Rush Eyeing Telecom Rewrite Talks for Q1 of 2017

The first step, Rush believes, may be convening interested parties with planning sessions for a rewrite, a meeting he initially intended to call this fall (see 1608080022). Other Democrats including Reps. John Yarmuth, D-Ky., and Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., encouraged a major congressional revamp of the law then.

“We weren’t able to do that,” Rush said in a recent interview. “We got sidetracked due to the elections. But we want to do that probably sometime during the first quarter.”

Rush, a longtime Commerce member active on telecom policy, sometimes breaks from other Democrats at the forefront of his committee and has questioned the direction of outgoing FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. He joined with Pallone and other Democrats a year ago to tell Wheeler of concerns with oversight hearing answers they judged incomplete. In 2014, he joined a letter opposing the FCC’s application of Communications Act Title II to broadband, as was done in its subsequent net neutrality order. In January 2015, he said he would introduce bipartisan legislation to codify open internet protections but never followed up. This year, he cautioned the FCC about Wheeler’s set-top box proceeding, a flash point that troubled some Republicans and Democrats. He voted in favor of the unsuccessful Kelsey Smith Act (HR-4889) this summer despite Democrats overall protesting due to what they felt were insufficient privacy protections. He also has eyed concerns about inmate calling fees and this month joined with Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., to introduce a resolution on them (see 1612080060). In July, he told the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council he was thinking of forming a bipartisan coalition to take on a rewrite beginning from scratch, with a spirit of bipartisanship he had said previously was missing in a GOP overhaul effort from the last Congress (see 1607140074).

“I think it’s very important that we rewrite this telecommunications law, which we haven’t done since 1996,” Rush told us. “And you can imagine the changes in the landscape in telecommunications. So we’ve got to try to catch up with it. At least if we can’t get in front of it, we try to catch up with it, so we’ll be able to legislate on any current scenario under the current regime.”

A Rush spokeswoman said his office’s overarching plans haven't changed and she anticipates, as before, “a diverse group of interested parties” at the planning table. “As of today, we do not have a firm grasp on what that will look like, but when January rolls around I’m sure that I can get more detail from the Congressman on what his plans are,” she emailed Tuesday.

Incoming Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., and his counsel David Redl were key figures in a GOP effort to launch an overhaul in 2013 and 2014, a time when Walden led the Communications Subcommittee. They solicited extensive feedback to telecom white papers throughout 2014 but the effort stalled in 2015, with Walden blaming net neutrality as a partisan distraction. Walden said last week he will retain Redl as chief telecom counsel, and said earlier this year that he thinks the coming year is a prime opportunity for a telecom rewrite (see 1607220053). He plans to announce his successor as Communications Subcommittee chair in January. Redl said early this month the white paper responses could be a baseline for a future Commerce effort, if not a definitive record now (see 1612020035).

Like many members of Commerce, Rush’s records show many donations from the telecom and media industries, including some companies that have pushed for a rewrite. In the last cycle, the political action committees for NCTA and Cox Enterprises gave $10,000 each, followed by AT&T’s giving a combined total of $8,650 and Verizon's $6,000. PACs for NAB, Charter Communications and T-Mobile gave $5,000 each, as did the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Among other PACs, Google’s gave $4,500, the one for CenturyLink $3,500, those belonging to Sprint, USTelecom and Facebook $2,000 each, and for CTIA’s and Viacom’s $1,500 each. The Center for Responsive Politics tallied Rush contributions from 1991 through the current cycle and showed AT&T and NCTA among the top five contributors. AT&T gave $105,964, with $96,564 coming from its PAC spending, and NCTA $85,497, with all but $500 listed as coming from PAC money. Verizon was the ninth-biggest donor over those years, at $67,500, and Comcast also near the top with $45,500. His career-long records total shows just under $700,000 from the communications and electronics sector. Rush had sought to lead the Communications Subcommittee after the 2010 elections but lost to current ranking member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif. He faced some criticism then for telecom industry ties.

“If Rep. Rush wants to open up the act to make specific improvements, we’ll be glad consider them,” said Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood. “If he’s just going to make substance-free claims that we have to rewrite good law just because it’s a certain number of years old, those claims carry no more weight when he makes them than when Chairman Walden does.”

Comprehensive telecom overhaul “is a big project, but it needs to get done -- the right way,” said Free State Foundation President Randolph May. “The Republicans should welcome bipartisan participation in the project from Rep. Rush and others, and Congressman Rush has been less adamantly pro-regulation than many others in his party. But here’s an important point from my perspective: An updated Communications Act needs to be clearly deregulatory in direction and technologically neutral in a way that the 1996 Act was not. At the end of the day, achieving this result will be more important than achieving some level of bipartisan buy-in that doesn’t accomplish the deregulatory orientation.”