Larry Pressler

Mr. PRESSLER

Mr. PRESSLER. I object.

Mr. PRESSLER. I move to table.

Mr. PRESSLER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the request to table this amendment be vitiated.

Mr. PRESSLER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent--the Senator from Montana has just arrived. He wishes to speak on this. All of my time is used, but I ask unanimous consent Senator Burns be given 5 minutes to speak on this. I have made the request to vitiate the yeas and nays.

Mr. PRESSLER. The Senate will vote in 5 minutes, but I also ask unanimous consent Senator Simon be recognized--following this upcoming vote, Senator Simon be recognized to speak for up to 10 minutes.

Mr. PRESSLER. I have more to it. I will go on. I was hoping to get that approved. Relax. It is coming. I ask unanimous consent that following the remarks of Senator Simon, the Senate resume consideration of the Conrad amendment No. 1275 and there be 20 minutes for debate to be equally divided in the usual form; and that following the conclusion or yielding time, I be recognized to make a motion to table the Conrad amendment.

Mr. PRESSLER. I point out as manager of the bill I cut my time down to about 4 minutes to speak against it, to try to keep things moving. But I think the Senator from Montana is so eloquent that his argument-- --

Mr. PRESSLER. I further ask that Senator Simon be recognized following the disposition of the Conrad amendment No. 1275. Does that take care of the Senator? Then we have all the problems taken care of.

Mr. PRESSLER. Fine. I will point out I gave the opposition 15 minutes. I just took 5 to try to move this thing along. But, fine, we will give each side 5 more minutes. I ask unanimous consent that occur.

Mr. PRESSLER. To the 14 seconds and 15 seconds.

Mr. PRESSLER

Mr. PRESSLER. We have a problem with one portion, which is to modify or remove such national or local ownership of radio and television broadcasting.

Mr. PRESSLER. In the amendment we have national or local ownership of radio and television broadcasting.

Mr. PRESSLER. As I understand it, every Senator can modify his amendment at any time. That changes the amendment based on my understanding. The amendment I have in my hand reads radio and television broadcasting. Mr. DORGAN addressed the Chair.

Mr. PRESSLER. A Senator has a right to modify his amendment.

Mr. PRESSLER. In view of the fact that the amendment I have in my hand is to modify or remove such national or local ownership of radio and television broadcasting, and just on the very moment of the vote to take out radio, and I want to consult with some of my colleagues, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. PRESSLER

Mr. PRESSLER. I do not yield the floor.

Mr. PRESSLER. Let me answer the question.

Mr. PRESSLER. If my friend will allow me, the Senators' amendment would require that they go to two places, first of all, for sure. There is no debate about that. You have to go to two places.

Mr. PRESSLER. Yes, I will yield.

Mr. PRESSLER. I will, just as soon as I am finished. I am almost finished. What we have here is a lawyer's paradise if this passes. It will mean the piece of regulation we have before us, which is deregulatory, will become in part regulatory. We are trying to simplify, to have less Government making approvals. This amendment would mean we would need a whole other layer of people making the same approvals. It is more regulation, in my judgment. Let me also say that we had quite a debate in the Commerce Committee and here on the floor on this matter of public interest, convenience, and necessity. There are many in the think tanks in town who would be described as on the conservative side of things who think we should not have the standard of public interest, convenience, and necessity because, they said, that is more bureaucracy, it lets the FCC have too much power. This Chamber and the Commerce Committee had votes on that and it was determined to leave it in, but a lot of people think that is too much regulation. These companies are going to have to go through all the checklists, the public interest test, State approval, they are going to have to go through all that. Then my friends want them to go on over to the Justice Department with their lawyers and start all over again. We should not allow that. That is my point.

