The FTC would receive 1.3 percent less funding under the White House’s FY 2015 budget proposal, released Tuesday (http://1.usa.gov/1kVbb6b). The budget puts the FTC’s 2014 estimated budget at $298 million, slightly above the 2015 proposed $293 million outlay. But the 2015 proposal is still higher than the actual $279 million 2013 budget, according to the White House proposal. The budget also “proposes to increase the Hart-Scott-Rodino fees and index them for the percentage annual change in the gross national product,” and create a new merger fee category for mergers valued at over $1 billion. The fee changes would take effect in 2016, according to the proposal. The FTC did not comment on the proposed budget.

TVFreedom began focusing its advertising on a “clean” satellite reauthorization this week, as groups sent letters to Congress asking for that. The TVFreedom coalition, formed earlier this year, represents various broadcast interests, including NAB. From its inception it advertised in Capitol Hill publications, but it began explicitly calling for a clean reauthorization of the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act in various Capitol Hill publications this week, days after NAB and TVFreedom announced opposition to a rumored STELA draft being developed in the House Communications Subcommittee. Broadcasters are unhappy with the proposals removing broadcast channels from the basic tier, in particular, as well as others that they say amount to a gift to the cable industry. “Tell Congress: We need a clean STELA reauthorization,” said an ad on The Hill’s website. In a Politico newsletter, a TVFreedom ad said, “We need a clean STELA reauthorization, not another vehicle to hike consumers’ cable bills. Pay-TV is trying to gouge consumers by taking the channels they watch most out of their basic package. They are ripping people off to boost record profits.” A spokesman for TVFreedom confirmed the explicit mention of STELA in the advertising is a new move as of this week, saying STELA is an “increased priority for us” after last week’s revelations. STELA is to expire at the end of the year. Other lobbyists have questioned broadcasters’ interpretation and have suggested the rumored STELA draft is actually quite narrow in scope and what should have been expected. The Americans for Prosperity, the American Conservative Union and TVFreedom member the Hispanic Institute sent letters to the subcommittee this week backing what they would consider clean STELA reauthorization. “We urge you to oppose attaching ancillary provisions outside of the original scope and intent of this legislation,” said the letter from the Americans for Prosperity. “Our concern is that changing the way that broadcasters negotiate with cable and satellite television providers would stray from the original intention of the law, as well as favor one private party at the expense of another.” STELA is hardly the “proper legislative vehicle to carry any kind of substantial changes,” the American Conservative Union said in its letter, suggesting instead that the House Republican leaders address such proposals as part of a broader communications law overhaul. The Hispanic Institute is “disappointed to see the interests and profits of pay-TV providers coming before the Hispanic consumer,” it said in its letter to Congress.

House Communications Subcommittee ranking member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., supported HR-2126, the Energy Efficiency Improvement Act, on the House floor Tuesday. “Title III of this bill is legislation I authored with [Republican] Congressman Mike Rogers of Michigan to make the federal government’s IT and data centers more energy efficient,” Eshoo said. “By requiring federal agencies to utilize the best technologies and energy management strategies, our legislation will reduce the federal government’s energy use, save taxpayer dollars, and set the standard for the private sector.” The House was expected to vote on the bill late Tuesday, and her office expected the measure to pass. “The legislation also creates an Open Data Initiative to make federal data center energy usage available in a way that empowers further data center innovation, while protecting national security interests,” Eshoo said.

Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian will brief the Congressional Privacy Caucus at 10 a.m. Wednesday in 2218 Rayburn, it said in a news release. It said her remarks will focus on designing products to promote digital privacy. Reps. Joe Barton, R-Tex., and Diana DeGette, D-Colo., co-chair the caucus, which discussed data security and data breach notifications at its last briefing with FTC Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen, public interest representatives and retail industry officials.

Public Knowledge said it supports the Transparency in Assertion of Patents Act (S-2049). The bill, introduced last week by Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., would extend the FTC’s authority to regulate patent assertion entities’ use of pre-litigation demand letters. Public Knowledge advocated for Senate Commerce Committee action on demand letters at a November hearing, and S-2049 “implements many of the reforms that we advocated in our testimony at the hearing,” said Charles Duan, Public Knowledge’s director-Patent Reform Project, in a statement Friday. The Senate Commerce Committee is to vote on S-2049 during an executive session Wednesday.

Several key stakeholders are set to testify on the reauthorization of the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act Wednesday at 10 a.m. in 2123 Rayburn. The House Communications Subcommittee, which is preparing a draft of STELA legislation that has already upset broadcasters (CD Feb 28 p1), is holding the hearing. Witnesses scheduled are NCTA CEO Michael Powell, a former FCC chairman; Schurz Communications Senior Vice President of Broadcasting Marci Burdick, a board member of NAB, which has said it strenuously opposes current provisions of the STELA draft; TiVo General Counsel Matt Zinn, who told us at length last fall of his objections to integration ban legislation now expected to be part of the STELA draft; and DirecTV Executive Vice President Mike Palkovic. TVFreedom, a recently formed coalition representing broadcaster interests and including NAB as a member, slammed industry reports that the STELA draft will allow cable operators to remove broadcast stations from the basic tier. “We are outraged by stealth efforts of pay-TV to eliminate consumer access to broadcast TV on the basic cable tier,” TVFreedom’s spokesman said in a statement Friday. “Forcing the most popular stations off this ‘basic-lifeline-cable-tier’ could deprive customers of local news, emergency information, and severe weather warnings that are only provided by broadcasters. This bad deal being driven by pay-TV interests will most severely impact Latinos, seniors and lower-income families who are most heavily reliant on over-the-air broadcast and basic tier TV when disaster strikes.” He criticized the alleged move as “another consumer rip-off.” The subcommittee has not confirmed any provisions in the STELA draft legislation it is preparing.

Watch for privacy packages put together by House Republican leadership, Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, said on an episode of C-SPAN’s The Communicators set to air Saturday. He named House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., and broadly, committee chairmen, including Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., as those interested in putting legislation together. The lawmakers sense a growing consumer demand for privacy legislation, “and they're beginning to put packages together that you'll hopefully see on the floor sometime this summer,” said Barton, founder and co-chair of the Congressional Privacy Caucus and a former House Commerce Committee chairman. He also slammed net neutrality rules that the FCC hopes to reinstate. “Obviously Netflix should pay more than someone who uses the Internet once a month,” Barton said. “I'm being very simplistic, but that’s the genesis.” Companies have spent billions to “set up their systems” and “should be allowed to charge based on volume,” he said. Barton expressed support for House Republicans’ goals of updating the Communications Act, citing recent conversation with Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., about more “oversight hearings and fact-finding hearings” to that end. He hopes there will be a bill in the next Congress. He defended his efforts backing legal online poker and touted poker as a game of skill, distinguishing it from other gambling. Of a recent vote on cellphone unlocking, Barton accused of confusion certain members who spoke in opposition to a bill, which passed the House earlier this week. Barton is “hopeful” of getting his Do Not Track Kids Act advancing in this Congress, he said, mentioning “all kinds of privacy issues that have made the front pages.” If the Fourth Amendment were ratified today, it “would include a specific right to privacy,” he predicted. He called the lobbying of tech companies “modest” but suggested lobbying forces have more power if they have a presence in a Congress member’s home district or state. He cited AT&T, based in Dallas and near his own district, as an example. He would be likelier to speak to AT&T workers if he knew they lived in his district and commuted there, he said. “That is much more effective,” he said of those home district connections. “On any big issue, the Washington side of it tends to balance out,” given so many trade associations and lobbyists around the Capitol, he said.

The Senate Commerce Committee fast-tracked consideration of the Transparency in Assertion of Patents Act (S-2049), saying Thursday that the committee plans to vote on the bill during its executive session Wednesday. S-2049 is one of eight bills on the docket for the session. The legislation, which Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., introduced Thursday, would expand the FTC’s authority to regulate patent assertion entities’ use of pre-litigation demand letters against potential lawsuit defendants. Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., is a co-sponsor of the bill (CD Feb 28 p12). The executive session begins at 2:30 p.m. in 253 Russell.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., backs Communications Subcommittee ranking member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., to be the top Democrat on the House Commerce Committee, said a letter Pelosi circulated to colleagues Thursday and given to us by a spokeswoman. Current ranking member Henry Waxman, D-Calif., announced he will retire after his current term, and both Eshoo and the more senior Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., said they intend to seek that top slot. “In that spirit, of moving with a policy for the future, I strongly endorse Anna Eshoo,” Pelosi wrote, saying she had not intended to make a public endorsement but was doing so since so many asked. “For over 20 years, Anna has represented the people of Silicon Valley and their innovative spirit in the House with great success as she conveyed the priorities of House Democrats to her constituents,” Pelosi said, citing Eshoo’s commitment to an agenda of innovation and in support of “STEM [science, technology, education and math] education, broadband capacity, and advanced technology development.”

Google, Cisco and Netflix were among 24 companies that told Senate Judiciary Committee leaders that they want the committee to strike a provision in the Patent Transparency and Improvements Act (S-1720) that would require the Patent and Trademark Office to stop using the broadest reasonable interpretation (BRI) patent evaluation standard and instead use the federal courts’ claim construction standard. Eliminating the BRI standard “would undermine the goal of producing high quality patents” and “would reverse much of the important progress that has been made under the America Invents Act (AIA) to reduce frivolous patent litigation,” the companies said in a letter to Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and ranking member Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. AIA created PTO’s inter partes review and post-grant review processes to provide a non-litigation method of challenging the validity of patents -- processes that have become popular remedies, the companies said. Eliminating BRI will “greatly weaken” both processes and “could produce inconsistent results where a single patent is under evaluation before the PTO in multiple proceedings,” the companies said. Industry observers see S-1720 as the marquee Senate bill addressing so-called abusive patent litigation, although other bills on the issue are under consideration in the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees.