Ed Markey

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Madam Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Kennedy).

Mr. MARKEY. Madam Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).

Mr. MARKEY. Madam Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Here is the problem with the Bush administration. The Congress, over the years, has passed any number of regulations that deal with the issue of appliance efficiency, but the Bush administration is allergic to energy efficiency. It just wants to put a big new gas station on top of the Arctic wilderness or on top of any other pristine area in our country rather than looking at the technological genius of our country to find some way of improving our efficiency. So even with regard to new standards in this manager's amendment, they give this administration 6 years, 6 years, to come up with new standards, even as the Bush administration has not done anything for the first 5 years of its term of office at the height of an energy crisis, knowing the consequence of all of this pollution going into the atmosphere in terms of its impact upon the health of our country. My colleagues, just so you know, women in Japan contract breast cancer at only one-fifth the rate of American women. Women in Japan contract breast cancer at only one-fifth the rate of American women. Women in Japan contract breast cancer at only one-fifth the rate of American women. After the family comes to America from Japan, they contract it at the same rate as Americans. That means it is not in the genes of the girls; it means it is in our air, it is in our water. What this amendment does is, it says we are just going to build a couple hundred more large electrical generating plants, coal and natural gas, and just spew it into the atmosphere. Well, that is going to be breathed in, all that mercury, all that sulfur and nitrous oxide, and it is going to have a dramatically negative impact upon the health of our country. My colleagues, this is a bad amendment, and I really regret it is out here and that my friend has proposed it.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition, and I yield myself 3 minutes. Madam Chairman, I rise in opposition to the Barton manager's amendment. I have a number of concerns about the manager's amendment. Let me just begin by saying that inside of the bill there was a provision that I authored in the Committee on Energy and Commerce that was accepted by the Chair, by the majority. And then, without any consultation with me, this amendment has been taken out of the energy bill by the manager's amendment which is being proposed here today. Let me tell you a little bit about the change they are going to make without any consultation with me. Now, when you think of all the pollution that comes out of smokestacks, that is created by the generation of electricity from coal-fired plants or from gas-fired plants to create electricity, well, that electricity is being created in order, for the most part, to keep our lights on, our air-conditioning on, to make sure that we can live in a modern society. Now, at the Department of Energy, in the first 5 years of the Bush administration, they have yet to have a new rulemaking that would improve the efficiency of any of these appliances. Now, the cumulative impact of that is that we are going to see, unfortunately, several hundred new coal-fired or gas-fired generating plants constructed in America. Now, what does that mean? Well, in addition to the cost to consumers who are going to have to pay for these new plants, you also have all of the additional pollution. We have 8 million children with asthma. We have a rise in breast cancer and prostate cancer and other diseases. More than 50 percent of all disease is environmentally based, coming from what we breathe, from the water that we drink. The majority, in its wisdom, has decided they are going to impose no burdens on anyone who makes any appliances in America, so they have to improve their efficiency, which is very typical of the entire Bush administration's approach to these technologies. But the impact of having all of these window air conditioners, furnaces, lighting fixtures, heat pumps, 3 years from now, 6 years from now, 10 years from now being just as inefficient as they were 5 years ago is that all this additional pollution has to go into the air: the carbon, the mercury, the sulfur, the nitrous oxide that is inhaled by children in our country. And I just think it is wrong, without any consultation with me, to take my amendment and put it in this manager's amendment, to have it deleted from the bill. Madam Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of the time.