[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 59 (Thursday, March 30, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4838-S4839]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           TELECOMMUNICATIONS

  Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, last week, the Senate Commerce Committee 
reported out a piece of legislation, the Telecommunications Competition 
Deregulation Act of 1995, that I consider to be a very important piece 
of legislation.
  I have come to the floor here this morning, though, to alert my 
colleagues, who are also interested and excited about this legislation, 
that I think it would be very unwise for Members to rush the enactment 
of this bill.
  I take that position not because I have major objections to the 
legislation. Indeed, I have been intimately involved not just with this 
bill, but 1822 and the farm team coalition that worked it, trying to 
make certain there would be universal service for high-cost rural 
areas.
  I have been very much involved with the deregulation of 
telecommunications. I suspect I am the only Member of Congress who is 
actually able to say I have signed a significant deregulation act in 
1985 when I was Governor.
  The delay that I am suggesting, Mr. President, comes as a consequence 
of a very interesting, what I would call, disconnect.
  Just last November I finished a successful reelection campaign. In 
meeting after meeting, in debates and so forth that we have when facing 
the voters, they were asking me about term limits, balanced budgets, 
health care, and agriculture policy. Crime, of course, dominated almost 
every discussion and debate. What are we going to do about crime?
  I must say, Mr. President, that never in my campaign did the issue of 
telecommunications arise.
  I say to my colleagues, as important as this legislation is, and I 
think it is an urgent and exciting opportunity here, the citizens, in 
my judgment, are not prepared for the change that this legislation 
would bring to them--significant change.
  I suspect the occupant of the Chair can remember in 1983 when the 
divestiture occurred. I know in Nebraska, if I put it to the voters, do 
voters want to go back to the old AT&T or do voters like the new 
divestiture arrangement, a very large percentage would have said, 
``Give me the good old days.''
 Because, all of a sudden, choice meant confusion, choice meant 
competition, choice meant a lot of problems that people were not 
prepared for.

  The same, in my judgment, is apt to occur here. I believe that we 
need to come to the floor and argue such things as access charges, so 
we not only understand what an access charge is but what happens when 
the access charges are decreased, understand what happens when 
something called rate rebalancing occurs at the local level in a 
competitive environment--which I am an advocate of. Chairman Pressler 
and Senator Hollings deserve an enormous amount of credit for being 
able to move this bill out of committee.
  One of the things I brought in a focused way to this argument was the 
need to make sure we had straightforward competition at the local 
level. So when an entrepreneur comes to the information service 
business and wants to go to a household and sell information, and that 
entrepreneur buys his lawyers at $50 an hour, he should know with 
certainty they are going to prevail over a company that buys, at $500 
or $1,000 an hour, its lawyers who have regular, familiar contact with 
the regulators. If we are going to have that competition, we need that 
level playing field for the entrepreneur. They need to know with 
certainty they are going to be able to offer their services to the 
customer as well.
  But in a competitive environment, you cannot price your product below 
cost for very long. That is what we 
[[Page S4839]] have been allowing for 60 years, basically. We used to 
have a competitive environment prior to 1934. The country made a 
conscious decision at the time that we wanted a monopoly, both at the 
local and long-distance level. We changed the law in 1934. We created a 
monopoly arrangement. And, as I said, people, I think, would be hard 
pressed to argue against the statement that it has resulted in the 
United States having the best telecommunications system in the world. 
Though monopolies in general do not seem to work, this particular one 
did.
  We made a good decision, although it was unpopular, in 1983 to 
divest. The divestiture has worked in the context of providing 
competition in the long-distance area. We now see rates have gone down. 
We see increased quality. We see improvement as a consequence of this 
competitive environment.
  But, again, to be clear on this, all of us should understand the 
implications of the statement that in a competitive environment you 
cannot price your product below cost for very long. What that means is 
that if I have a residential line into my home and I am paying $12 a 
month for that residential line and a business is paying $30 a month 
for the very same thing, we cannot, as residential users, count on that 
for long. If the price and the cost to provide that residential service 
is $14 or $15, we are not going to be able to count for very long on 
being able to get that service for $12. And many of our rural 
populations now enjoy $4, $5, $6, $7 a month for basic telephone 
service.
