Lawmakers working on phone-home-free bill for overseas troops

House and Senate aides are working to ease passage of a bill that would allow some overseas troops a certain amount of free phone calls home each month.

The two sides are trying to reconcile issues such as whether the free service should be in minutes or a set dollar amount and which overseas troops should be eligible, a spokesman for the House Armed Services Committee told CongressDaily Thursday.

The House has yet to consider a Senate-passed bill that calls for $40 a month in free calls home for U.S. troops supporting military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the spokesman said that the intent is to "move the bill through expeditiously" on the suspension calendar.

The committee is working with the Senate Armed Services Committee and the bill's author, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., but there is no word on when negotiations might be completed.

There is a similar provision in the Senate-passed defense authorization bill, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates would cost $56 million for fiscal 2004. The House version does not include such language.

Late last month, former GOP Rep. David O'Brien Martin of Martin, Fisher, Thompson & Associates registered to lobby Congress on the matter on behalf of AT&T. Martin, a six-term New York lawmaker who served on the House Armed Services Committee, referred inquiries about the phone company's interest in the legislation to AT&T.

The company is not looking for anything specific in the bill, but rather is interested in "making sure the bill is implemented expeditiously," said an AT&T spokeswoman. As a major telecommunications provider to the military, the company is working with McCain's office and committee members to ensure the measure becomes a reality, the spokeswoman said.

In March, AT&T donated 160,000 prepaid phone cards worth $3 million to U.S. troops in Iraq.