Congressman pushes for tech education fund

The U.S. Congress needs to dedicate some of the proceeds from radio frequency spectrum auctions to fund technology education projects so that U.S. workers can compete for high-paying technology jobs, backers of a technology trust fund argued Wednesday.

Members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet debated two proposals for creating a “digital dividend” from multibillion-dollar spectrum auctions through the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Representative Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, defended his Spectrum Commons and Digital Dividends Act of 2003, which would earmark any money beyond $5 billion of any wireless spectrum auction proceeds for technology education, worker training, research into education software and other technology-related projects.

Markey’s bill would allocate the first $5 billion of any spectrum auction to the U.S. Department of Defense to pay for spectrum freed up for commercial uses. Markey would be flexible on how much money is allocated to the Digital Dividends Trust Fund, a spokesman said. A Senate bill, the Digital Opportunity Investment Trust Act, would allocate 30 percent of spectrum auction funds to a digital dividends fund.

At least one Republican on the subcommittee, California Representative Christopher Cox, questioned whether Markey’s proposal would take money from other needed federal programs, because the proceeds from the FCC’s spectrum auctions now go into the U.S. government’s general budget.

“As much as we all wish for a more education-oriented Internet, the money collected in spectrum auctions doesn’t belong only to those of use who care about online education,” Cox said. “These funds belong to all American taxpayers, and so the potential uses of these funds must win out in competition with other priorities, including national defense, health care and the environment.”

But Markey and other proponents of a digital dividends fund pushed the proposal by saying the U.S. will risk falling behind the technological advancements of other countries if it does not invest in technology education. The U.S. could lose millions of “high-end” technology jobs to countries such as India over the next five years, Markey said.

“When the Federal Communications Commission decides to proceed with auctions as a means of granting licenses to public airwaves, I believe the public deserves to reap the benefits,” Markey said. “The issue isn’t whether we can afford it, but whether we can afford not to do it.”

FCC spectrum auctions, offered on no fixed schedule, can raise billions of dollars, and subcommittee chairman Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican, predicted that two upcoming auctions, one in the 700 MHz band and one for 3G (third generation) wireless services, could raise close to $20 billion.

Upton spoke in support of another bill, sponsored by New York Democrat Edolphus Towns, which would relax some lending rules at the Telecommunications Development Fund, a nonprofit corporation that provides education and training for communications entrepreneurs. This fund receives money from the interest earned on spectrum auction down payments, and has received $49.9 million since 1996.

But supporters of a broader technology education fund pressed for congressional approval, saying technology education is needed for the U.S. to stay competitive in a global economy. Newton Minow, a former FCC chairman and now senior counsel at Chicago law firm Sidley Austin Brown and Wood LLP, compared the potential impact of a digital dividend fund to the establishment of land grant colleges by President Abraham Lincoln in the 1860s and the GI Bill educational fund for war veterans during World War II.

In addition to those past efforts of designating federal land for colleges or federal funding for veterans, Congress should commit the resources of the public-owned wireless spectrum to education, Minow added. “The money (from auctions), however, was not designated for any particular use,” Minow said. “Unlike the GI Bill, the money simply went into the federal treasury, where it evaporated in a matter of hours.”

A digital dividends fund would have a long impact on the U.S. economy, argued Minow and Eamon Kelly, an international development professor at Tulane University in New Orleans. “It is going to dramatically change all of education,” Kelly said. “This is critical investment at a critical point in time that, with a leveraging effect that is simply enormous, in my judgement, will … outdistance the GI Bill. The entire learning world will change dramatically; this may be the single most important investment this country can make at this time.”

Minow’s Digital Promise Project, which is pushing for a technology education fund called the Digital Opportunity Investment Trust, has received support from technology companies including eBay Inc., 3Com Corp. and Novell Inc.