Waiting for the United States Postal Service’s (USPS) much-anticipated business plan feels a lot like Waiting for Godot. Will it ever arrive? Does it even exist? A whopping 108 days have passed since the self-imposed deadline created by USPS leadership. We aren’t happy (read our latest blog on the issue here). Consumers shouldn’t be happy. And Congress certainly shouldn’t be happy, because any reform initiated by lawmakers must be seen to completion by stable, competent USPS leadership. In the wake of Postmaster General Brennan’s retirement, the agency will need to find a reform-minded new leader who can get the job done and deliver a plan capable of getting the USPS back into the black. TPA has no shortage of ideas on how to pull this off. Stay tuned for even more reform proposals coming from us.
TPA Testifies Before Senate Appropriations Committee about Private C-Band Sale
Yesterday, I testified before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government on the pressing issue of mid-band spectrum auctions. It was an honor to be asked by Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) to present TPA’s concerns with the potential private sale of the valuable sliver of mid-band spectrum known as the C-band. The C-band part of the spectrum is especially important for making sure that consumers will have 5G access in their homes, at work, and everywhere in-between, because of its ability to support larger volumes of mobile data than lower frequencies. And, by using this mid-band spectrum to deliver 5G to millions of consumers, internet providers can be sure that information gets transmitted over the digital domain quickly and effectively. And that’s critical because 5G is at least ten times faster than 4G and doesn’t require the pricey infrastructure currently required to get internet out to rural areas. That’s right: internet providers can use C-band spectrum to close the digital divide.
A group of three – used to be four – satellite companies known as the C-Band Alliance (CBA) has been lobbying the agency and lawmakers for the right to commandeer C-band and sell it privately in order to clear the spectrum of current users. There’s just one small problem: their proposal leaves the FCC and taxpayers – the current owners of the spectrum – out of the equation entirely. If the CBA gets their way, they’ll receive all the benefit from selling C-band spectrum without any guarantee that the true owner of the spectrum – taxpayers – will see a single cent of the proceeds. And the stakes are too high to ignore, since the proceeds from a C-band auction could generate upwards of $60 billion for taxpayers.
Nowhere in the CBA’s proposal is a plan or guarantee that taxpayers will be made whole. The satellite group talks a lot about making a “voluntary contribution” to the Treasury once their private, opaque transaction is complete, but interestingly enough, there are never any details provided. TPA meticulously analyzed the ins-and-outs of CBA’s proposal shortly after it was announced. I had deep concerns after hearing about this “voluntary contribution” to taxpayers, so I had a call with the C-Band Alliance and shared these concerns with a senior employee at the organization. This employee kept reassuring me that spectrum owners, taxpayers, would see their due at the end of the day, but repeatedly refused to provide any concrete details. He also railed against the FCC and its auction process, despite a proven track record by the agency in conducting more than 100 spectrum auctions since 1994 and compensating taxpayers more than $120 billion over the past 25 years. Instead of acknowledging this effective, transparent way of doing business, the employee claimed that a truly free market approach would sidestep the FCC entirely. It is amazing that an organization like the C-Band Alliance (which has benefitted greatly from the current spectrum allocation process) wouldn’t trust the FCC, an agency that has given them so much.
If the FCC would be running the show, proceeds from winning bids would actually be deposited in the Treasury, just as they have been for every spectrum auction run by the FCC since 1994. Taxpayers would see dividends from the valuable spectrum assets that they own, instead of losing them in a fly-by-night sale devoid of any transparency. I want to thank Sen. Kennedy for his work on bringing these issues to taxpayers’ attention, and asking all the right questions.
Another #DemDebate - Same Old Bad Ideas
I spent 3 hours on Tuesday night watching the Democratic presidential hopefuls talk about how much taxpayer money they want to spend. Yikes! With Medicare for All and green energy subsidies, the tally topped trillions of dollars.