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, this is truly a bad bill. Every day we have pictures on the screen of consumers pulling up to the gas pump, paying an arm and a leg for gasoline. We have 150,000 young men and women over in the Middle East protecting our country in that region, and largely as well the oil supplies coming into our country. This bill does nothing in order to deal with that problem. In fact, the Department of Energy analysis of an almost identical bill in the last Congress concluded that changes to production, consumption, imports, and prices are negligible. The bill would open the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refugee to oil and natural gas exploration even though there is such a small supply of oil and gas there that most of the oil companies have pulled out of the coalition trying to open it to drilling. This bill contains a liability waiver for the big oil companies that would force cities and States to spend billions to clean up drinking water supplies that have been contaminated with the gasoline additive MTBE which is known to cause cancer. This bill tramples on the right of State and local governments to protect their citizens from potentially dangerous energy facilities such as large liquefied natural gas terminals that would be sited right in the middle of densely populated cities in our country, even though we know they would be the number one terrorist target constructed in that city. This bill allows oil and gas companies to pollute drinking water by granting them special exemptions from the Clean Water Act. This bill allows refineries and utilities to increase air pollution with special exemptions from the Clean Air Act. There is a special provision in this bill to protect Halliburton from ever facing any Federal regulation of a practice of drilling for oil using the hydraulic fracturing technique that actually injects diesel fuel into the water supply. There is a special provision added that authorizes grants and other assistance to something called the Dine Power Authority, an enterprise of the Navaho Nation. Who are the beneficiaries of that provision? Why do they deserve our largess? We never had a hearing on it. There is a special provision in the bill that provides a $1.3 billion subsidy to the Idaho National Laboratory to build a special advance nuclear reactor to produce hydrogen for the hydrogen car. Bad bill; vote ``no.'' Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to H.R. 6. I have the greatest respect and affection for the Chairman of the Committee, the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton), but I must say in all honesty that this is really a terrible energy bill. The Chairman comes from Texas, and I'm sure that from a Lone Star State perspective, this looks like a pretty good bill. But most of our constituents don't come from oil producing states. Most of our constituents are energy consumers, and from a consumer perspective this bill is seriously deficient. In fact, I would suggest that this bill is a bit like that old Clint Eastwood spaghetti Western: ``The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.'' There is a tiny bit of good in the bill--like extending daylight saving time by a month in the Spring and a month in the Fall. Now, that was a good idea, it really was--and I'm glad that the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Upton) and I were able to get it in the bill. But in all honesty I think I have to say that for the most part, what we have here before us today is one truly Bad and Ugly bill: First, let's take a look at the Bad: This bill does virtually nothing to address the current spike in crude oil prices or the price of gasoline at the pump. In fact, a Department of Energy analysis of an almost identical bill in the last Congress concluded that ``changes to production, consumption, imports and prices are negligible.'' This bill would open the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and natural gas exploration, even though there is such a small supply of oil and gas there that most of the oil companies have pulled out of the coalition trying to open it to drilling. This bill contains a liability waiver for the big oil companies that would force cities and states to spend billions to clean up drinking water supplies that have been contaminated with the gasoline additive MTBE, which is known to cause cancer. This bill tramples on the right of state and local governments to protect their citizens from potentially dangerous energy facilities, such as large Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) terminals sited right in the middle of densely populated urban areas. This bill allows oil and gas companies to pollute drinking water by granting them special exemptions from the Clean Water Act. This bill allows refineries and utilities to increase air pollution with special exemptions from the Clean Air Act. This bill gives utilities who dam the public's waterways special rights to appeal and change conditions federal resource agencies placed on their hydropower license in order to protect fish, the environmental, irrigation, navigation or other public uses of our nation's rivers. This bill repeals the Public Utility Holding Company Act, a consumer and investor protection law that restricts utilities from self-dealing and limits their ability to diversify into risky unregulated