this week, as the Congressional Budget Office toted up the price tag for the 200+ page measure: $5.2 billion over the next ten years. That’s worth saying again. $5.2 billion. That’s billion. With a “b”.
Most of the cost comes from extending communications subsidies to broadband. CBO pegs the cost of the proposed new “Broadband Service Fund” at nearly $4.5 billion. Other provisions–such as permanently exempting the Universal Service Fund from the Anti-deficiency Act (allowing grants to exceed fund revenue)–expansion of rural health care spending, among others–make up the rest of the new spending. (Among the others are, presumably, the provision expanding subsidies to “States that are comprised entirely of islands”. See this post.)
Most–but not all–of this new spending is made up by new revenue. But the Senate gets no cigars for this. Most of the new revenues are in fact new taxes to pay for the expanded subsidies. And because those new taxes–at $5 billion–still fall short of the spending, the bill is subject to a “point of order” if it is voted on the Senate floor, requiring 60 votes to let it proceed.
Beyond spending, however, Steven’s bill does contain a number of valuable regulatory reforms. Topping the list is the streamlining of state cable franchise regulations, which will clear the way for telephone companies to challenge cable television firms. But the bill also increases regulation in countless ways. Well, actually not countless. CBO counted, and found the bill increases regulation in 14 ways, ranging from new imposing energy requirements on digital converter boxes to requiring cable firms to carry analog broadcast signals to imposing “consumer protection” standards on Internet service providers, to requiring satellite carriers to serve subscribers in Alaska and Hawaii (coincidentally, the homes of Stevens and the ranking Commerce Committee Democrat, Daniel Inouye.
Senate staffers are still said to be working against long odds to get this bill through before the Senate recesses for the election. But because of CBO’s report–not to mention the provisions in the bill identified in the CBO’s report–those odds are longer than ever before. Don’t be surprised if the whole thing ends up down a series of tubes.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
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