“I want to see a stimulus package sooner rather than later. If it does not get done in the lame duck session, it will be the first thing I get done as President of the United States.”

So said President-Elect Barack Obama at his first press conference this past week.

Will subsidies for broadband be part of it?

The Telecommunications Industry Association recently urged Congress to include subsidies for broadband in the economic stimulus package. The membership of TIA are telecommunications equipment providers. They argue that subsidies for their products would be good for America.

Oh! – which allows me to mention how a group called BroadbandCensus.com is promoting a Nov. 18 conference on broadband here on this site (more info | register). They have sponsored info on pages like Public Law 110-385, The Broadband Data Improvement Act, and H.R. 3919, The Broadband Census of America Act of 2007, right where people interested in these topics will find it. (Click and check out their info in the right column.)

It’s a brilliant thing – sponsoring info here on WashingtonWatch.com. Here’s how to do it.

Anyway, enough fawning over a sponsor . . . .

The last stimulus package was passed in February and included rebate checks to taxpayers, returning about $540 per family on average. But it may not have been all that stimulative. Martin Feldstein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Reagan, recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal that it was a flop, with only 15% of the stimulus money going to new spending. (The rest went to savings or paying down debt – not bad things, but they came at the expense of driving up national debt.)

If an economic stimulus bill happens, maybe spending on infrastructure is better than cash payments out to people. We shall see. More to come, of course.

I wrote here six weeks ago about how the telecommunications subsidy programs run by the Federal Communications Commission were poorly run and subject to waste, fraud, and abuse.

Well, evidently, the FCC got the message and has cleaned up its act! Or started to . . . . Or at least they did something.

Today, the agency has debarred a Mr. George Marchelos from from the schools and libraries universal service support program (often called the “E-Rate program”) for three years. Marchelos was recently convicted of participating in schemes to defraud the E-Rate program and of engaging in bid rigging on E-Rate projects for certain school districts. (Here’s a look at part of his indictment.) He must be devastated that he can’t rig bids or defraud this particular corner of the government for a whole three years.

Interestingly, Marchelos was a witness at a congressional hearing on problems with the e-rate program back in 2004. (The House Commerce Committee says his testimony will be online “as soon as possible after the conclusion of the hearing,” which evidently is something more than three years.)

So you can go ahead and pay your telephone taxes again with the confidence of knowing that waste, fraud, and abuse have been squeezed out of this program – ummm, for three years at least.

One of the most visited bills on WashingtonWatch.com this week is H.R. 2774, The Solar Energy Research and Advancement Act of 2007. It has been reported from committee, which means that it is ready for the full House of Representatives to debate. The bill would establish a group of programs and subsidies to advance solar energy and its commercialization, at a cost of about $2.50 per U.S. family.

As always, there are at least two sides to the story. On the one hand, technological progress is a good thing, and solar power is a wonderfully renewable resource – that’s for sure. Using more of it would lower energy prices, reduce pollution, and perhaps lessen our reliance on unstable foreign sources of energy.

On the other hand, economists will tell you that it’s a mistake to try to make any product “viable” through subsidies – and that’s what we’re talking about here: subsidies. There is a point in the future when solar will be viable simply because it’s a more efficient way of producing energy than others. And we will get there without any government spending because private capital can be drawn to the problem by the profit motive. Let the sun rise on its own, and let taxpayers keep their dollars.

Where do you come down on all this? Can a bill like this bring sunshine to our energy portfolio? Or is it another government program feeling along in the dark?

Here’s the current vote on H.R. 2774, The Solar Energy Research and Advancement Act of 2007. Click to vote, comment, learn more, and edit the wiki article about the bill.

Last night, the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer had an interesting piece on the plight of commercial fishing industry under higher fuel costs.

What’s to be done with the economic dislocations underway in the industry? Fisherman Lewis Hill has an idea:

Well, the government subsidized the farmers; they’ve been bailing the airlines out; they’ve been bailing the bankers out. We need help, too. You know, you watch the news. This government isn’t doing squat.

(Lewis was kind not to use his full ocean-going vocabulary to describe things . . . .)

The piece notes that legislation was introduced last month to give fishermen a temporary income tax credit. That’s S. 3234, The Fisheries Fuel Tax Relief Act of 2008. The bill gives a tax credit based on a complicated formula that goes a little something like this: “an amount equal to the excessive fuel cost paid or incurred by the taxpayer during the taxable year for any creditable fuel used in the trade or business of the taxpayer.” Got it?

Hey, Lewis Hill has a point. When every other industry is getting a hand, why shouldn’t he? But how far does that logic take you?

Here’s the current vote on S. 3234. Click to vote, comment, learn more, or edit the wiki article on the bill: