The Hill

Venture Capitalists: Don't Treat Us As Hedge Funds | The Hill

Cecille Isidro — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 05:19:00 -0400

But groups including the New America Foundation, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge are urging the FCC to deny the request, ...

Deficit Claim on Health Bill Is Questioned | The Hill

Cecille Isidro — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 07:47:00 -0400

... the policy director at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, noting that lawmakers historically have not shown a willingness to make cuts to ... and more »

Obama's Pick Brings a New Savvy to the FCC | The Hill

Cecille Isidro — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 05:31:00 -0400

... promised during the Obama campaign will never see the light of day,” said Sascha Meinrath, director of New America Foundation's Wireless Future Program. ... and more »

Stimulus Spending Too Fast, Group Warns | The Hill

Cecille Isidro — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 05:01:00 -0400

In a letter sent this month to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, consumer groups including Consumer Federation of America, New America Foundation, ... and more »

CBO, Obama Forecast Widening Deficits | The Hill

Cecille Isidro — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 16:02:00 -0400

... both 2010 and 2011, along with a continued uptick in levels of unemployment through 2010, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. ... and more »

New America in The Hill | 'On stimulus, Sen. McCain, Bush divided'

Communications — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 00:23:00 -0500

On stimulus, Sen. McCain, Bush divided (The Hill)

“Just raining cash down — which seems like what Congress wants to do—is not going to have much of an effect,” declared Kevin Hassett, a senior McCain adviser, who appeared on a panel at the New America Foundation alongside the economic advisers to the leading Democratic candidates. more

Kids Accounts to Nurture Young Investors

Asset Building — Sun, 03 Apr 2005 09:15:00 -0400

Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) on KIDS Accounts and the Aspire Act (PDF Below).

Keeping our Commitments to American Workers on International Trade

Cecille Isidro — Thu, 11 Mar 2004 00:00:00 -0500

In 2002, after a nearly decade-long deadlock, Congress passed the most sweeping international trade legislation in 15 years.

By giving the president authority to negotiate new trade agreements, the United States has begun negotiating free-trade agreements with more than a dozen countries. President Bush has already signed free-trade agreements with Chile and Singapore, and he expects to sign at least two more this year.

In exchange for trade negotiating authority, Congress and the administration committed to assist those workers who lose their jobs due to increased imports and shifts in production. Unfortunately, our commitment to these workers has not received the energy and priority it deserves.

Expanded trade creates new jobs and provides consumers with greater choices at lower cost. At the same time, however, increased imports and the movement of factories from the United States overseas can cost some American workers their jobs.

Many of the more than 3 million manufacturing jobs lost since 1998 can be attributed to increased competition from abroad. But the costs associated with international competition are no longer limited to traditional manufacturing jobs.

Recently, even IBM moved some of its computer programming jobs -- once seen as the "safe jobs" in the new economy -- out of the country.

For those workers and thousands of others, the knowledge that the economy as a whole benefits from trade provides little solace. The inability or unwillingness of the government to respond to the needs of those workers is undoubtedly one reason that Americans appear doubtful of the benefits of free trade.

To address the legitimate and often overlooked needs of workers adversely affected by trade, the authors of the Trade Act of 2002 proposed to revise, expand and reinvigorate Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), the nation's largely moribund worker adjustment program. TAA was established 40 years ago, and its record has been spotty, due in large part to its limited resources.

The Trade Act of 2002 expanded TAA eligibility to include workers who lose their jobs due to shifts in production, workers who produce inputs into final products facing international competition, farmers and fishermen. Another important change was the provision of a refundable tax credit to help offset the cost of maintaining health insurance during the period of unemployment. Workers around the country have unanimously praised this provision.

The legislation also launched an innovative approach known as wage insurance. Older workers who qualify for wage insurance can receive half of the difference between their new and old wage. Wage insurance should help workers return to work at a lower cost than current programs. More important, it enables workers to get on-the-job training, which experience demonstrates is the most effective form of training. Wage insurance is a promising new idea in a field largely devoid of innovative thinking.

However, much of the promise of these reforms is yet to be realized. To its credit, the Bush administration requested nearly a tripling of funds for worker adjustment last year, but only a fraction of that amount has been spent. At the same time, numerous states, such as Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, experienced shortfalls in training funds. The healthcare tax credit is in place, but some states have made it difficult for workers to receive it.

A lot more needs to be done to ensure that workers who lose their jobs due to increased imports or shifts in production receive the assistance they need. The nation's ability to pursue further trade liberalization depends on our willingness to provide assistance to all workers who need it. Fully implementing the TAA reforms may cost money. Breaking our commitment to workers may cost the economy the benefits of future trade liberalization.

The TAA reforms adopted in 2002 are slowly being implemented. The administration and the states must move beyond bureaucratic roadblocks and strive to insure that all workers get the assistance they need. Perhaps if TAA received the same priority as new free-trade agreements, workers who lose their jobs because of shifts in international trade and investment would receive meaningful assistance and might be back at work, earning paychecks once again.

Regrettably, free trade and workers' needs are often presented as opposing interests.

