S. 259, Foreign Adversary Communications Transparency Act

S. 259 would require the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to publish annually a list of entities with ties to China, Iran, North Korea, or Russia that hold licenses or authorizations granted by the commission.

Based on information from the FCC, CBO expects that the agency would need five employees, at an annual average cost of $225,000 per employee, for the first two years, to review existing grants of authority, and two employees after 2027 to review new applications and changes in ownership. On that basis, CBO estimates that it would cost the FCC $4 million over the 2025-2030 period to issue rules and identify whether any of those four nations hold equity or a voting interest in organizations that have an authorization, license, or other grant of authority issued by the commission. Because the FCC is authorized to collect fees each year sufficient to offset the appropriated costs of its regulatory activities, CBO estimates that the net cost to the FCC would be negligible, assuming appropriation actions consistent with that authority.

If the FCC increases annual fee collections to offset the costs of implementing provisions in the bill, S. 259 would increase the cost of an existing private-sector mandate on entities required to pay those fees. CBO estimates that the incremental cost of the mandate would be small and would fall well below the annual threshold established in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA) for private-sector mandates ($206 million in 2025, adjusted annually for inflation).

The bill contains no intergovernmental mandates as defined in UMRA.

The CBO staff contacts for this estimate are Margot Berman (for federal costs) and Rachel Austin (for mandates). The estimate was reviewed by H. Samuel Papenfuss, Deputy Director of Budget Analysis.