A bad bargain

Republicans and Democrats have agreed to sell spectrum and use the proceeds to pay for payroll tax cuts and unemployment benefits. Sounds like a good deal all the way around, right?

No.

To begin with, spectrum is a limited resource. Once it is sold, it is gone. Payroll tax cuts and unemployment benefits are long-term recurring needs which should not be supported even in the short run by one-off sales.

It's a little like chopping up the piano for firewood — in the Spring.

Secondly, far more jobs would be created over the long term if we (we as in us, as in U.S.) held our spectrum back, or made it available for free, to anyone.

How can that be, with the auction expected to raise $25 billion?

Because innovation would follow such a major lowering of "barriers to entry" into wireless markets. Not selling spectrum to fat and entrenched oligopolies, but allowing general access to hungry and smart entrepreneurs would encourage new companies to spring up and new industries to flourish. Tremendous growth and more tax revenues in the long run would actually pay for programs that proceeds from this one time auction may offset temporarily.

But no, the fix is in. AT&T and Verizon will buy up most of the spectrum and Americans will be stuck with extortionist policies as powerful corporate "persons" profit by limiting our choice of phones, dictating usage through lawyered-up sleight-of-hand, and bundling unwanted services.

How badly does this reek? First clue is support by Oregon's Rep. Greg Walden, AT&T's main man in Washington. That right there smells like a used fish barrel.

In "The National Journal:"

The provision in the House spectrum bill is aimed at ensuring the FCC can't keep the nation's two biggest wireless providers ,Verizon Wireless and AT&T, from participating in future spectrum auctions. Energy and Commerce Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., who drafted the House spectrum legislation, said last month that he doesn't think it's good public policy to exclude any market players from participating in spectrum auctions.

AT&T has echoed Walden's view on the issue. "Auctions should be open, not closed. Any qualified carrier, including those on today's letter, should have a chance to bid on any spectrum available in an auction," AT&T Senior Executive Vice President Jim Cicconi said in a statement. "This group, however, wants the FCC to stack the deck in its favor. Congress is right to resist this notion." –

By the way, Cicconi has made several vitriolic statements as AT&T blundered around trying to duopolize the mobile phone industry. Look him up. If AT&T likes a proposal, get ready to hurt.

The second clue that this is not a good deal is the standard-issue fiscal recklessness of those on the left who continue the magical thinking of getting something for nothing. "Win-win," chortles the threadbare Democrat while AT&T and its shill Verizon buy from him an apple with money they just picked from his pocket. How sad.

It's a bad bargain between the worst inclinations of both major parties.