Why The Spectrum Section of the Jobs Bill Is An OMB Fantasy and a Political and Policy Nightmare

[Commentary] Not surprisingly, the ubiquitous combination of incentive auctions/D Block re-allocation/Public Safety Network has made its way into the proposed American Jobs Act. Somewhat surprisingly, the spectrum piece is not simply a reprint of the Hutchison/Rockefeller S.911 Bill or the Democratic House discussion draft. It’s not even a straight cut and paste from Senate Majority Leader Reid’s Debt Ceiling/Deficit Reduction draft that gave the broadcasters conniptions but raised the revenue for debt reduction.

No, this was clearly written by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which took the opportunity to “enhance” the basic idea of incentive auctions and the D Block reallocation/Public Safety network with some bright ideas of its own. It’s as if the President shouted down to OMB in the basement while they were scrambling to get this bill together and said: “Yo! Make sure you throw in that public safety incentive auction spectrum thingy we keep talking about!” And the folks down in OMB, realizing that for once they could draft a bill that no one with any actual spectrum policy experience cared about, proceeded to draft a bill whose short title should have been: “OMB Fantasy Spectrum Bill To Raise Revenue And Screw Everything Else.” The bill adds no fewer than 10 new references to OMB in the spectrum policy section, each designed to insert OMB in positions of authority over the Federal Communications Commission and National telecommunications and Information Administration in entirely unprecedented ways. The bill contains a spectrum fee provision, a perenniel OMB wish-list favorite, but with the surprise twist that it requires the FCC to impose spectrum fees on everyone: including folks like AT&T and Verizon who got licenses at auction.