Mr. PRESSLER. Mr. President, I would like to respond to some of the remarks made here today, in part, to say that we already do have antitrust laws that will continue to exist. We have the Sherman Antitrust, the Clayton Act, and the Hart-Scott- Rodino Act, which will remain in full application. I would like to go through the regulatory safeguards that already exist in S. 652, to break up local Bell monopolies without a new Department of Justice bottleneck. It is my strongest feeling that having the Department involved as a decisionmaker here is a mistake. The Department is already involved. The Department can be a party to any case on appeal from the FCC. Under the Hobbs Civil Appeals Act, it involved the Department as an independent party in all FCC appeals. The point is, the Department has an antitrust role. It has a role as an independent party in all FCC appeals. It can use the Sherman antitrust standard or it can use the Clayton, or indeed the Hart-Scott- Rodino can be used when there is an application for a merger. Now, we already have several safeguards in the process. We do not need bureaucracy. Having the Department do the same thing, basically, that the FCC is already doing is a mistake. I might say that even if they do it, it will take them a long time. My friends have said we will put a time certain. The legislation already requires the Department to try to act within 30 days. That is a requirement that is already on them. Presently, the appeals last up to 3 or 4 years. I have a chart. I will show how long the appeals last. They already have a 30-day requirement that they have not been meeting. [[Page S8147]] I want to go through some of the regulatory safeguards in this bill. First of all, the State certifies compliance with market requirements. The State has to act on this. That is a safeguard. That is a check. Second, the FCC affirms public interest. That is also public interest, convenience, and necessity. That means that the FCC can look at this from the traditional public interest, convenience, and necessity standpoint. We had a discussion about that here on the floor of the Senate. There was an effort to repeal that by some Members of the Senate who feel that the public interest gives the FCC too much latitude, too much power. Next, the FCC certifies compliance and requests a 14-point checklist. The FCC has to go through a 14-point checklist to certify that the regional Bells have acted. I have the 14 points on another chart. I will go through that. The Bell companies comply with separate subsidiary requirement. They must have a separate subsidiary in a certain period of time in many areas. Nondiscrimination requirement. They cannot give all the business to one long distance or one subsidiary. They have to act in a nondiscriminatory way. There is a cross-subsidization ban. Fifth, FCC allows the Department full participation in all its proceedings. The Department of Justice will be there as the FCC proceeds. Indeed, the bill, as written, gives the Justice Department a role. Next, the Bells must comply with existing FCC rules in rigorous annual audits; elaborate cost accounting; computer-assisted reporting, and special pricing rules. Seventh, there will remain the full application of the Sherman Antitrust, the Clayton Act, and the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act. This is very important. It is not as though, if we defeat the Dorgan-Thurmond amendments, that the Justice Department will have no role. They will have a very active role as they have had in the past. I think that that is something to remember. Again, the Hobbs Civil Appeals Act lets the Department of Justice participate as an independent party in all FCC appeals. Let me go over here to the competitive checklist, if I may. This is S. 652's measure to assure breakup of local Bell monopolies. First, access to network functions and services. The interconnect requirement is on the checklist. I think everybody in the Chamber has been in on drawing up this checklist. It is a checklist that the FCC will have to go through before a Bell company is certified that it has met the requirements. This is a definite checklist. It is something that we have worked on around here since January in meetings every night and on Saturdays and Sundays. Next, capability to exchange telecommunications between Bell customers and competitors' customers; Third, access to poles, ducts, conduits, and rights of way; Fourth, local loop transmission unbundled from switching; Fifth, local transport from trunk side unbundled from switch; Sixth, local switching unbundled. These are the so-called unbundling portions of it, whereby a company will have to open up and unbundle its codes so that competitors can come in. It is only once they form a small telephone company that there is interconnection and unbundling available. Next, access to 911 and enhanced 911, directory assistance and operator call completion service; Next is the white pages directory listing; Next is access to telephone number assignment; Tenth, access to data bases and network signaling; Eleventh, interim number portability; Twelfth, local dialing parity; Thirteenth, reciprocal compensation; Fourteenth, resale of local service to competitors. Mr. President, this is the competitive checklist, the 14 points that must be met first of all to be certified by the FCC. Then we also have the so-called public interest requirement. We also have State certification. What I am saying is, here we have a carefully crafted bill that already requires much review, and what is being proposed in