business ventures at the expense of utility consumers. Second, let's take a look at the just plain Ugly. There's a special provision in this bill for Home Depot that preempts several states existing or proposed energy efficiency standards for ceiling fans. There's a special provision in here to protect Halliburton from ever facing any Federal regulation of the practice of drilling for oil using the hydraulic fracturing technique that actually injects diesel fuel into acquifers. There's the special provision added that authorizes ``grants and other assistance'' to something called ``the Dine Power Authority, an Enterprise of the Navajo Nation.'' Who are they? Why do they deserve our largess? There's the special provision added that provides a special exemption from our Nation's nuclear nonproliferation law for a Canadian company named Nordion, so that they won't be required to ever agree to convert their nuclear reactor to using Low-Enriched Uranium fuel and targets, but can instead continue to use bomb-grade Highly Enriched Uranium that is a potential terrorist target. There's the special provision in the bill that provides a $1.3 billion subsidy to the Idaho National Laboratory to build a special advanced nuclear reactor to produce hydrogen for the hydrogen car. This is not what a national energy policy should be--a tiny bit of Good in a sea of Bad and Ugly provisions. No. We should try to seek a fair balance between the interests of consumers and producers, between the need for new production and the preservation of our natural environment. We should take advantage of America's strength--our technological superiority--and not play to our weakness (the fact that we control only 3 percent of the world's oil reserves, while OPEC controls more than 70 percent). Americans own more cars than there are licensed drivers, and yet this energy bill does nothing to address the fuel efficiency of cars. Instead this bill offers up the false hope that drilling in the Arctic Refuge will solve our energy problems, ignoring that the United State's 3 percent of world oil reserves will never match our 25 percent of world oil consumption. For some fuzzy math, we would sacrifice the last great wilderness in America, an area biologically unique within the American Arctic. It didn't have to be this way. I lived through the energy policy battles of the late It didn't have to be this way. It really didn't. But the Republican Majority that controls this Congress today decided to make energy policy partisan with a bill that is extreme and over- reaching. So I would say to my Republican Colleagues, you may have the votes to prevail here on the House floor this week, but this extreme bill will not become law. Democrats in this body, along with our colleagues in the Senate, will fight to ensure that the Bad and Ugly provisions that presently make up the bulk of this bill are deleted or revised. And if they are not, we will fight to prevent this bill from moving to the President's desk. I urge my colleagues to vote against this bill. We can and must do much better.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Mrs. Johnson).

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, this is a huge moment for this Congress. Inside of the Republican bill that we are voting on is a continuation of the $35,000 tax break to purchase Hummer IIs, a tax break to buy a Hummer II, $35,000. And then they turn with policies like that and they say, We need more gasoline in America. And they turn to an Arctic wildlife refuge as the first example of where they will go, rather than saying, Well, you know, if our country could put a man on the moon in 1969, if we could deploy the Internet around the world in the last 15 years, if we could craft a human genome, then maybe we could find a way to reinvent the automobile and the SUV so that it would average more than 23 miles per gallon, 1983s average; that is the average we have today. It is wrong, it is immoral for this Congress not to have any fuel efficiency standards for automobiles or SUVs in their bill, to continue tax breaks, giving incentives for Americans to purchase the most inefficient vehicles, and to then turn to the wilderness areas and say, We need the energy. America is great because its people are great, and what makes us great is we are technological giants. We have only 3 percent of the oil reserves in the world, but with our brains, we can make vehicles that are twice as efficient as the ones that we use today, if we put our minds to it. But the Bush administration and the Republican majority are completely and totally opposed to it. They reject it in their legislation today. Yet, they say they have a solution for the energy crisis in America. Well, you cannot put 70 percent of all of the oil in gasoline tanks, have no improvement in fuel economy standards, and then say you are solving the problem by going to wilderness areas and spoiling them. Vote ``aye'' on the Markey amendment.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from California (Mr. Cardoza).

