Carr: 78 Fewer FCC Employees Now Than at FY25's Start; Defends Savings
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr is defending cuts to the agency’s workforce and other actions in written testimony ahead of the House Appropriations Financial Services Subcommittee’s planned Wednesday hearing on commission oversight. Carr also urges Congress again to restore the FCC’s lapsed auction authority, as House GOP leaders aimed to pass, as soon as Wednesday night, their One Big Beautiful Bill Act budget reconciliation package with spectrum language included. The House Appropriations Financial Services hearing will begin at 10 a.m. in 2358-A Rayburn.
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President Donald Trump highlighted the House Commerce spectrum reconciliation language Tuesday afternoon, particularly its proposal that the federal government reallocate at least 600 MHz for commercial use. He said on Truth Social that the U.S. “must maintain our status as the Worldwide Leader in WiFi, 5G, and 6G, connecting every American to the World’s BEST Networks, while also keeping everyone safe. We can do both at the same time. Bottom line, I am going to free up plenty of SPECTRUM for auction, so Congress must put 600 MHz in” the reconciliation package. The Congressional Budget Office confirmed Tuesday that House Commerce's spectrum language scores at $88 billion over the next 10 years.
Carr says in his testimony that the FCC had 78 fewer employees as of April 28 than it did when FY 2025 began Oct. 1, 2024. “The difference over the last six months can be attributed to many factors, including FCC employees who took advantage of the early retirement window opened by [former Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel], the deferred resignation program offered by President Trump, and natural turnover,” he says. “The agency is well positioned to continue carrying out its statutory mission for the remainder of [FY25] and beyond.” Democratic FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez and some other observers in March raised concerns about the wave of retirements (see 2503270063).
Carr also highlights the FCC’s reduction of “authorized contract spending ceiling amount by more than $567 million” (see 2505140044). “A lot of our savings have come from reviewing and modifying bloated and duplicative IT contracts,” he says. The FCC has also “found more than $6.7 million in savings for the remainder of [FY25 and] is operating successfully under” the $390 million Congress appropriated via the December continuing resolution (see 2412230024). Carr touts that more than 92% of FCC staff “are required to be back to full-time work in the office … and the agency’s longstanding culture of teamwork and collaboration is getting even stronger.”
Airwaves Legislation
“It is important that Congress restore the FCC’s spectrum auction authority,” Carr says. “It puts the wind at the backs of those working to advance our values. It ensures that next-generation wireless services develop in ways that will benefit our innovators and interests -- rather than regimes that seek to diminish America’s standing in the world.” House Commerce's spectrum reconciliation language would restore the FCC’s authority through Sept. 30, 2034.
Carr argues that auctioning spectrum “is also good for the U.S. Treasury and our national funding priorities [and that such sales] consistently exceed revenue estimates -- by multiples in many cases. So, restoring FCC auction authority via a robust pipeline of mid-band spectrum is one of the most important steps that Congress can take in the near term.” He touts FCC action to kick off work on reauctioning 197 returned AWS-3 licenses that Congress authorized in December to offset $3.08 billion to fully fund the FCC’s Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program (see 2412240036).
CBO said Tuesday that almost half of the estimated revenue from new FCC spectrum auctions would come during FY 2031 and FY 2032. The office estimated spectrum auctions would bring $20.5 billion in FY31 and $22.9 billion in FY32. Such sales would garner $16.7 billion in FY 2033 and $13.4 billion in FY 2029, CBO said. House Commerce Chairman Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., said the CBO’s estimate “shows how [panel] Republicans are rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse from the federal government. Savings from policies including the spectrum auction … are critical for reining in runaway spending.”
House Democrats filed three amendments they proposed during House Commerce’s markup last week (see 2505140062) aimed at modifying the spectrum reconciliation language. One from House Communications Subcommittee ranking member Doris Matsui, D-Calif., would delay the spectrum proposal from taking effect until Cabinet-level secretaries and other executive branch political appointees “have received cybersecurity training, [including] on the operation of commercial messaging applications, such as Signal and TeleMessage, for official use.”
Matsui’s other amendment would bar spectrum proceeds from benefiting “any entities where the President, government officials, special government employees, or family members of the President, government officials or special government employees maintain an ownership interest (directly or indirectly) in the entity.” It also prohibits the FCC from using its spectrum authority if it’s pursuing “investigations or enforcement action against entities engaged in legal disputes with the President [and associated people] for the purpose of attempting to influence the outcome of such disputes.” A third amendment, from Rep. Nikki Budzinski, D-Ill., would allocate 10% of spectrum auction proceeds from the 600 MHz pipeline to the FCC's lapsed affordable connectivity program.