the Thurmond and Dorgan amendments is that, when we finish all this with the State and the FCC, then we go over to the Justice Department and start all over again with another decisionmaker. The Justice Department is not supposed to be a decisionmaker in this sense. The Justice Department is not a regulatory agency. It has become one under Judge Greene's rules, but those attorneys theoretically respond to Judge Greene from the district court. They have gotten in the habit over there of having several hundred lawyers who are basically regulators. As, for example, in the Ameritech case, they are even approving phone books and things of that sort over at the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice is supposed to deal with antitrust issues and the Sherman Act and the Clayton Act and go act as an independent party under the Hobbs Appeals Act. They are supposed to be lawyers bringing cases and lawyers giving interpretations and antitrust rulings and so forth. What the Justice Department, like so many departments in Washington, wants to do is become a regulator, to have a permanent staff of people who regulate and make decisions. That is supposed to be done over at the FCC. So I say to my friends who propose this change that, if they want another standard of regulation, let us do it at the FCC where it is supposed to be. Why go over here to the Department of Justice--which has its role, which has its traditional role, and a good role, let me say. We have read a lot in the paper about the Hart-Scott-Rodino rulings of this year and the Clayton Act standard, which is in the proposal of Senator Thurmond. And, of course, the Sherman Antitrust Act, which started all this, in Judge Greene's decision. The point is the Department of Justice already has a role and will have a role without adding another layer of bureaucracy. The Dorgan-Thurmond amendment or variations thereof, is the opposite of proconsumer legislation. Consumers want wide open competition. They want lower costs. They want more and better services, and they want these without delay. The Department of Justice, in carrying out the MFJ, is now averaging nearly 3 years. I believe I have here a list of small charts which show the average time, ``Average Age Of Waivers Pending Before the District Court.'' In 1993 it is 1,600 days, is the average age of the waivers. That is how long it takes to get a decision out of the Department of Justice, 1,600 days. The ``Waivers Disposed Of Through the District Court,'' that is through the Justice Department, has declined in 1993. It reached a height in 1986 but they are doing less, even slower, even more slowly. The average age of waivers pending before the Department of Justice year-end is 1,200 days. This is in a Department that in present law says it will endeavor to get these done within 30 days. They have completely ignored that. Next we come to ``Waivers Disposed Of By DOJ.'' It has dropped to an all-time low in 1993 for some reason. The point I am making--requests filed with the DOJ hit an all time low in 1992, again in 1993--is people have given up. If they have to wait 3 years or more, it is too frustrating, too futile. I think that is something we should think about very carefully before we add another layer of bureaucracy. I know my colleagues have the best intentions here, but I have a chart showing the ``Average Age of Waivers Before the District Court Year-end.'' It started in 1985. They were supposed to get theirs, in the law, done within 30 days. They were supposed to get the work done within 30 days. In 1985 it took them an average of about 100 days to get the waivers issued. In 1986 it was up to about 200 days. Anyway, to make a long story short, if you file a waiver before the Department of Justice today you will wait, on the average, nearly 1,500 days, about 4 years. That is why they dropped so much. I say to my colleagues, do we want this extra layer of bureaucracy? Or do we really want to open up competition? I would say it is a great mistake. We are doing all these checklists. We are doing public interest. We are having [[Page S8148]] the States be involved. All this has to happen first. This is a formidable task. We are probably talking about delaying competition 3 years at least if this amendment passes in any form. The way the bureaucracy works around this town--I have been around here awhile watching it--it will probably be more than that before we are through. We are probably talking about a 3- to 5-year delay. Some of my colleagues have talked about a LeMans start--that is, just start right now, in terms of competition. We would let everybody compete. There are some problems of unbundling or interconnecting with that, but there are Members of this body, indeed we had two members in the Commerce Committee who voted against this bill who felt strongly about an immediate start. There is much merit to that. But the bill we came up with is a balance between those two. The bill we came up with allows States to certify, then the FCC to go through a 14-point checklist, then the FCC to go through the public interest test, then competition would begin under our bill. But under the proposal of my colleagues here today on the Senate floor, the Dorgan-Thurmond proposal, after we finished all that process and went through all those approvals and went through that checklist, then we would go over to the Justice Department and start all over again with some more regulators and they would go through yet more tests. It would take more time. What we have here is a lawyer's dream, a lawyer's paradise.

