Not sure what this means yet. Anyone have a clue?
Financing: To pay for the non-payroll provisions, lawmakers agreed to sell radio spectrum licenses, as well as forcing new federal workers to pay more into their government pensions. Dems gave up on the millionaire/billionaire surtax fairly early in the process.
The clip is from Steve Benen at The Maddow Blog, explaining how Congress is planning to pay for extending unemployment benefits and the Doc Fix.
UPDATE: Ok, I get it now. This is not just radio spectrum. It’s spectrum held by the TV broadcasters but no longer needed because they’ve all gone digital. The wireless companies are desperate for more bandwidth. Carl Franzen at Talking Points Memo explains it pretty well.
The last-minute compromise reached by House and Senate leaders on Thursday to extend the payroll tax cut for another year was achieved partially by having both sides agree to pay for the cut by auctioning off $22 billion worth of licenses to the wireless spectrum — the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum over which radio waves and data can be transmitted.
The licenses, which are issued by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), are currently held by national TV broadcasters.
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