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, this is the key issue if we are going to get serious about the imports of oil into our country. We put 70 percent of all oil that we consume in America into gasoline tanks. In 1975, we averaged 13 miles per gallon; we averaged 13 miles per gallon in 1935. But Congress, because of the energy crisis, passed a law mandating a doubling of the standards in 10 years, and the auto industry responded; and by 1986, the average was 27 miles per gallon, and we had OPEC on its back. The price of oil fell to $12 a barrel. We, using our technological genius, had won. Now, it is almost 20 years later and America is now averaging 23 miles per gallon. We have gone backwards 4 miles per gallon and played into OPEC's hands as the price of oil goes up to $50 to $55 to $58 a barrel, as consumers are tipped upside down every time they go into a gas station in order to pay to fill up their car. The only answer is to call upon our country's greatness to improve the fuel economy standards to 33 miles per gallon by 2015. In other words, to add only 6 additional miles per gallon over what was accomplished in 1986. The opponents of this amendment say that is impossible. Well, we put a man on the moon in 9 years. We improved the fuel economy standards in 10 years by 13 miles per gallon in the 1970s and 1980s, but now we are being told that we do not have any longer the ability to do that. Well, we are 60 percent dependent upon imported oil. We are heading towards 65 percent, towards 70 percent. That is increased national security problems for our country that we will look back at and regret that we missed this opportunity to make our country more secure. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. MARKEY. Madam Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey).

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Washington State (Mr. Inslee.)

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Menendez), the chairman of the Democratic Caucus.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote, and pending that, I make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Throughout United States history, we have been the world's moral and political leader. One of the things that really strengthened our hand at Nuremberg was that in turn the Germans could not make a case that we had engaged in the kind of human rights violations that the Nazis had engaged in. It made the trials at Nuremberg a moral statement about the United States and our view of the way in which war should be conducted. This debate that we are having is intended on ensuring that we restate that commitment. We cannot have Uzbekistan, we cannot have Syria dictating what the standards are for our country. We cannot take prisoners within our control, put them on planes, and have them flown to other countries where whatever standards exist in that country dictate whether or not and what kind of torture will be engaged in. The statement which we are making today on the floor will be to once again reassert this Congress' complete commitment to the Convention against Torture. I think it is important at this time that we once again make this point because the rest of the world looks to us as the moral leader and it is important for us in act as well as in word to uphold that standard. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer), the cosponsor of this amendment.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute. The amendment I am offering today simply reaffirms the United States' commitment to the Convention against Torture. The United States signed this treaty under President Reagan, and the Senate ratified it in 1994. Despite our commitments under this treaty and the recent statements made by the administration emphasizing that the United States is emphatically and unambiguously against the use of torture, reports keep growing of the United States sending detainees to countries where they are likely to face torture, including countries notorious for human rights violations, including Syria, Uzbekistan, and Egypt and other countries. My amendment will just restate existing law so that this body is put on record taking the position which Ronald Reagan did in his negotiation of the Convention against Torture. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I thank both gentlemen for their statements. It is my intention to try to work in a way in which we can find a way to guarantee that once someone has been shot and taken out of the combat zone that their benefits are not cut. The irony is of course if they are shot but not seriously wounded and they stay in Iraq, they do not lose any of these benefits. It is only the most serious who lose the benefits. I would like to be able to work with them. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw the amendment.