Senate Commerce Gears Up for Nominations, Mobile Now, Infrastructure

“It’d be nice to be able to knock them off next week,” Thune said. “We’re trying to work out scheduling to try to get the hearings in before inauguration week, so it’s a work in progress.” Inauguration Day is Jan. 20. Thune mentioned the multiple committees at play in the nominations process and members of Commerce who may belong to other committees reviewing nominees. He referred to “what also may be happening on the floor with a budget resolution” amid “a lot to juggle” in the schedule currently. Meanwhile, with Jessica Rosenworcel's last day Tuesday as an FCC member, there has been some talk she could be renominated before President Barack Obama leaves office (see 1701030039).

Senate Democrats “don’t want to make it easy” and will likely “want to consume as much time as possible in the nomination process,” Thune said. “What we’ll have to do is be diligent and keep pushing forward. Because they changed the [filibuster] rules, these are all going to be 51-vote thresholds, which really limits their long-term options, but they can certainly use dilatory tactics to try to drag it out.” But he didn’t believe any nominees such as Ross will falter. “My expectation is that these nominees that have been put forward, including those that are under our committee’s jurisdiction, although they’ll probably get some hard questioning in the confirmation process ... I suspect eventually they will make it through the process and be confirmed,” Thune said.

Both Thune and Commerce Committee ranking member Bill Nelson, D-Fla., previously committed to reviving certain key telecom legislative packages from last Congress -- namely, the Mobile Now spectrum bill and the FCC Reauthorization Act. Both bills died on the Senate floor last month. Thune reintroduced Mobile Now Tuesday, with the co-sponsorship of Nelson, and posted the bill text. “The MOBILE NOW Act is a gateway to faster and more extensive wireless coverage that empowers more Americans to use technologies requiring a connection to the internet,” Thune said in a statement. “This legislation is an early technology priority that I expect the Commerce Committee will send to the Senate floor soon.”

“I think a lot of this personnel stuff is going to keep us preoccupied for a while,” Thune told us of the agenda for January. But he resisted the idea that Senate Commerce wouldn't be digging into its telecom priorities fast: “We’ll start working on that right away. We can multitask!”

Thune's office said the reintroduced Mobile Now closely tracks with the final compromise version stalled last month, the product of extensive negotiation with the Obama administration. Its provisions would place in statute an administration commitment to free up 500 MHz by 2020, ease 5G infrastructure deployment, include a “dig once” sense of Congress and create a national broadband facilities asset database. “The Commerce Department would be directed to issue a report within 18 months on additional legislative or regulatory proposals to incentivize Federal entities to relinquish or share their spectrum with non-federal spectrum users,” the news release said. The measure would speed “the relocation of Federal entities by allowing existing Spectrum Relocation Fund balances to be transferred to agencies for transition efforts immediately upon completion of an auction, rather than after the actual receipt by the Fund of auction proceeds” and “directs the Federal government to conduct assessments of spectrum in the 3 GHz band and in the millimeter wave frequencies to determine whether authorizing licensed or unlicensed wireless broadband services in those bands is feasible, and if so, which frequencies are best suited for such operations,” the release said.

Commerce Committee leadership remains stable this Congress under Thune and Nelson but the membership shifted. Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Steve Daines, R-Mont., won't sit on Commerce, according to GOP rosters unveiled Tuesday. Democrats revealed last month their additions and loss of Commerce members (see 1612200067). Commerce in the new Congress will have 14 Republicans and 13 Democrats. Subcommittee assignments aren't made, and some say it’s possible Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., could replace Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., as head of the Communications Subcommittee. Some Republicans meanwhile are joining the Senate Judiciary Committee (see 1701030053).

New Commerce Republican members include Sens. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, Mike Lee of Utah, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Todd Young of Indiana. Capito helped start the Senate Broadband Caucus last year. She said in a statement her committee assignment will help put her in a “strong position” to fight for better broadband access. “I will have a more powerful voice on telecom issues,” she said. Lee has an especially full record on telecom. He objected strongly to the FCC's net neutrality order in recent years and also addressed telecom issues through his perch on the Judiciary Committee, where he has been chairman on its Antitrust Subcommittee. He led a hearing on AT&T buying Time Warner last month.

Rubio prioritized spectrum reallocation legislation and eyed the 5.9 GHz band, touting that work in a recent listing of accomplishments from his first term. His office told us last month that Rubio’s goals “remain the same” and could be pursued through “administrative action, legislation, or a combination thereof in the new Congress” (see 1612160062). Daines, a former cloud computing official, was the driving force behind the Small Business Broadband Deployment Act last Congress, a bill that would exempt smaller ISPs from the net neutrality order’s enhanced transparency reporting requirements. He agreed to the bipartisan compromise that passed the House but stalled in the Senate.

Thune also anticipates more dialogue with the Trump administration on infrastructure, given the Trump campaign’s repeated references for a $1 trillion infrastructure package to be advanced in the first 100 days of his administration. “I expect it’ll be somewhat collaborative and they’ll seek our input on that,” Thune said. “We’re hoping they show us at some point what it is they want to do. … Until they actually put it in some form that we can take a look at it, start to evaluate it, we probably won’t be judging what they’ve done yet. Hopefully, we’ll get a chance.”

The Trump team said it wants its infrastructure package to “include a lot of different components,” including telecom, Thune noted. He said this could lead to synergies on other committee priorities, such as legislation to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration. “We’ve got to do an aviation bill this year, before the end of the fiscal year, Sept. 30, and they want to have a pretty ambitious agenda in terms of infrastructure, so there may be some ways in which we can work together,” Thune said. He stressed a need for more details about how the incoming administration may want to incorporate tax credits and other means to pay for the investment. “My hope would be it’s something that we can work together on and come up with a plan that actually is paid for, that creates jobs in the economy, raises wage levels and does some things that are desperately needed in terms of our infrastructure,” said Thune.

He also said Senate Commerce could take legislative action on driverless cars in 2017. He lauded the headway already made on the issue and the attention committee lawmakers have shown to it. But more questions exist as companies move forward, he said. “Probably at some point, Congress is going to have to weigh in,” Thune said. The committee will keep investigating the technology “in a way that protects safety and privacy and all the other considerations that come into play,” also weighing the “questions on liability and insurance,” he said.