House Appropriations Clears FY 2016 Commerce Budget
The House Appropriations Committee cleared an FY 2016 $51.4 billion budget Wednesday for the Department of Commerce and several other federal departments and agencies. It includes a provision that would bar NTIA from using its funding “to relinquish” its responsibility for domain name systems functions via the planned spinoff of its oversight over the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions. The committee-passed FY 2016 Commerce budget would give the department $8.2 billion -- $250 million below its FY 2015 budget and $1.6 billion below the department’s FY 2016 funding request. NTIA would receive $35.2 million under the proposed budget, below the $49.2 million it originally requested. The National Institute of Standards and Technology would receive $855 million -- $9 million less than its FY 2015 budget (see 1505130047).
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
House Appropriations cleared five amendments to the original budget. None affected NTIA or NIST priorities. The IANA transition provision received some attention at two House hearings last week on the transition and related ICANN issues (see 1505130061), but House Appropriations members didn’t mention the provision or voice opposition to it during the committee’s Wednesday markup.
House Appropriations Commerce Subcommittee Chairman John Culberson, R-Texas, defended the reductions to some agencies’ funding in the budget as a necessity because of discretionary spending caps included in the 2011 Budget Control Act. “Because of that cap, we’ve been forced to prioritize,” he said. Subcommittee Republicans prioritized funding for law enforcement and counterterrorism programs, including those related to cybersecurity, Culberson said. Office of Management and Budget Director Shaun Donovan voiced the White House’s “serious concerns” Tuesday with the proposed budget. He wrote House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers, R-Ky., that it would underfund “important investments and includes highly problematic ideological riders.” NTIA didn’t comment on House Appropriations’ passage of the budget. ICANN doesn’t take a position on legislation, but “obviously anything that artificially delays or blocks the transition is concerning,” said Jamie Hedlund, ICANN vice president-strategic programs, in an interview.
It’s surprising there wasn’t vocal opposition to the IANA transition provision during the markup since the provision makes "it harder for NTIA to participate in the process,” said New America’s Open Technology Institute Senior Policy Counsel Danielle Kehl in an interview. The provision “sends mixed signals” given that questions during a House Communications Subcommittee hearing last week on the IANA transition indicated the House was moving toward a consensus for increased oversight over the transition rather than attempting to stop it completely, Kehl said. “It’s a little strange to also have a provision in the budget that prevents NTIA from spending money” on the transition, she said.
The IANA transition provision, if kept in the finalized budget, would extend an existing prohibition on the agency’s use of funding for the transition that first appeared in the FY 2015 so-called cromnibus appropriations bill that President Barack Obama signed in December (see 1412170034). The IANA transition provision proved more controversial at that point and encountered opposition, but in the months since, “we have seen NTIA figure out how to continue to be involved and give progress updates on the transition process as it’s moved forward,” Kehl said. “There may have been people who have taken that as a sign that things are OK” under the provision, she said. “I don’t think that necessarily means that it is, but I think that’s how some people interpreted it.”
NetChoice CEO Steve DelBianco, who voiced concerns during last week’s House IP Subcommittee hearing on the IANA transition about the transition provision’s inclusion in the FY 2016 Commerce budget, told us he continues to believe “NTIA needs to be allowed to use its funds to respond to questions from Congress and report” on ICANN community proposals on the IANA transition that are in the public comment process. DelBianco said he doesn’t believe the IANA transition provision’s language would prohibit NTIA from responding to questions from Congress on the transition, though the provision’s language isn’t completely clear. A likely NTIA extension of its current contract with ICANN for the IANA functions beyond the contract’s current Sept. 30 expiration date is good because it provides assurance to ICANN stakeholders that they can “take all the time” they need to plan the transition, he said. The transition provision in the FY 2016 budget could prove worrisome because “it’s a bad idea to push off the transition for two years even if the community has a consensus proposal that meets the U.S. government’s requirements,” DelBianco said. The transition provision could potentially prohibit a transition even if ICANN proposes a consensus transition plan that is acceptable to NTIA, which “would send the wrong signal to the global multistakeholder community,” he said.