[governance] ISOC-NY joins coalition of groups supporting the completion of the IANA Transition - hearing is Weds

[John Curran]

On Sep 18, 2016, at 4:26 PM, Mueller, Milton L <milton at gatech.edu> wrote:
> ...
> Note that the leader of the opposition, Sen. Cruz, is NOT a Presidential candidate and is NOT a supporter of Donald Trump (he refused to endorse him at the Convention). So the idea that this is all happening because it’s an election year doesn’t hold water. Note also that last year we DID get a budget resolution that prevented the transition until this year, so the opposition was even stronger then (not clear whether we will get one this year). 
>  
> So when Bill and John imply that had we gotten this done last year we would have avoided all these problems I don’t know what they are talking about. But then, politics are not their strong suits.

Milton -

While politics may not be my background, it is possible (as with many things)
to hire folks who are extremely experienced in this area.   

While the US does tend to do a continuing resolution (CR) each year to continue 
its operation, a CR done in a campaign year has some additional dynamics weigh
heavily in our present situation with respect to the IANA stewardship transition. 

First, there is effectively zero chance of administration veto, since that would 
result in a government shutdown just prior to the election (which would give a
huge PR win to the republican party to the effect of “Obama shuts down USG
so he can give Internet away illegally before election”)  CR’s are generally not
veto’d, but the threat of doing so does impact the appropriation committee 
negotiations (or so I am told) and is realistically not available during an election
year unless the matter has clear and overwhelming public support. 

The second challenge is that an election year means there are formal campaign 
platforms which are (nominally) set by the party, and in the case of the republican
party, this includes the following statements - 

  "He (the President) has unilaterally announced America’s abandonment of the 
   international internet by surrendering U.S. control of the root zone of web names
   and addresses. He threw the internet to the wolves, and they — Russia, China, 
   Iran, and others — are ready to devour it.  We salute the Congressional 
   Republicans who have legislatively impeded his plans to turn over the 
   Information Freedom Highway to regulators and tyrants. That fight must 
   continue, for its outcome is in doubt.”

This places the republican leadership in a difficult situation during the appropriation
committee negotiations on the CR, as in theory it is no longer just Sen Cruz's issue, 
but is a party position (and one which will be decided _before_ the election, which 
means as it is their job (republican leadership) to stand up for it until then.  This also 
would not be the case in a non-election year. 

If the Internet community were ready to transition on 30 Sept 2015, it is quite likely
that the necessary opposition (to the provision preventing transition) could have been
brought to bear, but there was zero reason to do so since the community wasn’t ready.
By instead doing this in an election year, the politics is not simply administration versus
an unpopular Senator, but is very much keyed to party and public perceptions of all of
the participants (and potential voter impact) based on their actions on this matter.

For more details into present status of this year's CR negotiations, please see 
<http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/congress-capitol-hill-exit-228302>

Thanks,
/John

p.s.  my views alone 


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