Mr. PRESSLER. Mr. President, we are returning to the telecommunications bill. I urge all Senators to come to the floor with their statements and amendments. We have made good progress on the bill. We have many challenges ahead to meet. As I have said frequently, this bill will allow all parts of the telecommunications industry to get into each other's business and allow new small businesses to get into the telecommunications area. It will open up our local telephone markets for the first time to competition. It will allow our long distance companies to get into local and vice versa. It will move toward the deregulation of cable by encouraging competition from DBS, direct broadcast satellite television, and by giving the regional Bells video dial opportunity. There will be three or four competitors in each market, which should and will make cable prices much lower. It will mean lower cost telephone services, lower telephone rates and lower long distance rates for the average American. Many years ago, when I was in the House, we had some great debates over the deregulation of natural gas, and people said if we deregulate natural gas, prices will skyrocket. They did not. They have come down and there is competition and natural gas prices are lower than they have ever been. We can do our senior citizens and others a favor by getting lower prices through competition. That is what this bill will do. This bill will also lift some regulation in the broadcast area. It will allow some of our utilities to do things they have not done before in telecommunications. It covers a broad spectrum of American life. It is a very important bill. It is a bill we need to pass. The bill we have before us is not perfect in anyone's eyes. It is a good bill, and each Senator would write it slightly differently. Indeed, every Senator has had the opportunity to participate in the writing of this bill. It has been a long process that we held before the markup in the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee. We held meeting after meeting for probably 90 days as well as meeting on Saturdays and Sundays, with Senators and staffs being invited who wished to participate. We came to the Commerce Committee with this bill and received all except two votes. We are very proud of the bipartisan effort that we have made and that will remain bipartisan. I want to pay tribute to my colleague, Senator Hollings, who has done such an outstanding job, and to all the Republicans and Democrats who have worked hard on this bill. This bill will provide a roadmap for us into the wireless age. It will provide a roadmap for investors to invest in creative and competitive enterprises. It will also help consumers because it will mean more services at lower prices. If we look at what has happened in the computer industry, every 18 months their equipment is virtually obsolete, there is so much competition and so much innovation. I would like to see the same thing in the telecommunications area, and I think we can see that in the next 10 years if we pass this bill. We still have a long way to go. We have to pass the bill in the Senate and in the House, we have to have a conference, and the President has to be able to sign it. I hope the White House will help us out. I began this process by going to the White House with a copy of the chairman's discussion draft and talking to Al Gore, trying to get his support. We hope the White House will be supportive of this process, because, if we can pass this bill, I frequently say, it will be like the Oklahoma land rush for the American consumers. Right now, many of our telecommunications areas are in economic apartheid; they are limited just to one group. If we could get them deregulated and competing, there would be an explosion of new investment, an explosion of new services, and a explosion of opportunities and employment. Presently, many of our largest telecommunications companies have to invest abroad if they want to manufacture, for example, because the regional Bells are prohibited. Others invest abroad because they cannot get into other areas. This will let everybody into everybody else's business. It will allow competition, as it should. In the future, whether it is 5 or 10 or 15 years from now, we will be in the wireless era. That may well be an opportunity for even more competition because presently you have to unbundle or interconnect with someone else's wires to get access to local telephone service, for example. But we hope that is changed and will be changed by this bill. I know there are many amendments pending, and I hope Senators will bring their amendments to the floor this afternoon. I plead with Senators to allow us to have some time agreements at some point so we can debate these amendments on both sides. It is not my intention to discourage any Senator from offering an amendment. We are working with staff, trying to get time [[Page S8135]] agreements on some of these amendments so we can move forward. I have asked Senator Dole and Senator Daschle for their cooperation in finishing this bill, and I think it is very, very important. As has been pointed out repeatedly, this bill will affect every household in America. If we fail to act this year, it will fall over to 1997 because next year, being a Presidential year, such a controversial bill probably will not be able to pass. This is one of the most controversial and complicated bills to come to the Senate floor. I think we are on the way to passing it. But we will need the cooperation of all Senators. I have frequently said this is not the sort of bill that any one Senator can take credit for, or the lead. It takes every Senator. We all have to be involved. Because in the telecommunications field, any one group can checkmate, almost, the progress of a bill. We hope that does not happen. It is very important. It will affect a third of our economy. It will create jobs. As we read in the newspapers about some of our mature, aging industries, as they lay people off, we need to have new, creative areas to create jobs. We have done that in the computer industry. We have done it in some of our other growth industries. This will make us competitive internationally also. It will affect our exports and our balance of payments. This bill also includes reciprocity for investors from abroad so we treat them as they treat us. The public interest review by the FCC is preserved. So, I urge Senators, come to the floor and offer amendments. I ask respectfully that we be able to get some time agreements on some of these controversial amendments that will be coming. It is not our intention to shut anybody off. We want people to have their vote. But we must proceed. