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CAGW: FCC Commissioners Are Porkers of the Month for July '04 WASHINGTON, July 8 /PRNewswire/ -- Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today named the five commissioners of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Porkers of the Month for voting 5-0 to approve a plan to swap airwave spectrum with Nextel Communications at a below-market price. The FCC's five Porkers are Chairman Michael K. Powell and Commissioners Kathleen Q. Abernathy, Michael J. Copps, Jonathan S. Edelstein, and Kevin J. Martin.While the FCC regulators claim to have solved a public safety issue, in reality they capitulated to Nextel's scheme to obtain contiguous blocks of valuable spectrum at a substantially reduced cost. Nextel is trading its fragmented, non-nationwide spectrum in the 700, 800 and 900 MHz bands, estimated to be worth $1.2 billion, in exchange for prime nationwide spectrum in the valuable 1.9 GHz band, estimated to be worth as much as $7 billion. It is ironic that Nextel is getting nearly a $5 billion windfall to "correct" an interference problem it caused in the first place. In a time of record budget deficits, the FCC is clueless as to how much money an auction would bring in for taxpayers. The swap is a clear example of corporate welfare -- a sweetheart deal that puts rival carriers at a disadvantage by giving Nextel a valuable public resource for practically nothing. There were several solutions before the FCC that would have addressed the public safety issue while protecting taxpayers. The cellular industry trade group, the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association, backs a plan to give Nextel less desirable airwaves in the 2.1 Gigahertz frequency at a price of $3 billion. Since Congress gave the FCC the authority to use public auctions for electromagnetic spectrum, the process has returned some $14.4 billion since 1994. Some in Congress have fortunately taken notice of the FCC sticking it to taxpayers. Responding to requests from Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), the General Accounting Office (GAO) decided Tuesday to review whether the FCC's spectrum-exchange proposal violates federal laws against the private sale of public resources. Rep. Jim Nussle (R-Iowa) has introduced H.R. 4715, the Spectrum Accountability Act, to reaffirm the intent of Congress that the FCC should use competitive bidding for the grant of commercial spectrum. In addition, Nextel's rivals are preparing legal challenges to the FCC decision. For violating the law, approving a corporate welfare giveaway hatched by Nextel, distorting the cellular communications market, and passing up a multi- billion dollar opportunity for taxpayers, CAGW names the Federal Communications Commission its Porker of the Month for July 2004. Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, mismanagement and abuse in government. Citizens Against Government Waste CONTACT: Mark Carpenter or Tom Finnigan of the Citizens AgainstGovernment Waste, +1-202-467-5300 Web site: http://www.cagw.org/ |