[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 19 (Tuesday, March 3, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E265]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          LET CONSUMERS CHOOSE

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. BILL PAXON

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, March 3, 1998

  Mr. PAXON. Mr. Speaker, during the arduous legislative process that 
created the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the Members of the Commerce 
Committee used the basic principle of consumer choice as our guide.
  Today, responsibility for implementation of the Telecommunications 
Act of 1996 rests with the FCC, and I am left to wonder if the same 
principles that guided Congress' creation of the Telecommunications 
Act, are guiding the FCC in their implementation of the Act.
  When the Federal Communications Commission turned down yet another 
State Commission's request that the local Bell company be allowed to 
offer long-distance, the FCC essentially said that local phone 
customers cannot be trusted to make wise choices. The FCC said that, if 
we let them, the residents of Oklahoma, Michigan, South Carolina, or 
Louisiana, for example, might make what the FCC thinks is the wrong 
decision.
  In passing the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Congress wanted 
competition to begin in the telephone services marketplace. It's time 
to get all parties moving in that direction.
  The free enterprise system is built on the belief that American 
consumers are best capable of making consumer decisions--that they can 
decide what is good for them a lot better than a Washington 
bureaucracy.

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