I want to talk to this measure. I think part of the frustration those of us on the Republican side of the aisle feel is this: We are being asked to truncate the time to debate this bill, which was already limited to no amendments under a closed rule, a bill that has never had a hearing in this House or before the Energy and Commerce Committee or the subcommittee.
The Republicans were completely denied the opportunity to offer any amendment at any time. Now I am trying to figure out how that's democracy in action and how that is change for a better day. And now we are being asked to basically cut it quick, be quiet, go back to our offices so they can go to the White House for a media show.
Let me talk to this bill. Delaying the DTV date from February 17 to June puts it right in the middle of hurricane season, tornado season, and all that. It doesn't open up the spectrum any sooner for law enforcement to deal with the issues that the public safety community identified 5 years to the day of 9/11. Five years before, they said, You have got to give us some more spectrum so we can have interoperability. That is back in 2001. We are that to here. Now we are going to delay it some more.
For broadcasters in my State of Oregon, they are going to get to pay $500,000 to $1 million more in energy costs to run two transmitters, when they should only, and had counted on, only running one. So to keep their analog--most likely, a tube-driven transmitter fired up--that will add 4 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere at a time when I thought the majority and others in this Congress wanted to do something about carbon emissions.
So, it will cost $1 million, it will cost jobs. You will burn more energy. They will have to have engineers keep old transmitters hobbled together. We had a transmitter across the river in Washington State, an analog transmitter, burn up 2 weeks ago. Their analog transmitter. It's off the air. They switched. And they haven't had any real pushback from the community.
``The provisions in this new bill, according to Communications Daily,'' that purport to provide a safety valve for public safety agencies that want to make use of the 700 megahertz spectrum before the revised deadline are worse than provisions that raised public safety objections,'' industry officials said Friday. ``This bill is totally of no value to public safety,'' said an industry official.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to put this report from Communications Daily into the Record so that Americans and our colleagues can see this.
Under the bill, a public safety agency can go on the air if a TV station vacates its channel in compliance with the various rules. And yet, it's so complicated in here, that isn't going to happen. We had Members say, Gee, we have got to do something to help public safety. This just delays that.
So you're going to burn more power, you're going to cost jobs. Then, most Americans, 93, 94, probably pushing up higher than that, have already made the conversion, that we know of. A million people have come off the waiting list for the coupons in the last 4 weeks.
