DeMint Outlines GOP Commerce Committee Priorities for 2013 and Beyond
Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., said he would immediately work to free up more spectrum for wireless carriers, remove unnecessary telecom regulations and ensure that the FCC is not “preemptively” regulating the industry, if he were to become chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee. He told us in an interview last week that the future of telecom policy depends entirely on which party wins the Senate majority this November. “I hope I have a chance to be chairman and move some positive legislation instead of just trying to stop bad stuff,” he said.
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There is speculation that DeMint, the third most senior Republican in the committee after the retiring Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, is a likely candidate to become ranking member next session. And a handful of neck-and-neck Senate races could give the GOP a majority in the upper chamber and propel DeMint to become the next Commerce Committee chairman. Committee roles are generally determined via seniority, but Republicans vote on their chairmen and ranking members, and could theoretically choose someone else, an industry source said.
DeMint has been outspoken in his desire to minimize federal regulation of the booming telecommunications marketplace and as chairman he said he'd do his best to get government out of the way. This year DeMint introduced the Next Generation Television Marketplace Act (S-2008), which would repeal from the Communications Act mandates on carriage and purchase of certain broadcast signals by cable and satellite companies; repeal retrans and compulsory license provisions; and repeal media ownership rules. DeMint is also the author of S-492, which aims to rewrite the Communications Act to prohibit federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Today’s communications laws are “really set up for decades-old monopoly principles,” said DeMint. “They have got to be transformed into a competitive and dynamic industry at every level. I think that if we win the election we can get some consensus in the industry on how to move forward. I can probably get some of the good Democrats in the committee on board.”
DeMint said he would first call for a federal spectrum inventory and then develop a plan on how to get those assets to industry members in order to create more competition, were he to become chairman. Second, DeMint said he would ensure that current telecom regulations are technologically agnostic to products like video, texts and data. Finally, DeMint said he would pressure the FCC to move away from “preemptively regulating things where there is no problem” to prosecuting companies “where there is problem.” DeMint said he would like to see telecom companies bring more transparency to the way they bill customers for their services and would encourage voluntary best practices to simplify and standardize their services.
"The Internet and telecom is expanding more quickly because it is not being encumbered by government,” he said. “There are a lot of folks here who think it is a public service, that it needs to be completely regulated. It is a private industry, it is very competitive, there are lots of choices, broadband is pretty well built out, over 90 percent across the country. We don’t need the government in there to decide winners and losers.”
DeMint would not say whether he was eyeing the 2014 reauthorization of the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act as a vehicle for telecommunications reform. “I don’t want to get that far out now, we are developing a strategic plan of where we want to go in the committee and telecom so I'm not going to get too ahead of myself.”