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. As preposterous as it sounds, today members of the armed services who are wounded in battle have their pay cut the moment they are evacuated from a combat zone after they have been wounded and they are fighting for their lives in a hospital bed. A pay cut is not, in my opinion, my idea of support; and it most assuredly is not what the wounded soldier thinks of as support. The amendment I am proposing is intended to remedy this situation. It places a restriction on the supplemental appropriations funds to end this unjust practice. Essentially, this amendment will no longer allow the special hazardous duty pay to be cut for our wounded troops when they are evacuated from a combat zone. Instead, the special pay rates that they were receiving prior to their injury will be continued while the member recovers in a hospital. These pay rates will continue until the soldier either is reassigned to duty, discharged from service, or succumbs to his or her wounds. The cut in pay comes at the exact moment when severely wounded members are evacuated for medical treatment and leave the combat zone. I know this because my constituent, James Crosby, was wounded last year in Iraq. On March 18, 2004, James was wounded by enemy fire while riding on the back of a U.S. military vehicle in Iraq. A rocket fired at the vehicle killed the driver and injured two Marines, including James. A piece of shrapnel pierced James's side and penetrated his intestines and spine, paralyzing him from the waist down. James's pay was immediately cut when he was transported out of the combat zone in Iraq. He was discharged from the hospital in August and from active duty in September. Unfortunately, James's story is the story of many more soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, struck down by hostile fire or mortars or improvised explosive devices. Soldiers who would never leave a wounded comrade unattended on the battlefield suddenly find themselves in a hospital bed fighting for their lives. They have been separated from their unit, they are distressed about their condition, about what it means for the future, about suddenly being ripped from their unit by a mortar shell, about being helicoptered away from a very special group that had promised to protect each other come hell or high water. Now they are in the hands of people who made no such pledge, and the first thing the soldier learns is that his pay is being cut. I cannot imagine a more unambiguous way of telling that soldier that he or she is not as valuable today as yesterday. Some have said to me, these are special pays for special purposes. We cannot be extending them indefinitely. There are two answers to this: one, my amendment would not extend them indefinitely, only to the point where the soldier has recovered and been reassigned or discharged; and, two, the Congress has already recognized the principle that combat pay should be extended to the wounded soldier in the hospital. It did so in the case of the combat pay tax exclusion which exempts combat pay from taxation until the soldier is discharged from the hospital. I would hope that this body would accept my ``do no harm'' amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, today I am introducing two bills aimed at protecting the privacy of personally identifiable individual information and making it more difficult for unauthorized persons to obtain access to such data. In Bonfire of the Vanities, the novelist Tom Wolfe wrote about ``The Bororo Indians, a primitive jungle tribe who live along the Vermelho River in the Amazon Jungles of Brazil.'' According to Wolfe, the Bororos believed that ``there is no such thing as a private self.'' Instead, they ``regard the mind as an open cavity, like a cave or a tunnel or an arcade, if you will, in which the entire village dwells and the jungle grows.'' Wolfe compared this to the situation faced by his protagonist, Sherman McCoy, who was caught in the middle of a public scandal in the last quarter of the 20th century. In the 21st century, we now face the prospect of a world in which all of us--not just someone in the midst of scandal--will be forced to live without a private self: with the entire ``village'' able to obtain access to some of the most personal aspects of our lives. In the emerging surveillance society of the 21st century, the data mining and information brokerage firms, much like Wolf's Bororo Indians, believe that there is no such thing as a private self. These companies are collecting and selling a vast array of personal information about the American public. For a fee, these companies will tell you someone's Social Security number, their address, phone number, driver's license number, driving record, any criminal record information, court records, insurance claims, divorce records, and even credit and financial information. Recent press reports indicate that ChoicePoint, an information broker and data mining firm, had allowed a group of Nigerian con artists to get access to names, Social Security numbers, and other personal information about 140,000 Americans, including roughly 1,100 Massachusetts residents. Apparently this is not the first time that ChoicePoint has allowed criminal identity thieves to get access to such information. Two years ago, a similar problem reportedly occurred at the same company. Unchecked, these companies take advantage of the most valuable possessions that Americans have: their personal identities. Companies like ChoicePoint are playing Russian roulette with the personal information and identities of millions of Americans. If we don't take steps to protect America's consumers soon, it is not a question of whether or not more Americans will lose their privacy--it is question of when will the next ID theft scandal hit. We must take immediate action to protect consumers from more information breaches. The ``Information Protection and Security Act,'' which I am introducing today in the House, and which Senator Nelson of Florida is introducing in the Senate, would do three basic things: 1. Subject information brokers like ChoicePoint to federal regulation by the Federal Trade Commission, and specifically, require such brokers to comply with a set of new fair information practice rules that the FTC would be required to issue within 6 months of enactment. 