House Pulls NTIA Reauthorization Act, Passes FY24 Funding for Commerce Agencies

House leaders removed the NTIA Reauthorization Act (HR-4510) from floor consideration Tuesday amid other committees’ objections to it, the bill’s sponsors told us Wednesday. Chamber leaders previously scheduled consideration of HR-4510 under suspension of the rules (see 2403010073), along with two other telecom-focused bills. The House voted 339-85 Wednesday to pass H.Res. 1061, which amended vehicle HR-4366 to become the Consolidated Appropriations Act FY24 appropriations minibus package that includes reduced funding for NTIA and other Commerce Department agencies compared with FY 2023 but a slight increase for the DOJ Antitrust Division (see 2403040083).

House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Bob Latta, R-Ohio, and ranking member Doris Matsui, D-Calif., separately confirmed to us that chamber leaders pulled HR-4510 because other committees’ leaders objected to using the suspension process to swiftly approve the measure. The House Commerce Committee-cleared bill would elevate the NTIA administrator from assistant secretary to undersecretary of Commerce and proposes other steps to improve coordination of federal spectrum (see 2307270063). HR-4366 allocates $57 billion to NTIA, almost 5% less than the agency received during FY 2023 and more than 48% less than President Joe Biden sought last year in his budget request (see 2303130070).

Neither Latta nor Matsui would elaborate on who objected to HR-4510 or what their concerns were. “We’re working out some of the details with a couple of the other committees and I think you’ll see that up there in the next couple of weeks,” Latta told us. “I hate to say” which lawmakers or committees are involved in the dispute. “I just know that it was pulled, and I can’t recall what committees were upset about it,” Matsui said: “It’s unfortunate. I was ready to talk about” HR-4510 on the House floor.

The House Armed Services Committee is believed to be the primary panel with concerns, communications sector lobbyists told us. Armed Services does not have specific objections to HR-4510 but is holding up the bill because of the fight between NTIA and DOD over efforts to allow 5G use of the 3.1-3.45 GHz band, lobbyists said. The Biden administration’s national spectrum strategy charges the two agencies with co-leading a new study of the lower 3 GHz band that would follow a DOD-run analysis last year that scuttled efforts to pass legislation that would allow an FCC auction of some licenses on the frequency (see 2312280044).

There was behind-the-scenes chatter about whether other House panels also objected to HR-4510, including the Intelligence Committee, over concerns about NTIA’s work on the spectrum strategy implementation plan (see 2403050048). House Armed Services and Intelligence didn’t immediately comment.

The House passed the 988 Lifeline Cybersecurity Responsibility Act (HR-498) and DiasporaLink Act (HR-3385) on voice votes. HR-498, which House Commerce advanced last year, would amend the 2020 National Suicide Hotline Designation Act to require improved coordination and reporting on potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities within the 988 Lifeline in a bid to mitigate future cyberattacks and prevent disruption of services (see 2304050080). HR-3398 directs NTIA to submit a report to Congress on the feasibility of developing a trans-Atlantic submarine fiber cable connecting the U.S., the U.S. Virgin Islands, Ghana and Nigeria, aimed at improving network security.

HR-498 lead sponsor Rep. Jay Obernolte, R-Calif., House Commerce Health Subcommittee Chairman Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., and other lawmakers strongly backed HR-498 during floor debate Tuesday. They cited 988’s December 2022 outage, caused by a cyberattack, as a reason to enact the measure. It's “unknown how many individuals were hurt by” the 988 outage, but we know "individuals in emotional distress or suicide crisis were unable to utilize the Lifeline for hours,” Guthrie said. He hopes HR-498’s passage “will prevent future outages, so individuals can get the help they need.”

Every “minute that Lifeline is offline” provides “the potential for the loss of American lives because those resources are not available to them,” Obernolte said. HR-498 “is a vital step to make sure that a vital lifeline remains available to Americans who are depending on it.” 988 “is imperative to suicide prevention and utilized by constituents in every one of our districts,” said Rep. Kim Schrier, D-Wash.

House Judiciary Committee ranking member Jerry Nadler (N.Y.), Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) and more than two dozen other congressional Democrats continued to press ahead of the lower chamber vote on H.Res. 1061 Wednesday for legislative leaders to strike language from the package that bars DOJ Antitrust from using merger filing fees above the $233 million level the minibus authorizes. They argue the rider undermines congressional intent in the 2022 Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act and State Antitrust Enforcement Venue Act to give the agency broader authority to use the fees as a revenue source (see 2212220075). HR-4366’s proposed $233 million for DOJ Antitrust is more than 3% above what it received for FY 2023 but 28% less than what the Biden administration sought.

“Since Congress amended the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act to add merger filing fees in 1989,” DOJ Antitrust “has received a budget made up partially of fees and partially of appropriated funds from Congress,” Nadler and the other congressional Democrats said in a letter to leaders of the House and Senate Appropriations committees. “The purpose of the recently passed legislation was to provide additional fees from merger filings to” DOJ and Antitrust. “The 2022 amendment received significant bipartisan support in the Senate and the clear intent of the provision was best captured by the title which states it is ‘to increase antitrust enforcement resources,’ in order to ‘protect competition and promote antitrust enforcement,’” the lawmakers said.