Congress demands full accounting of how feds hoard spectrum
S. 794 — A bill to require the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information to audit Federal spectrum. · Filed by Mike Lee (R-UT) · Introduced Feb 27, 2025 · Referred to committee
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What it does
This bill requires the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information to conduct a comprehensive audit of all electromagnetic spectrum assigned to federal agencies within 18 months and report findings to Congress. The audit must detail which spectrum bands each agency uses, for what purposes, in which geographic areas, whether they share spectrum with others, and which portions remain unused.
Why we flagged it
The bill's sole operative mechanism is a mandatory audit and public reporting requirement. It creates no new authority, no carve-outs, and no restrictions—only visibility into existing federal spectrum holdings.
What the text implies
- Audit may reveal significant spectrum hoarding by federal agencies, creating political pressure to reallocate underused bands to commercial or public-safety uses—potentially affecting defense, intelligence, or aviation operations.
- Report will be available to all Members of Congress, enabling targeted legislative proposals to reclaim or repurpose federal spectrum without further authorization.
- Classified annex option allows sensitive military/intelligence spectrum uses to remain hidden from public view while still informing Congress.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
Spectrum is a finite public resource; transparency on federal use enables Congress and the public to identify waste, inefficiency, or underutilization and potentially reallocate spectrum to higher-value uses (commercial broadband, emergency services, etc.). The audit itself imposes no restrictions on citizens and creates no new costs to the public.
Named in the bill
Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information, Federal entities (as defined in NTIA Organization Act § 113(l)), Secretary of Transportation, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (Public Law 117–58)
Where it stands
- Feb 27, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
- Feb 27, 2025 — Referred to Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation · Congress.gov: “Read twice and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
1 lobbying clients named this bill on 2 disclosure filings across 2 quarters, Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $5,020,000 in lobbying spend. A filing names 25 bills on average, so that figure is what each filing reported, not a share belonging to this bill.
More lobbying clients named this bill than 0% of bills with at least one filing.
Mike Lee, the sponsor, reported $241,000 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle. $5,000 of that came from 1 PAC tied to these lobbying clients.
- Charter Communications Inc — $5,020,000 on 2 filings
Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 20, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (2,770 characters) on May 21, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,222 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 20, 2026 · page rendered 2026-10-20.
“Congress demands full accounting of how feds hoard spectrum” QuorumCivic. https://share.quorumcivic.app/bill/119/s794 Report an error
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