Commerce Leaders Seek to Fast-Track Clyburn Approval

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With Senate floor time "in flux" and unable to get
a quorum of the Senate Commerce Committee to vote on the renomination of FCC commissioner
Mignon Clyburn, the heads of the committee have come up with plan B.

According to a committee spokesperson, chairman Jay
Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and ranking member Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) agreed
to seek unanimous consent from the Senate on discharging the nominees from the
Committee.  That would mean they would only need a full Senate vote to be
confirmed.

If no Senator objects, the nominations would not have to go
through a committee markup and vote.

There would still need to be a vote in the full Senate, but
that one could happen quickly, too, though the staffer said there would be no
word on whether the committee vote had been fast-tracked until Friday.

John Eggerton
John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.