 | |
| |
TechnologyDaily Mobile
Congress Troubles Over EAA Reauthorization
Few issues have troubled Congress as much as the efforts to reauthorize the Export Administration Act, a law governing export controls over dual use products, those with both commercial and military value.
Despite numerous efforts, Congress has failed to fully overhaul the measure since 1979, and 2000 appears unlikely to provide the right political oil to move legislation, S. 1712, re-authorizing the EAA along the legislative track to enactment.
While the Senate Banking Committee approved the measure on a 20-0 vote in September, S. 1712 has been marred in a dispute with four committee chairmen who say the measure does not do enough to protect national security.
"It's embarrassing," said Senate Banking Committee Chairman Phil Gramm, R-TX, who pledged to make reauthorizing the EAA a top priority when he took over the panel at the beginning of the 106th Congress. "We're not doing our job."
The act expired in 1994, leaving the executive branch to exercise export controls over dual-use products under emergency powers authorized by the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). The battles over the EAA generally have been reduced to the inability of lawmakers to find a balance between national security and business interests.
"They're largely irreconcilable differences," said a key Senate leadership aide.
Some argue, however, that there are some serious flaws with the status quo. The relatively minimal penalties allowed under current law have made it difficult to use them as a deterrent to breaking export regulations. And IEEPA has left the federal government open to legal challenges based on a number of provisions.
"IEEPA…when enacted was never designed to substitute for a permanent authorization of the federal program," said Ed Rice, president of the Coalition for Employment Through Exports and a former senior aide on the House International Relations Committee. "It's emergency powers. Yet we're in the sixth year of running the system under IEEPA."
There are those, including some industry representatives, who are just as glad to see the export control process operate by executive order. The high-tech industry generally has received positive treatment from the Clinton administration, leaving marginal desire to push for a new system.
"There are pluses and minuses to running it under the current system," said David Calabrese, the Electronic Industries Alliance's director of international trade. For the high-tech industry, "people are confident with how the Commerce Department…is running things…In that respect, it's hard to get people in industry ginned up for an EAA."
But Calabrese and others acknowledge that this could change with a new administration.
"The high-tech industry has been lulled into a false sense of security because the administration has been so forward-looking on these issues," Rice said. "A new president coming in next Jan. 20 could change the entire system by executive order."
Current State Of Play
S. 1712, sponsored by Gramm, would update the 1979 EAA to reflect an economy much more dependent on exports available from a wide range of sources around the world.
Key provisions include establishing a system for decontrolling dual-use products that are available on a mass-market scale or from foreign competitors. It also would increase penalties from about $10,000 to $1 million or 10 times the value of the export for individuals and $10 million or 10 times the value of the export for corporations.
Gramm came close to bringing the bill to the Senate floor in March after he thought he had reached an agreement with the four committee chairmen, led by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, R-VA, who have raised objections about the measure. But a misunderstanding about what had been agreed to help collapse the deal.
Since then, the two sides have been unable to bridge their differences despite numerous attempts by Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-MS, to get the two sides to reach a compromise before attempting to move the bill to the floor.
Some people following the issue have faulted Lott for not taking more of a lead on it. Gramm gathered the necessary signatures needed to file a cloture motion, which would force a vote on a motion to proceed to the bill.
But such a move would highlight differences within his own party on a bill that Democrats appear to largely support, and Lott so far has declined to file a cloture motion. A Senate GOP aide argued that part of the reason stems from Lott's concern that bringing the EAA to the floor under the current circumstances would eat up valuable floor time the Senate doesn't have to give.
Gramm recently has suggested that he may look for other ways to move the bill such as attaching it to unrelated legislation. Among the possible legislative vehicles he has cited include the foreign assistance bill, which has been referred to his committee, or possibly even the fiscal 2001 defense authorization bill. Both the measures fall under the jurisdiction of the Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees, respectively, which are headed by opponents of S. 1712.
Gramm said "this is a good government issue," which are never high priorities for Congress. He agreed that the prospects for the bill are dim, saying if "we can't, we can't. But I'm gonna keep on trying."
Commerce Undersecretary for Export Administration William Reinsch is among those who have been pushing lawmakers for years to reauthorize the act, citing inadequate penalties and potential legal challenges as two consequences of Congress' failure to act on the issue.
Among the ongoing legal issues stemming from the lapse in the legislation include ongoing challenges to enforcement of anti-boycott provisions, which prevent U.S. firms from participating in foreign boycotts not sanctioned by the United States, and requests for confidential information under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The EAA gave the federal government the authority to enforce the anti-boycott and confidentiality provisions, but they are not specifically referenced in IEEPA.
"The longer the act is expired the more worried we become," he said.
Cold Warriors Vs. New Economy?
Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Fred Thompson, R-TN, one of the four committee chairmen who have raised objections to S. 1712, agrees that the EAA needs to be reauthorized. But Thompson said he wants to see export control laws tightened not loosened, which he claims S. 1712 would do.
"What the Gramm-Enzi thing would do would be to put into law the current practices of the executive branch in large part, which I disagree with," he said. "So, it's better to leave it the way it is and address it in a more proper way later on than it is to pass it just to be passing it."
Thompson argues that the administration has been too lax in how it has enforced export control laws, noting in particular the administration's moves in recent years to loosen computer export controls in response to advances in computer technology. He would prefer to see a reauthorization effort put off until a new administration is in place.
In the meantime, he said he has begun weighing trying to make more subtle changes aimed at beefing up enforcement of current export controls such as increasing the staff to enforce export license conditions and to verify that products were delivered to the intended customer.
Reinsch, however, complains that critics of updating the current export control system have often focused on process to mask their desire to hold back U.S. technology from falling into too many hands.
"The reality is they want to control more," Reinsch said. "Rather than saying that, instead they focus on process."
He and others argue that forging the middle ground necessary to pass the bill has always been difficult. An EAA "will only pass when you build a coalition in the center," he said, adding that allowing the bill to be pulled in either direction has doomed it in the past.
But Calabrese said, "It's hard to say what's a fair bill. Everyone has their own version" of what's middle ground. While critics like Thompson say S. 1712 went too far, there are many industry representatives who say it didn't go far enough.
"Clearly, the current wording in the law is outdated. And that's why there is an impetus for new legislation," said Ed Black, president of the Computer and Communications Industry Association. "At the same time, the nature of the global economy, speed of technology, communication realities of doing business have also dramatically changed and bring seriously into question whether anything approaching the export concepts of the past have any significant relevance anymore."
Most of those involved with the debate acknowledge that it is extremely difficult to try to move a broad overhaul of the export control system.
Rep. Sam Gejdenson of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, is among those who have suggested breaking out pieces of the EAA and moving them separately. He introduced legislation, H.R. 4417, recently that would shift jurisdiction over satellite licensing from the State Department back to the Commerce Department. He and others note that the export of satellites and related parts have declined 36 percent between 1998-1999, according to industry figures, after Congress shifted responsibility to the State Department.
"You can't compare satellites, supercomputers, encryption, engines (and other dual-use products)…and say it's all the same and have the same rules for each one," said Amos Hochstein, an aide to Gejdenson. "Different products have different challenges."
 | - by Juliana Gruenwald |
NEW FEATURE
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
