Providing for Consideration of S. 352, DTV Delay Act
Floor Speech
Providing for Consideration of S. 352, DTV Delay Act -- (House of Representatives - February 04, 2009)
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A brief discussion of some of the many hearings and discussions that occurred on this matter. March 28, 2007, the subcommittee held its first hearings on the status of the DTV transition; October 17, 2007, second hearing on the status of DTV transition, at which the NTIA Assistant Secretary Kneuer testified.
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Mr. POLIS of Colorado. No, I have to complete this. October 31, 2007, subcommittee holds a third hearing on status of the DTV transition; February 13, 2008, a fourth hearing. It continues. There were a total of nine hearings at which this matter was discussed extensively. Those who wanted to be heard were able to be heard at that point.
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Mr. POLIS of Colorado. This bill had extensive discussion. In the absence of acting soon, there will be millions of people who will not have TV, and they won't be very happy.
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Mr. POLIS of Colorado. Madam Speaker, this delay is a one-time delay only. And given the national security issues and increasing number of natural disasters we face, I can think of no time in our history when having access to television is more critical than it is now. Absent this extension, millions of television sets will go dark in 13 days.
This legislation contains specific language recommended by public safety organizations. It explicitly preserves the ability of public safety entities to use the DTV spectrum before the new transition date subject to existing FCC rules, and under no circumstances will there be any disruption of spectrum currently used for public safety communications.
As I said before, this bill has the support of leading public safety organizations, including the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials International, the International Associations of Chiefs of Police, the International Association of Fire Chiefs, and the National Emergency Number Association.
I would add that allowing the 6.5 million households estimated by Nielsen that are completely unprepared for the DTV transition to go dark is in and of itself a legitimate public safety issue. Those homes will not be able to continue to rely on local broadcast stations for news about natural disasters, evacuations, terrorist attacks, or other public safety announcements. A one-time delay of 115 days is a reasonable response to a very difficult problem that millions of Americans would face in 2 weeks absent this legislation.
I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. POLIS of Colorado. Reclaiming my time, the gentleman from Nebraska has in his very own district 3,401 people who have not made the transition; I have in my district 3,671. There are a number of people across the country, particularly elderly people and people who aren't as aware of the technology. Now, Nielsen has estimated that 6.5 million remain. And it is critical that, again, this is something that a lot of people don't realize as they go about their everyday lives. We realize this in this body. We talk about it, those involved with technology do.
Another issue is, for instance, many of the coupons were sent out via third-class mail, taking 4 to 8 weeks to deliver. Some of those, as is inevitable when things get mailed, actually get lost in the mail; when they arrive, some of them arrived after their expiration date, which was only a 90-day expiration date. One of the provisions in the bill would actually allow consumers to reapply for coupons when their coupons expired.
So, again, for these reasons there would be a lot of difficulty in explaining to any of our constituents whose televisions will go off in 13 days why we didn't act to be able to allow them to continue to watch their television and give them time to see this transition through with this one-time delay.
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Mr. POLIS of Colorado. As testimony to the demand for the need to change, there are currently pending about 2 million requests for coupons. This bill, as passed, would finally allow for some of those coupons to be reissued by allowing consumers to reapply for those coupons and help ensure that those who need coupons can still get them and their televisions do not go dark.
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Mr. POLIS of Colorado. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
The Chair of the appropriate subcommittee, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Boucher), has indicated that he will not support an additional delay in the implementation of the change as have several of the other speakers who have advocated on this side of the issue as well. Again, the urgent need for a one-time delay is simply in the fact that 6.5 million people's televisions will go black in 13 days absent this very simple change that gives them more time.
To show the ongoing urgent need for this, just yesterday 135,464 coupons were added to the waiting list. Two point one million households are now on the waiting list for coupons. These are people who did everything right, and they are on the waiting list. And if we pass this bill many of them will, in fact, be eligible for coupons as well.
Again, this is a one-time delay only. Given the critical nature of television in today's society, that is why this has been supported by a number of national public safety organizations including the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials, the Association of Chiefs of Police, the Association of Fire Chiefs and the National Emergency Managers Association.
Television is an important way to communicate with people. We all have constituents that this affects. And that is why it's important to pass this bill today.
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We originally thought that the omnibus would be ready today, so we required a previous rule that Chairman Obey file a statement by today explaining the bill. The bill is delayed potentially until after the recess so the rule changes the statement deadline to February 26. It is our intention to file the statement when the bill is introduced.
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