Joe Barton

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Upton), our subcommittee chairman.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I enthusiastically bring the general debate for H.R. 5252, the Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006, to the floor of the House of Representatives. The process in getting the bill to this stage has been long, has been fruitful, and, in my opinion, it has been fair. It has involved more than a year of hearings, as well as staff and Member-level negotiations. That process has clearly borne, I think, positive fruit. We come to the House today with a bill that has received overwhelming bipartisan support in both the subcommittee and the full committee. The bill passed the subcommittee by a margin of 27-4, with all Republicans voting for it and two-thirds of the Democrat minority party voting for it. In the full committee it was reported by a margin of 42-12, again all Republicans voting for it and a majority of the Democrats voting for it. The primary focus of this legislation is to create a streamlined cable franchising process in order to increase the number of facilities-based providers for video, voice, and data services everywhere in our great Nation. Today, there are thousands of local franchising authorities. Each may impose disparate restriction on the provision of cable service in its specific franchising area. The requirement to negotiate such local franchises and the patchwork of obligations that local franchising authorities impose are hindering the deployment of advanced broadband networks that will bring increasingly innovative and competitive services to all of our constituents. The United States does not even rank in the top 10 of the nations of the world in broadband deployment. This bill should change that statistic. H.R. 5252 seeks to address this concern and strike the right balance between national standards and local oversight. It would allow the negotiation of local franchises, but make available an alternative national franchise process. Moreover, the national franchise preserves local franchise fees, municipal control over their rights-of-way, and support for their Public Education and Governmental channels that so many of our Members are strongly in favor of. The bill also seeks to strike the right balance between ensuring the public Internet remains an open, vibrant marketplace, and ensuring Congress does not hand the FCC a blank check to regulate Internet services, an action that I believe would have a chilling effect on broadband deployment, especially broadband innovation. We need the FCC to stop the cheats without killing honest creativity. We don't need anybody to be the first Secretary of the Internet. Finally, the bill addresses rules for voiceover Internet protocol services, or VoIP services, to ensure that the Internet voice services become a vibrant competitor to what we call plain old telephone service. I want to thank Congressman Rush for his cosponsorship, Subcommittee Chairman Mr. Upton for his cosponsorship, Vice Chairman Chip Pickering of Mississippi for his leadership, and all the members of the committee and the subcommittee on both sides of the aisle who have cosponsored this bipartisan legislation with me. I would urge my colleagues to support this bill and look forward to a vigorous debate on the amendments that have been made in order by the Rules Committee. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, a strong supporter of the bill, the gentleman from California (Mr. Radanovich).

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. First, let me say about the gentlewoman from Dallas, I support her amendment. I think it is a good amendment. I think it adds to the bill, increasing the penalty by 50 percent from $500,000 to $750,000. It does increase the penalty for discrimination; and for that reason, I will be happy to support the amendment at the appropriate time. Mr. Chairman, I would like to enter into a colloquy with a member of the committee, Mr. Murphy of Pennsylvania.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I was opposed at the beginning of the debate.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, for purposes of debate only, I rise in opposition to the amendment; but I am not in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I respect Mr. Conyers. He is a good man. He is in serious opposition. I have 4\1/2\ minutes remaining. I would be happy to yield those 4\1/2\ minutes to my good friend, Mr. Conyers.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this motion for two principal reasons: The anti-redlining provisions of the motion are unnecessary because the underlying bill has language that has been carefully crafted with the leadership of such distinguished members of the full committee as Mr. Rush, Mr. Wynn, Mr. Towns, Mr. Gonzalez, and others. We worked on it for a number of months. We have perfected it, we have changed it, and so I think the bill more than adequately addresses that part of the motion to recommit. On the second part of the motion to recommit, which deals with the concept called buildout, under existing law when you only have one franchise, only have one franchise, I think it is acceptable public policy to require there be a buildout provision because you have a monopoly. But the premise of this bill is to go from a monopoly situation to a market situation where you could have as many as four or five competitors in the same market. If that is the case, what Adam Smith, in that great book called The Wealth of Nations, called the hidden hand of the market is going to more than adequately take the place of a monopolistic model buildout requirement. If you are a new entrant into the market and you have a national franchise and you go into Chicago or New York or Los Angeles, or a small community, like Ennis, Texas, or Arlington, Texas, you are not going to want to just serve a little bit, you are going to want to get market penetration. You are going to want to take away customers from an existing cable provider, so you are going to want to reach out to as many people as is possible and there is not going to be a need for a buildout provision. I would also point out that these new entrants are going to be, in most cases, telephone companies that already have close to 100 percent of market penetration through their phone lines, or wireless providers that are coming into the market with their towers that, again, will have wide penetration. So there is really not a need for a buildout provision. So I urge a ``no'' vote on the motion to recommit. To close out debate, I am going to yield the balance of my time to my distinguished sponsor, colleague of the full committee, the distinguished gentleman from Chicago (Mr. Rush).

