Preserving Home and Office Numbers in Emergencies Act of 2021

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak on H.R. 678, the PHONE Act. This legislation will ensure that Americans whose homes are lost during a fire or other natural disaster do not have to worry about losing their home phone numbers.

As we have seen from the horrific fires over the last several years, they destroy everything in their path. No matter how resilient a home or communications tower may be, you cannot regulate your way out of a fire's burning path.

Today, when a natural disaster strikes, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, is activated to provide housing assistance and other resources to respond to the crisis at hand. If your home is completely burned to the ground, the last thing that you should have to worry about is if your home phone number will be available when you return.

Thankfully, the Federal Communications Commission, FCC, can prevent that from happening. The FCC can waive rules and regulations that require landline phone numbers to return to the pool of available numbers when a home is completely destroyed by a natural disaster. This bill codifies that process, but we still must be cautious. This type of relief should only apply to areas where significant physical damage has occurred to render a home uninhabitable, as is the objective of the bill.

It is FEMA's role to determine which households have actually sustained damage in an affected county, which this bill does not codify, and we hope can be addressed as it moves through the process. As the experts on the ground, we should defer to their assessment before these regulations go into effect.

While it may be easy to grab a cell phone upon evacuating, landlines cannot be brought on the go. For many people, especially our seniors, they rely on their landline phone number to stay connected to family, their doctor, and others during such a trying time in their life. During a traumatic event, one less thing they should not have to worry about is losing their home phone number.

I ask for support of this measure moving forward, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. LATTA. Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close. I support H.R. 678 moving forward, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. LATTA. Will the gentleman yield?

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Mr. LATTA. Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate Jeff on his future endeavors.

Our staffs do so much for us. As the chairman was speaking, I was thinking that the hours that they put in aren't ever recognized, including the work over the weekends. I know when I have talked to our committee staff, especially when we have worked on pieces of legislation the last several Congresses, with the amount of work that goes into it, we have to thank our staff.

For all his years of service here and for his future endeavors, I give him my best wishes.

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