Crime
House Passes Child Safety Bills
     The House this week passed bills that would reauthorize federal funding for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and enhance industry efforts to fight illegal child pornography on the Internet. The bill to keep the crime-fighting center afloat, H.R. 2517, would authorize $50 million per year from fiscal 2008 through fiscal 2013. The group, which runs the congressionally mandated Cyber Tipline, currently gets $20 million annually. Since its founding, the center has handled more than 137,600 missing-child cases, 120,000 successfully, and has fielded hundreds of thousands of leads. The other measure, H.R. 3791, would require better reporting of child porn by Internet service providers, with penalty hikes for noncompliance. "Child safety is a national priority," said Rep. Nick Lampson, who sponsored both bills. "Parents form the front line when it comes to keeping children safe, but child safety is a shared responsibility."

Security
Panel Delays Action On Bill To Shield Telecom Firms
     The Senate Judiciary Committee postponed voting on a bill to shield telecommunications companies from lawsuits for helping the Bush administration spy on U.S. citizens without warrants. The committee has delayed action on the bill, introduced by Judiciary ranking Republican Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, until Dec. 13. Specter offered the bill as part of the Senate's debate on overhauling the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It would substitute the government as the defendant in lawsuits against telecom companies. The firms face about 40 civil lawsuits. Given a jam-packed congressional schedule before the holiday recess, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., could decide to move forward with floor debate on the FISA bill before the committee reconsiders the measure. In that case, Specter said he would offer his bill as an amendment on the floor. But Specter said, "I would prefer not to go that route."

On The Hill
Industry Executives Urge Support For 'Green Tech'
     People lobbying for measures to promote an economy based on innovation are trying to get heard over the typically louder voices of oil and utility industry lobbyists. The tech industry is urging Congress to reform tax laws to spur new energy technology. More than 35 senior executives from TechNet sent a detailed letter to lawmakers outlining their hopes for the final energy bill that the House passed this week. The industry is interested in language to provide "green technologies" with the same types of tax breaks given to the oil industry. Getting heard above oil giants once may have been an insurmountable challenge, but there is growing agreement on Capitol Hill that the United States needs to become less reliant on fossil fuels. TechNet lobbyist Betsy Mullins said there also is growing interest from economists and financial investors in green tech.

On The Hill
When, Not If, Is Unanswered Question On R&D Credit
     With only days to go before Congress adjourns for the year, the people pushing for a renewal of the research and development tax credit that expires at the end of the year are hoping for a Christmas miracle. Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican and long-time advocate of the credit, anticipates the R&D credit being renewed. The key unanswered question is when lawmakers will act. The issue remains mired in a more complex tax package that the Senate passed this week. The R&D Credit Coalition held a news conference to ask Congress to extend the credit this year. The credit "may be the only issue in Washington for which there is no opposition -- it's just the [political] tactics," an industry official said. In other tax news, a House Judiciary subcommittee held a hearing on efforts to streamline state sales-tax systems in an effort to allow the collection of taxes on Internet purchases.

Lobbying
The High-Tech Visa Debate In Blue And Green
     To highlight the problems that high-tech workers face getting green cards, all members of Congress now have "blue cards." The Compete America coalition has been distributing the cards to lawmakers during meetings, one of several industry lobbying efforts on competitiveness issues in the last few weeks of the year. On one side, the cards highlight Europe's blue-card immigration provisions, which allow highly educated workers to apply for renewable two-year visas. The European visas take just one or two months to process. On the flip side, lawmakers are given a summary of the U.S. green-card system. The lobbying cards note that there are not enough green cards for highly skilled workers who want to work in the United States, and the wait time is five to 10 years. "The highly educated will just have to wait," the cards say.

Antitrust
FCC's Martin Finds Media Allies At House Hearing
     House Republicans defended the plan by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin to ease a critical media-ownership rule. During an oversight hearing before an Energy and Commerce subcommittee, Martin said lifting the 1975 ban on owning a newspaper and broadcast outlet in the same city is necessary for the survival of papers in the Internet era. "Newspapers in financial difficulty often have little choice other than to scale back their news-reporting," Martin said. Joe Barton of Texas, the subcommittee's ranking Republican, called the cross-ownership ban "a relic of the past that "should be abolished." But some Democratic lawmakers reiterated their demand that Martin delay a Dec. 18 vote on media ownership, and the FCC's two Democrats, Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps, questioned Martin's plan. "People aren't clamoring for us to relax the cross-ownership ban," Adelstein said.

Telecom
Congress To Continue Tough FCC Oversight, Aides Say
     Aggressive congressional oversight of the FCC will not wane in 2008, aides to leaders of the House Energy and Commerce and Senate Commerce committees said. The staffers spoke to a roomful of attorneys at the Practicing Law Institute's annual conference. David Cavicke, the chief of staff for Energy and Commerce ranking Republican Joe Barton of Texas, said he anticipates "aggressive" actions next year to gauge how the "fairly activist FCC" is handling various issues. The Senate Commerce Committee this session has kept "much closer tabs on what is going on at the FCC ... so we're better-informed and better-positioned to exercise our constitutional prerogative to oversee the agency," added James Assey, a counsel for Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii. The top issues include digital television, federal subsidies for communications services and high-speed Internet service.

Campaigns
Lawmakers Air Personal Gripes About 'Robocalls'
     Three House members complained that they were victimized by automated telephone calls during their election campaigns and urged passage of legislation to curb or end them. Melissa Bean, D-Ill., told the House Administration Elections Subcommittee that she was the target of negative attacks in such "robocalls" by the National Republican Congressional Committee. Rep. Jason Altmire, D-Pa., said his experiences persuaded him to introduce a bill, H.R.372, to add automated calls from political organizations to the national "do not call" registry. Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., also discussed her negative experiences. Subcommittee members agreed that there is a problem with "robocalls" but argued that any legislative remedy cannot prevent free speech. In related news, federal election officials admonished the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for not disclaiming that it used corporate funds to pay for robocalls in 2006 on behalf of a failed senatorial candidate.