Trust fund bill motionless in last rush of Congress
Chances are slim now that Congress will endow public broadcasting with a trust fund this year. When the legislators return to work this week, they'll be busy enough trying to complete fiscal 1997 appropriations in the month before they adjourn early in October for late campaigning.
"About all we're saying is that we're hopeful something can be worked out," said a spokesman for Rep. Jack Fields (R-Tex.), the House telecommunications subcommittee chairman who had hoped to craft a permanent solution to pubcasting funding issue before he retires from Congress in December.
At this point in the year, "the only legislation that is going to pass is legislation that will move quickly," consuming only a tiny amount of floor time, says Mary Lou Joseph, NPR vice president.
Such a bill would have to be totally without controversy, and also would need a reason for quick action. That does not describe the Fields bill.
The pressure for an extraordinary solution to the funding question has dissipated, according to a well-placed pubcaster. There's no widespread sense of crisis for Big Bird, and funds continue to flow to CPB. Even though Fields did not produce an authorization bill for CPB funding, the House has gone ahead by approving appropriations through fiscal 1999. "As far as the lawmakers are concerned, the issue is out of the way for two years." His best guess is that CPB will "hobble along" with annual appropriations.
On the other hand, no matter which party controls the House next year, the likely telecom chairman will be a solid backer of pubcasting and a trust fund--Republican W.J. (Billy) Tauzin (La.) or Democrat Edward Markey (Mass.).
Mary Lou Joseph says there's incentive to complete a pubcasting funding bill, no matter which party controls the House next year. "When you're running a committee and responsibility for authorization bills is there, there's an incentive to get the job done."
Though Fields worked for months with pubcasters to revise their 1995 proposal for a trust fund that would replace annual CPB appropriations--and they spent more time revising his his February 1995 bill--he didn't line up enough support among colleagues to move the bill.
Subcommittee Democrats including Markey failed to offer an alternative to Fields' bill. They didn't support it because it authorized only a relatively small endowment of $1 billion. And they objected to its "earned-income" provisions that, among other things, would permit the sell-off of second and third public TV stations in a multi-station market.
Support for the Fields bill "simply wasn't there," either among Democrats or Republicans, says a Democratic House staffer. Among other things, Democrats took issue with the way Fields wrote and revised the bill, incorporating earned-income ideas advocated by a minority of station executives. "This is not a compromise reached between legislators," said the aide. "It was a compromise reached between Fields' staff and some but not all of elements of the industry."
And on the Republican side, Rep. Thomas J. Bliley Jr. (Va.), chairman of the Commerce Committee and Fields' boss, reportedly never gave the go-ahead for a mark-up of the bill, though the subcommittee held a fast-start hearing the day after he introduced the bill in February, and negotiated extensively with pubcasters since then over revisions. The Commerce Committee chairman controls the unified staff that serves both the full committee and its subcommittees, according to an aide.
At the same time, Bliley's Senate counterpart, Sen. Larry Pressler (R-S.D.) talked frequently about introducing a bill, but never did. In May he floated the draft of a trust-fund authorization similar to Fields', but it never went anywhere.
In the end, the Fields bill was left without a politically viable way to endow the trust fund that he proposed to replace annual CPB appropriations. Deficit hawks laid claim to every loose dollar or scrap of spectrum that could have been directed toward a trust fund, and commercial broadcasters blocked auctions of broadcast channels, as Fields proposed in midyear.
The trust fund proposal remains a viable idea for funding the field, says Jeff Clarke, a Fields constituent and g.m. of KUHT, Houston. But he suggests that the permanent funding mechanism will face opposition from some politicians if its charter completely frees pubcasters from oversight by Congress.
"There's a mixed bag of folks that still want Congress to have some oversight and control," says Clarke.
Web page posted Sept. 8, 1996
Copyright 1996 by Current Publishing Committee