Department Of Labor, Health And Human Services, And Education, And Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2008

Floor Speech

DEPARTMENTS OF LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, AND EDUCATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008 -- (House of Representatives - July 18, 2007)

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Ms. McCOLLUM of Minnesota. Madam Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

The CHAIRMAN. The gentlewoman is recognized for 5 minutes.

Ms. McCOLLUM of Minnesota. Madam Chairman, I speak today on behalf of public television and its contributions to inform our citizens, people of all ages, throughout Minnesota and our Nation, and I look forward to the opportunity to share with the Member of this body what this money will do.

As a Minnesotan, I'm proud of the people in my district and the people throughout my State. They support public television and they're committed to it. On no issue in my 7 years in Congress did I receive more calls from my constituents and from citizens around Minnesota than when the Republican majority tried to cut the funding for public broadcasting.

The people of Minnesota treasure their public television stations, and they support with their own dollars, with State dollars, and they look forward to support from a Federal commitment to ensure that excellent public television programming is available in Minnesota and around this Nation.

Over the past 50 years, Minnesota's award-winning public television stations have produced tens of thousands of hours of local and regional programs that capture our State's history, politics, daily life and culture.

Today, these programs are stored in a physical tape archive. They're not stored digitally because they're old tapes. They're archived. They're locked away, and they're totally inaccessible to the public.

At worst, these videotapes that are stored this way are physically deteriorating. That means these programs could be lost forever if they are not converted to a digital format.

This is about a public investment. Twin Cities Public Television is already investing in the process of converting its tape archive into a fully searchable digital archive. The project involves public television stations across the State: Duluth, Brainerd, Austin and Moorhead.

Once the conversion is completed, all the information will be free and available to anyone, free and available to anyone at any time, anywhere, on the Internet. Programs like Newton's Apple, which was the Mr. Wizard of my children's generation, still has requests from teachers across this country to use those programs in their classrooms. At a time when we're trying to encourage our children to be captured, to be interested in science and math, Newton's Apple being available on the Internet, free to our teachers, free to our families, will make America, I believe, have children more interested in science and math.

This digital archive will be an asset, as I said, for educators and students and all the citizens in Minnesota, not just in science and math but in history, arts and culture. People will be able to access, as I said, around the country and around the world, and I believe that the knowledge put forward by this type of innovative use of digitizing the old tapes will put our Internet to work for democracy around the world as well.

The challenge of preserving information and media for future generations is a 21st century problem, and Congress is just starting to address it. This is an issue for those of us on the Appropriations Committee. We heard time and time again from the Library of Congress and others in hearings this year about this problem.

This is a public-private partnership in Minnesota to preserve public television programs, and this is one of the first of the kind in the Nation.

Minnesota's effort will result in a best practices that can help other stations save two generations of American history and tens of millions of dollars. We will save dollars.

This is an important project that seeks to address a national problem. It will produce benefits far beyond Minnesota, and it will produce benefits long into the future.

Congress should be in the business of taking advantage of opportunities of partnering with States to solve problems that affect our country as a whole, and this is exactly what this project's all about.

This is a partnership to make the problem of saving our history and to turning it into an opportunity for our children and for our families to learn together about the richness of this country.

Madam Chairman, I yield back my time.

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