Mr. WALDEN. Reclaiming my time; not on this bill. There was no hearing on this bill. We've had hearings along the way about this issue, but not on this bill before us today--at least no markup on this bill. So our only alternative to help the taxpayers prevent--who's going to loan us this money, by the way? $650 million more we're going to ask to borrow to pay for converter boxes. And yet, only half the money has been spent.
There's an affordable, efficient alternative we could have at least allowed the Members here to vote on that said, Change the accounting a bit, allow them to go ahead and move forward and issue the coupons as those expired, that aren't used, because not every coupon is being used. There's only a 52.5 redemption rate. Then that money will flow back in at the end.
Putting money in the stimulus means it's not available until April or May. Now you have got a June deadline. So even that money is not going to flow out there. I urge defeat of the rule. We can legislate in a much better way than this.