An effective worker-adjustment program could go a long way toward reducing worker anxiety over foreign trade. This, in turn, could reduce the opposition to free trade, open the door to new trade agreements, spur new economic growth and ultimately ensure that the benefits of free trade are fairly shared. The first step should be to keep the commitments we made to American workers in the 2002 Trade Act.

Spectrum Reform an Urgent U.S. Priority

Cecille Isidro — Wed, 04 Feb 2004 04:00:00 -0500

At the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, one of the hottest topics was WiFi, the technology that uses license-exempt (unlicensed) spectrum to share high-speed wireless Internet connections. In the United States, wireless networking is the fastest-growing segment in telecommunications, while in less developed countries it is seen as the means to leapfrog the lack of a wired infrastructure.

While the WiFi boom has been about short-range mobility, roughly 1,500 wireless Internet service providers (WISPs) already are using unlicensed spectrum to offer high-speed broadband to homes and businesses up to 30 miles from the Internet backbone. This is particularly important for rural areas, where wired connections are unavailable or unaffordable.

As the world goes wireless, demand for access to the airwaves will explode. Big retailers and manufacturers are investing millions to replace bar-coding with wireless inventory controls. And Intel is planning for a future in which unlicensed devices are cheap and ubiquitous, with dozens and possibly hundreds of them scattered around houses in beehive-like wireless networks.

We can try to achieve this future goal of pervasive connectivity by relying on a pair of regulated monopolies o one cable, one copper o to trench fiber into every home and small business. We also could wait for national wireless carriers to blanket the nation with the thick quilt of cell towers.

Alternatively, we can spread our bets by promoting competition in the last-mile by opening more spectrum to thousands of entrepreneurial WISPs and community-access networks that are already offering last-mile connections on unlicensed frequencies.

As usual, our political institutions lag far behind technological change. The conventional wisdom is that we suffer from a severe shortage of spectrum. In reality, even the prime low frequencies that pass easily through walls, trees and weather are barely used at all. Over downtown D.C., near the White House, we found that 60 to 80 percent of the prime frequencies are barely in use.

What is scarce is government permission to access the airwaves. The most useful spectrum has all been allocated on an exclusive basis to broadcasting, the military and other services that now need only a fraction of the frequencies they license thanks to digital technologies.

All sides of the spectrum debate agree that the FCCis outdated command-and-control approach o based on rigid zoning by service and zero cost licensing o has created artificial scarcity, stifling competition, slowing innovation and restricting citizen access to the airwaves.

While delicensing frequencies and relying on markets for technologies like WiFi would represent true deregulation, the predominant view at the FCC is that the most practical solution is to simply grant spectrum incumbents complete and permanent control over the frequencies they now borrow. Todayis licenses would become de facto property.

The FCC is already moving in this direction. Last May, the commission decided to facilitate secondary markets for spectrum that allow firms, whether or not they paid for licenses, to more easily sell or sublease underused spectrum.

The commission is also proposing a so-called itwo-sided auctioni that would allow incumbent licensees to pocket auction revenues when the FCC seeks to clear a band for new uses. According to senior FCC staff, the logic is that broadcasters and other licensees have so much political clout that the only practical way to reduce scarcity is to bribe them to bring their spectrum to market.

This approach to spectrum flexibility transfers a massive and unnecessary windfall to lucky incumbents that never paid a nickel for their now-scarce licenses. In addition to costing billions at a time of ballooning budget deficits, it is being pursued despite the fact that Congress explicitly rejected this sort of giveaway when it passed emergency legislation in June, 2002 canceling auctions for TV Channels 60 to 69.

A longer-term problem is that freezing the old zoning system into permanent property rights will forestall emerging ismarti radio technologies that could dynamically share todayis underutilized spectrum space. Exclusive ownership of frequencies turns sharing into itrespassingi and allows licensees to demand payment for access to their airwaves.

Spectrum deregulation can be achieved without costly giveaways and without strangling unlicensed technologies that promise more affordable and ubiquitous high-speed broadband.

Strange as it may sound, government should both lease spectrum and give it away.

By leasing, I mean that licensees should be given nearly complete flexibility, but in exchange for paying a modest annual user fee, or royalty, as we do with other public resources. While spectrum capacity may be plentiful, exclusive government licenses to operate profitable services like broadcasting remain scarce. Congress adopted this approach in 1996 when it gave broadcasters the flexibility to use their new DTV channel to sell ancillary services, but only in exchange for a fee the FCC set at 5 percent of gross revenue.

By giving away, I mean that we need a substantial reallocation of wasted spectrum capacity to shared, unlicensed access. Rather than focus on private markets to sell spectrum access, expanding free and shared access to the airwaves can encourage markets for new generations of WiFi equipment and mitigate spectrum scarcity.

Some bands can be reallocated for unlicensed wireless broadband on a primary basis, while others can be opened for opportunistic sharing by ismarti devices that hop frequencies and avoid harmful interference with existing services. This year the FCC will be considering to what degree analog TV channels 52-69 can be opened for unlicensed sharing since they are due to be returned once the DTV transition is complete.

Just as public highways have proved far more efficient than relying exclusively on toll roads or fixed-line railroads, meshed networks of cognitive radios can share the airwaves based on basic irules of the road.i That is the icommonsi model: spectrum as a common carrier that is, thankfully, already owned by the public.