If you’re a second-tier candidate like Andrew Yang or Pete Buttigieg, you will try and make a mark and differentiate yourself. Well, that’s not what happened. The second-tier candidates want to spend taxpayer money as prolifically as the frontrunners, just with a different twist. Hitting back against Sen. Sanders’ (I-Vt.) proposed jobs guarantee, former tech executive (and current internet meme) Andrew Yang offered a simple, yet profound insight: “The fact is most Americans do not want to work for the federal government.” This is certainly true in a narrow sense, as few Americans want to resign themselves to the doldrums of federal paper-pushing. But hundreds of millions of taxpayers work for the federal government without the employee badge by paying large shares of their income each and every year to an expanding bureaucracy. Yet like the other Democratic candidates on the stage last night, Yang would vastly increase taxes on working Americans to finance his guaranteed income scheme. Yang would introduce a 10 percent federal value-added tax which would raise the prices of millions of goods across the country. These taxes are known to hit poorest residents the hardest, since low-income households typically spend the largest percentage of their incomes on household necessities. Sure, Yang claims that everyday items would be exempt from his tax, but unelected, out-of-touch bureaucrats will likely make the final call as to what constitutes a “necessity.” European nations typically have these taxes, and by all accounts, their working classes pay far more in taxes than their American counterparts. At least Yang is honest in “asking” ordinary Americans to foot the bill for his proposed entitlement. Candidates such as Sen. Sanders promise free college tuition, Medicare-for-All, and everything else under the sun while proposing to bilk the wealthy. It’s easy to invoke the past (specifically the 1950s) to justify sky-high top tax rates, but candidates leave out critical details in pushing their “progressive” visions. As a percent of economic output, individual income tax revenue was actually lower in the ‘50s when America had 90-plus percent tax rates. Revenues went up a decade later, amidst the prosperity of the 1960s. But that was only after President Kennedy slashed the top tax rate from 91 percent to 70 percent.
Unless one of these Democratic candidates is able to engineer another decade of economic growth after massively hiking taxes (spoiler alert: very unlikely), revenues are unlikely to increase as debt spirals out of control. At that point, taxes on everybody would have to go up, harming Americans already juggling multiple bills. But there’s an alternative to this tired old tax-and-spend theology. Maybe, just maybe, the presidential hopefuls could turn their attention toward curbing rampant government waste across agencies. For starters, there’s more than $140 billion in improper payments mainly from mammoth programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. Figuring out how to make these programs work better, instead of creating sprawling new programs, seems like a saner approach to making Americans’ lives easier. With more stringent safeguards on government spending, tax bills could decrease even further, driving prosperity to new heights. These are the debate ideas and conversations that Americans deserve, not higher taxes and lower-quality services.
Blogs:
Tuesday: No need for duplication with music venue
Wednesday: Section 230 Delivers for Conservative Voices on Digital Domain
Thursday: TPA President David Williams Testifies Before Congress Regarding FCC Spectrum Auctions and C-Band
Friday: USPS’s Promised Business Plan: More than 100 Days Late and Counting
Media:
October 12, 2019: The Daily Energy Insider mentioned TPA in their story, “FERC’s proposed PURPA rulemaking gains wide-ranging national support.”
October 14, 2019: The Cincinnati Enquirer ran TPA’s op-ed, “No need for duplication with music venue.”
October 16, 2019: TPA policy director Ross Marchand appeared on KRC55 (Cincinnati, Ohio) to talk about duplicate music venues being built in Cincinnati.
October 16, 2019: Townhall ran TPA’s op-ed, “Dem Candidates Determined as Ever to Soak the Middle-Class.”
October 17, 2019: WBFF (Fox, Baltimore) interviewed me about education spending in Baltimore.
October 17, 2019: RealClearHealth ran TPA’s op-ed, “Only Market Reforms Can End Scourge of Surprise Billing.”
October 17, 2019: Politico mentioned TPA in their “Morning Tech” newsletter.
October 18, 2019: FierceWireless mentioned TPA in their story, “C-Band Alliance taken to task in FCC oversight hearing.”
October 18, 2019: SpaceNews mentioned TPA in their story, “Senator pushes for FCC to run C-band auction, not satellite operators.”
Have a great weekend, and as always, thanks for your continued support.
Best,
David Williams
President
Taxpayers Protection Alliance
1401 K Street, NW
Suite 502
Washington, D.C. xxxxxx
www.protectingtaxpayers.org
