^{Democracy & Technology Blog} Telecom Act … of 2008

The Senate Commerce Committee has announced an ambitious set of hearings which will delve into every imaginable aspect of telecom reform — beginning in January with Internet porn and ending in mid March assuming everything goes as planned. Let’s see. 2006 is an election year, so there will be a desire to adjourn early and to focus on a limited number of issues with voter appeal. Uh oh. There will be new members in 2007 and a need to get organized and to refresh the record. Assuming there is agreement that telecom reform should be on the short list of major action items for the new Congress and considering that telecom reform usually has to be bipartisan (since, amazingly, Republicans — the party of limited government — can’t sort out the core issue as to whether the telecom industry should be regulated or deregulated), it looks like legislation wouldn’t clear the Senate and House until late 2007 or early 2008.