  There are other issues that I think are terribly important for us to 
bring to this floor under the rules of the Senate, which allow 
unlimited debate. We need to have a debate. There is tremendous promise 
in telecommunications, promise for new jobs, particularly in a 
competitive environment, particularly from those entrepreneurs who are 
apt to create most of the new jobs. Those individuals who come in as 
small business people with a great new idea tend to be enormously 
innovative and competitive when it comes to pricing their good or 
service. I am excited about what competition is going to be able to do, 
not just for price and quality, but also for the creation of new jobs 
in the country.
  There is tremendous promise, second, Mr. President, in our capacity 
to educate ourselves. I give a great deal of praise, again, to Senator 
Pressler and Senator Burns and Senator Rockefeller and others on the 
committee who put language in here to carve out special protection for 
our K-12 environment.
  Some will say, why? If it is going to be market oriented, why would 
you do that? For the moment, at least, our schools are not market-
oriented businesses. By that I mean they are government run. At $240 
billion a year, about 40 million students at $6,000 apiece have to go 
to school for 180 days a year and learn whatever it is that the States 
have decided they are supposed to learn. It is a government-run 
operation. And they are going to be unable, if property taxes and State 
sales and income taxes are the source of revenue, they are going to be 
unable to take advantage of this technology. So I was pleased we carved 
out provisions for schools in this legislation.
  We are going to have to debate how do we get our institutions at the 
local level to change. It is not going to be enough for us merely to 
change the Federal regulation, giving them the legal authority to ask 
their local telephone company for a connect and to get a subsidized 
rate. There is a need for institutional change, both at the local level 
and at the State level. There is tremendous promise, in my judgment, in 
communication technology to help our schoolchildren and to help our 
people who are in the workplace to learn the things they need to know, 
not just to be able to raise their standard of living, but also to be 
able to function well as a citizen and to be able to get along with one 
another in their communities.
  Finally, there is tremendous promise with communication technology in 
helping a citizen of this country become informed. When you are born in 
the United States of America or you become a citizen of the United 
States of America through the naturalization process, it is an 
extraordinary thing to consider. We are the freest people on Earth. No 
one really seriously doubts that. And the freedoms that we enjoy as a 
consequence of being a citizen are very exciting.
  But balanced against that, a citizen of this country also has very 
difficult responsibilities. It is a hard thing to be a citizen, a hard 
thing. Pick up the newspaper, and if you read a newspaper cover to 
cover today, you have processed as much information in one single 
reading as was required in a lifetime in the 17th century. We are 
getting deluged with information. Suddenly a citizen needs to know 
where is Chechnya, for gosh sakes? What is the history of Haiti, for 
gosh sakes? All of a sudden I have to know things that I did not have 
to know before. To make an informed decision is not an easy thing to 
do. This technology offers us an opportunity to help that citizen, our 
citizens--ourselves included, I might add--make good decisions.
  That will necessitate institutional change, I believe, at the Federal 
level, but also at the State level to get that done. This, along with 
education, along with jobs, and along with the changes that our people 
can expect to have happen, need a full and open and perhaps even 
lengthy debate on this floor before we enact what I consider to be a 
pretty darned good piece of legislation.
  The committee finished the bill. They are fine tuning it now. They 
have not actually introduced it yet or given it a title. I am very 
appreciative of the fine work that Chairman Pressler has done and that 
Senator Hollings and other members of the committee have done to bring 
this legislation out. I consider it to be at least as important as many 
other things that we have debated thus far this year. Indeed, over the 
course of the next 10 years it is apt to be the most important thing 
that we do.
  Therefore, I believe it is incumbent upon us not to just come here 
with an urgency to change the law, but it is incumbent upon us to come 
here and examine the law we propose to change and examine the details 
of the law as we propose to change them and engage the American people 
in a discussion of what these changes are going to mean for them.
  Again, I have high praise for the committee and look forward and hope 
we have the opportunity to come to this floor for a good, open, and 
informative debate for the American people.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Coverdell). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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