Hands Off the FCC

Last month, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) threatened to start a filibuster to prevent a vote on campaign finance reform. On Tuesday another blow is expected in Congress, and this one bears Lott’s fingerprints as well. The Senate Appropriations Committee will take up a measure that would effectively prevent the Federal Communications Commission from even thinking about requiring radio and TV stations to provide political candidates with free air time.

A few years ago, such a requirement was seen as a fair exchange for giving a huge and valuable new part of the airwave spectrum to the broadcast industry. As then-FCC Chairman Reed Hundt said last year to broadcasters in urging free campaign air time, “The property you use is public property.”

Free air time would genuinely undermine the corrupting influence of money on politics, for candidates at all levels in the 1996 elections spent well over half of their campaign donation revenues on media.

Broadcasters would lose revenues if they had to provide free time--they earned $400 million, or just over 1% of their total ad revenues, on political spots in the 1996 presidential election year. But Congress seems to have forgotten that when the federal government gave the industry a huge portion of public real estate--the airwaves--without charge in 1934, it required broadcasters to serve the public interest and expected them to use as much as 30% of their air time for noncommercial, public-interest programming. The networks lobbied that down to almost nothing over the years. The new spectrum space handed over in 1996 is valued at from $20 billion to $100 billion.

The public deserves something in return. Last month, however, when broadcasters heard that a majority of FCC commissioners now favor imposing free-time requirements on them, they lobbied Lott and Sen. Conrad R. Burns (R-Mont.) to put together the FCC prohibition. Lott introduced the measure as an amendment last month, and Burns says he’ll attach it to a bill funding disaster relief for storm-racked states and military operations overseas.

The political calculation is that President Clinton, despite his statements in favor of free-time requirements, would not dare veto such a bill. But in his radio address Saturday the president reiterated his strong opposition to Senate interference with the FCC.

Burns ridiculously defends his legislation by saying that he’s only preventing the FCC from imposing a restriction that would deprive broadcasters of “their property rights.” Equally specious is Burns’ argument that the legislation would merely prevent the FCC from “overreaching its authority.”

Congress has already asked the FCC to determine what the appropriate public-interest payback would be in exchange for the gift of the digital spectrum, and the Supreme Court has ruled that the FCC may dictate such obligations.

President Clinton should point out that this measure is pure arm-twisting by powerful campaign contributors--the broadcasters--and their friends in the Senate who are fighting tooth and nail against campaign finance reform. Then he should wield his veto pen without a twinge of guilt.