End Taxpayer Funded Cell Phones Act of 2016
Floor Speech
I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 5525. A few weeks ago when Speaker Ryan presented his anti-poverty plan, many of us were skeptical and argued that his proposals would not actually help the poor. The Ryan plan was simply a rebranding of failed policies that congressional Republicans have been pushing for years.
Unfortunately, we are quickly finding out that our fears were justified, Mr. Speaker. Today, Speaker Ryan and the Republican majority are bringing a bill to the floor that would eliminate the successful Lifeline program that provides millions of low-income Americans access to basic communication services. It would leave people with no way to search for job postings, no way to schedule interviews, and no way to get a call back from a potential employer.
This goes far beyond jobs, Mr. Speaker. Cell phones are a necessity in modern, everyday life. Low-income Americans rely more heavily on mobile phones and mobile Internet service than the overall population. Children from low-income homes use Lifeline to help do their homework. Seniors use it to manage their health care and call their family and loved ones. Victims of domestic violence use it to find the help and support they need, and victims of assaults use their Lifeline phones to call 911 in an emergency, which makes me question how exactly this bill fits into Speaker Ryan's anti-poverty agenda.
The legislation is so extreme when you consider that congressional Republicans are looking to gut a Lifeline program created in the Reagan administration and expanded to include wireless service in the Bush administration. At least 9.8 million Americans depend on the Lifeline program to stay connected using mobile phones, and this bill would leave these people stranded.
Some claim that the program is fraught with government waste. I heard that from the gentleman from Georgia. But these claims ignore the fact that the Obama administration has eliminated nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars in waste, fraud, and abuse.
This bill will do absolutely nothing to help taxpayers. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that this bill would essentially create a $1.2 billion tax. Specifically, the bill directs the FCC to continue collecting funds from the American people that had been used for the Lifeline program, but not pay any benefits out. Rather than cut taxes, this bill essentially creates a new one.
When it comes down to it, congressional Republicans already know there are significant problems with this bill. They don't want it to pass. That is the only way to explain why they came up with this cynical procedural move to ignore regular order and set up the bill to fail. They are bringing it up under a suspension of the rules, which requires a two-thirds majority. They think that the American people will not hold them accountable for their bad policies if they let Democrats kill the bill.
Worse, this maneuver comes from a committee that normally obsesses with process for the agencies in our jurisdiction. It seems those concerns apply only to others. Well, I think more highly of our constituents. I think they see through these kinds of ploys.
The American people know that if Republicans are really serious about battling poverty and shrinking the size of Lifeline, they would work with us to create more jobs for those who are unemployed or underemployed. The best way to lower the costs of the Lifeline program is to lift people up and not to take away their connection to a better life.
We should not be spending our time on bills like this. We could be looking at ways to take guns from terrorists instead of taking phones from Americans who are looking for jobs. We could be working together to increase the minimum wage and repair our crumbling infrastructure.
Mr. Speaker, this bill abandons our most vulnerable, and I urge all of my colleagues to oppose it.
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Mr. PALLONE. I yield the gentlewoman an additional 30 seconds.
Mr. Speaker, I want to address some of the points that the gentleman from Georgia made.
First of all, 85 percent of the program goes toward wireless service; mobile phones. So when the gentleman says that we are eliminating wireless and that it doesn't matter because we will go back to land lines, that is just simply not the case. That is what the gentlewoman from California just explained.
I am concerned that what I am really hearing from the gentleman from Georgia is the notion that somehow, if there are more than two lines at a given address, it is fraud. I just want to eliminate that notion because I think that criticism misses the point.
There is an exception in the Lifeline program that can permit more than one line per household. This exception is a critical feature that allows people without a long-term home address to take advantage of the program. These are the very people Lifeline was designed to help.
The system allows those living in a homeless shelter, without a stable address, to have access to a phone. It even allows veterans in a group home to access the Internet. So it is not fraud to allow these people access to phones because they happen to have the same address.
While this particular feature of the program may not be the cause of harm that has been alleged, Democrats are serious about eliminating the waste, fraud, and abuse from the Lifeline program. We stand ready to work with Republicans to make the program better.
When we had a hearing in the Energy and Commerce Committee, one of the points we were making was, just cutting the program doesn't eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse. You understand, this bill simply says we are going to cut the funds. It doesn't say how that is going to eliminate the waste, fraud, and abuse.
I will tell you there never was a markup. It just came to the floor. We did have a hearing. There was no markup. So this is not regular order. But the bottom line is, we said over and over again, as Democrats: work with us to eliminate the fraud and abuse. The Obama administration has always done that.
This doesn't do that. This just cuts the program and goes back to what my two colleagues from California were saying: you now have all these people who are poor and working people, who don't have enough money to pay for these phones. They just don't have the phone anymore, and so they don't have access to a mobile phone in order to make those critical calls for some of the purposes that were mentioned.
As I said, during the Obama administration, the FCC has already reduced expenditures by nearly a billion dollars. In fact, the FCC recently took additional substantial steps to prevent potential abuses of the program. The FCC very recently created an independent, third- party National Lifeline Eligibility Verifier. So there is a singular, disinterested referee making Lifeline eligibility decisions.
So an effort is being made--a serious effort--that has already saved a lot of money to try to improve this program. But, again, the bill before us does nothing to target waste, fraud, or abuse. It just cuts off truly deserving low-income Americans from a program that can help them improve their lives.
So for that reason, I urge my colleagues to oppose the bill.
In closing, I don't want to keep repeating the same thing, but I think it is pretty clear where I and my colleagues on this side of the aisle stand. This bill would cut off millions of low-income persons from having wireless service and access to the Internet. If enacted, it would prohibit commercial wireless providers from receiving money from the Universal Service Fund Lifeline program, and that program subsidizes phones for low-income Americans. Without this program, millions of Americans will be left stranded, without any phones.
The bill is being brought to the floor under suspension of the rules, even though no committee has actually held a markup on the bill.
I urge Members to vote ``no,'' to protect low-income Americans' Lifeline wireless phone service.
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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
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