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the motion to recommit.

Mr. BARTON

Mr. BARTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I wish to acknowledge the important role that you have played in the process of developing this legislation. I also would like to commend you on your support for rural America, and would add that, if this bill becomes law, small rural telephone companies are going to benefit and enter the video business in communities like your community in your congressional district of McMinnville, Tennessee. In response to the specific inquiry, you are correct, under the legislation if the telephone company identifies a portion of a cable franchise area that it intends to serve with video, there is no build- out obligation nor would there be a redlining violation as long as the telephone company did not refuse to serve a group of potential residential subscribers in that area because of the income of that group.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I am not going to object strenuously to this amendment. I do want to make a couple of points. I think the universal service fund needs, at a minimum, to be significantly reformed. I do not think, as we hopefully deploy more technologies and more innovative ways of using those technologies, that we should saddle these new emerging technologies with attacks that, while well-intentioned, was originated in the 1920s and is in need of serious reform. So I do oppose the amendment, respectfully, but I understand those that support it, and am very respectful of the gentleman who offered it, because he has worked with us diligently on it. I would like to enter into a colloquy with the gentlewoman from Tennessee at this point in time.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the Gutknecht amendment.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I yield myself the balance of the time. (Mr. BARTON of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) MR. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I listened with a great degree of respect to the gentleman from Massachusetts as he rose in defense of his amendment. And I agree that, if a consumer goes into that dealership and you could find a dealership that was selling a Ferrari alongside with a Ford Taurus, that the consumer has the right to choose which vehicle to purchase and he has the right to take that vehicle out on the highway and he has the right, subject to the laws of the State, to drive it as fast as he or she wishes. That is what the underlying base bill does. We are debating a term of ``net neutrality'' that didn't exist 9 months ago. We are debating a term that, as Mr. Ferguson pointed out in his remarks, there wasn't even agreement among the experts exactly what it was when we had a hearing on this before the full committee. But we understand, just as Mr. Markey supports, we understand that, whatever net neutrality is, we want to preserve the open access nature of the Internet, number one. Number two, we also want to bring the United States out of the undeveloped nations, so to speak, in terms of broadband deployment. Now, the underlying purpose of this bill is to get the private entrepreneurs of this country to put the billions and billions and billions of dollars that are necessary to get the broadband deployment into the homes hopefully of every American home in this country, and then use that to unleash the creative entrepreneurship of our creative community to develop new services and new ways of providing those services so that all Americans can have access to some of these new services that are promised if we actually make this bill a reality. What Mr. Markey's amendment really does, if we were to adopt it, is say you can't charge for any of that; you can't differentially price between the Taurus and the Ferrari, you have to charge everybody the same. And, if you do that, you are not going to get the deployment. Now, the base bill says we are not sure what net neutrality is, but we agree it should be preserved, and we want the FCC to preserve it. And, we explicitly give the FCC the authority to punish a transgression once it is identified on a case-by-case basis and to do it within 90 days. Now, if you really want to unleash the creative energy, if you really want this to be a jobs bill, if you really want the United States to go from twelfth in broadband deployment into hopefully number one, vote against Mr. Markey and for the underlying bill. That is real net neutrality.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. He is the pride of the entire State of Texas.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to another member of the distinguished Energy and Commerce Committee who hails from Houston, Texas (Mr. Gene Green).

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to another member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, the pride of the entire State of Nebraska, Mr. Lee Terry.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the pride of New Providence, New Jersey, a member of the full committee, Mr. Ferguson.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman of the full committee hailing from the great Alamo City, birthplace of Texas democracy, Mr. Gonzalez.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time and ask for a ``no'' vote on the Markey amendment.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished member of the subcommittee and full committee, the gentlewoman from Nashville, Tennessee, Congresswoman Blackburn.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Upton), the distinguished subcommittee chairman.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on H.R. 5252 and to insert extraneous material on the bill.