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. PRESSLER. Yes. We have to resolve the Administrative Procedures Act matter or clarify it to the Senate. The Justice Department, being a prosecutorial branch of our Government, can operate in secret or does not have to follow the administrative procedures rules. Therefore when you file a waiver--presently when a telephone company files for a waiver--they do not have the same rights to know what is going on or ex parte rules or rules of openness that one has with an agency such as the FCC. And under the 14-point checklist that we have and under the public interest rules at FCC, they have to follow the administrative procedures. This provides openness and and protects the rights of parties. But when they go over to the Justice Department--and it was one problem we had with the VIII(c) test very frankly--there is not that openness. The Justice Department does not have to have open meetings [[Page S8150]] and hearings. It does not have to have ex parte rules. Your rights over there are less than they are when you are before an agency that has the Administrative Procedures Act. I think this goes to the core of the debate here on the Senate floor. The Justice Department is a different sort of an agency. It is a cabinet agency that does not have to be under the Administrative Procedures Act. It can prosecute people. It interprets the antitrust laws. It interprets the Sherman Act and the Clayton Act and the Hart- Scott-Rodino Act, and it does a good job in those areas. I might say that the present Assistant Attorney General, a fine woman, has done a great job, in my opinion, on Hart-Scott-Rodino, and she has done a great job in administering this huge group of lawyers over there who are regulators presently under the MFJ. And I suppose that somebody fears they are going to have to let all their lawyers go, somewhere between 200 and 900 lawyers, and I do not know where they are going to go. Maybe that is the problem. Seriously, on a serious note, the Department of Justice wants to keep on being a regulator without being under the Administrative Procedures Act. And that is a problem. When you get over to the Justice Department--first of all, under the Dorgan amendment, you go to the FCC and you have openness. You can have an open hearing. If one of the commissioners talks to somebody even at a reception about this case, he has to file a report of it and give equal time to somebody else. But you go over here to the Justice Department, you are not under the Administrative Procedures Act. They can operate in secret if they want to. They are a prosecutorial agency. They can operate without the ex parte rules. I think that is a very important thing. Constitutionally, I do not think you should be able to apply all of the aspects of the Administrative Procedures Act to the Justice Department. They have a different role in the nature of our Government. They have a different mission to carry out. Now, every agency would like to have several rooms full of lawyers who are regulators. And, indeed, if you look in the present Ameritech case, the Department of Justice had regulators checking on the validity of telephone books, to see whether they fit into the rules. They have regulators checking into the validity of Yellow Pages. This is in the Department of Justice, where we hold up the hand of the balance of justice. This has nothing to do with the balance of justice. This belongs in the regulatory agency that we spend so much money on, the FCC. So that is I think a very core point here in the nature of this debate. I am going to yield any further time. I will just conclude by saying, because we have to get this debate moving, I challenge my friend from North Dakota to name another area of commerce where the Department of Justice has a decisionmaking role. This is trying to give the Department of Justice a decisionmaking role. And the answer to that question, which I will get, is none, not another single area--not transportation, not aviation, not financial services or any other area. Why telecom, which is an important area? Why are they putting them over in the Department of Justice? It is going to take a thousand regulators at least to carry out the Dorgan amendment. And we have this job done twice already, once at the State level and once at the FCC. I hope when we get into the wireless age I will still be around here offering a bill to eliminate the regulation that we have, but that may be 10 years down the road. In any event, this is a bad concept, from the Administrative Procedures Act to the decisionmaking role. I yield the floor.

Mr. PRESSLER

Mr. PRESSLER. Mr. President, we will be back on the telecommunications bill at 1 o'clock. I urge Senators to bring their amendments to the floor so we can begin to see if we can work them out. We are determined to press forward on the telecommunications bill this afternoon, and we will be starting at 1 o'clock. We invite speeches by Members as well as amendments. This is a vast bill that will affect every household in the United States. It also affects about one-third of our economy. We have been on this bill for 2 days and we will be going back to it at 1 o'clock. We invite amendments to be offered from that time onward. I yield the floor.

Mr. PRESSLER

Mr. PRESSLER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in recess under the previous order.