your phone bill is about to go up stealthily, thanks to Al Gore's conviction that we need federally subsidized Internet access for every classroom and public library in America. This sounded uplifting to Congress, which was willing to play along as long as paying for it would be politically painless. The idea: to hide the cost, $ 10 billion or so over the next four years, in your long-distance bill and to do so by bureaucratic fiat from the Federal Communications Commission.
Indeed, last week the FCC issued an order, without the usual public notice or comment, to implement this new tax. Why the hurry? The new Clinton- appointed FCC, headed by chairman William Kennard, is apparently desperate to have the Internet entitlement for schools and libraries in place by Jan. 1.
And the large long-distance carriers -- AT&T, MCI, and Sprint -- which were going to list the new tax as a line-item on phone bills, succumbed to heavy political pressure and arm-twisting from the vice president's office and the Senate. They now plan not to notify consumers of the new Internet tax. In return, the FCC has agreed to phase it in more slowly. Do the taxpayers ever get a say in this?