2. The FTC rules that the bill mandates will require information brokers to better secure the information in their possession, grant consumers the right to obtain access to and correct information held by the broker, require information brokers to protect information from unauthorized users, and prohibit users of an information broker to obtain the information for impermissible or unlawful purposes. 3. The bill's requirements will be enforceable through the FTC, which would be empowered to bring civil actions to punish and fine violators; the State Attorney's General, who could bring similar actions; and consumers, who would be empowered to bring a private right of action. My second bill, the ``Social Security Number Protection Act,'' would bring a halt to unregulated commerce in Social Security numbers. This bill would make it a crime for a person to sell or purchase Social Security numbers. Under the bill, the FTC would be given rulemaking authority to restrict the sale of Social Security numbers, determine appropriate exemptions, and to enforce civil compliance with the bill's restrictions. The bill would also authorize the States to enforce compliance, and provide for appropriate penalties. I look forward to working with my colleagues in the House and the Senate to see to it that these two bills are enacted into law.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, on February 16, 2005, the House approved H.R. 310, the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act of 2005. It passed the House by a vote of 389 to 38 and had 67 cosponsors when it was considered by the House. Due to a failure to convey in timely fashion a co-sponsorship request from my staff to the bill's sponsor, Chairman Fred Upton, our colleague Representative Gene Taylor (D-MS) was not listed as one of the cosponsors prior to the bill's passage through the House. Representative Taylor has been a strong supporter of the bill, and was a cosponsor of the identical legislative effort in the last Congress. I am pleased to have his ardent support for H.R. 310. And I want the Record to reflect his intention to be a cosponsor, as well as his early and longstanding support for the public interest in broadcasting and adequate enforcement tools for the Federal Communications Commission.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise to introduce the ``Video Description Restoration Act of 2005.'' Mr. Speaker, we have a long history in telecommunications policy of trying to ensure that the benefits of technology reach all segments of American society. Our policies, enacted by Congress and implemented by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), has sought to further the three principal goals of telecommunications policy, namely, universal service, diversity, and localism--even as such policy objectives are buffeted by rapid technological change and competition. For instance, in the late 1980s, the Telecommunications Subcommittee enacted legislation to include a decoder chip in all televisions to ensure that the deaf and hard-of-hearing community had affordable access to closed captioning. While the industry opposed such efforts as being too costly, with exaggerated claims of how much the price of televisions would rise as a result of this mandate, the technology cost was minimal and now turns out to be about a dollar a set. The FCC's video description rules were designed to similarly serve a community, in this case the blind community, in a modest effort to ensure that television was available to that community. Video description is the insertion of narration about the visual setting and background when that information is not already included in the audio portion of the program. Because television is a mainstay for information, news, and family-oriented viewing in the home, it is important that steps are taken, in furtherance of longstanding universal service goals, to reach the blind community. This bill would restore the video programming rules. Recently the DC Circuit Court of Appeals invalidated the rules, alleging that the Commission did not have sufficient authority to promulgate such rules. Passage of this legislation would remove any ambiguity. I believe Congress ought to give the Commission clear guidance that such rules should be reinstated in a way that no court could question the intent of Congress that the Commission should have such authority. Moreover, by approving such legislation, Congress can also establish that such video description rules do not regulate content in violation of any Constitutional protections. Broadcasters are free to air whatever content they wish over the course of a week. The video description rules simply require that a modest portion of such speech be made available to all listeners, including those who cannot see. The regulations would not stipulate which speech is acceptable, favored, or otherwise and broadcasters can choose which speech they wish to make available to the blind community. In fact, rather than infringing upon speech, the rules celebrate it, essentially saying that such speech is so important, so valued, that more Americans deserve to be able to hear it over their public airwaves, as broadcast by public licensees who are required by law to serve the public interest. Mr. Speaker, I hope the House will move legislation this year to re- instate these important video description rules and look forward to working with all of my colleagues on this issue in the weeks and months ahead.