President Barack Obama has called a 10:40 a.m. press conference Monday, where he is expected to unveil his new jobs bill package, including incentive auctions for reclaimed broadcast spectrum and funding for an interoperable broadband communications network for first responders.
Th3e auction language was in the outline of the American Jobs Act released last week after the President's speech to a joint session of Congress.
The auction legislation was also added to the debt-ceiling bill during one of its incarnations this past summer, but was removed before final passage for procedural and political reasons.
There are several motivating factors behind the bill, including that it frees up spectrum for wireless broadband, which the president has made a national priority. It also raises money for the treasury and would provide a path toward that emergency network, one of the unfulfilled recommendations of the 9/11 commission.
But the bill still has to negotiate a divided Congress, where many Republicans still favor auctioning rather than allocating spectrum to the emergency network.
