[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 27 (Friday, February 18, 2011)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E287]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


  IN OPPOSITION TO AMENDMENT 468 TO H.R. 1, CONTINUING APPROPRIATIONS 
                               ACT, 2011

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. DORIS O. MATSUI

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, February 17, 2011

  Ms. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, under current law, the Lifeline program 
provides Americans struggling to climb out of poverty and get back on 
their feet a choice to receive a landline phone or a mobile phone 
subsidized by the Universal Service Fund. In my district of Sacramento, 
we have 25,000, and in the State of California we have approximately 2 
million, residents who benefit from this service.
  Low income people use Lifeline service to look for a job, call their 
doctors, reach their child care providers, or contact their family in 
an emergency.
  But Amendment No. 468 would eliminate USF funding for mobile phone 
service for the poorest Americans, and maintain it only for landline 
phones, forcing poor people to stay at home waiting for important 
calls, rather than getting out of their homes to look for a job.
  I have heard from many of my constituents in Sacramento who are 
concerned about the high costs of services, and would be impacted by 
these cuts to Lifeline services.
  I have heard from a woman who is living off a fixed income and is 
counting her pennies each month to make ends meet. If her bill goes up 
``by one cent'', she says she will have to drop her service. The 
Lifeline program allows her to stay connected in an increasingly 
connected society.
  Another one of my constituents, who is disabled, can't afford in-home 
broadband services, and is forced to commute miles to the nearest 
library to access the Internet. But these all day excursions means that 
he misses important calls, and if something were to happen to him while 
he was out without a mobile phone, he would have no ability to call a 
friend, family member, or 911 for help. This Amendment would take that 
cell phone away.
  Moreover, this Amendment would not return any monies to the U.S. 
Treasury. The Universal Service Fund is supported entirely by telephone 
users--not taxpayers.
  In short, this Amendment picks technological winners and losers. It 
ignores input from legislators who have expertise on these issues. The 
House Energy and Commerce Committee plans to hold hearings on the 
Universal Service Fund this year, and the Federal Communications 
Commission announced its intention to review the Lifeline program.
  Finally, the amendment limits both economic opportunity and 
discourages employment security. Studies by the Opinion Research 
Corporation and MIT have found that cell phones are extremely important 
to an individual's economic productivity and earning power. Having 
access to a cell phone in order to get a ``call back'' is essential for 
Americans who are out of work. When the rest of America is cutting 
their landlines, this amendment is forcing the poorest among us to rely 
on a dying technology, which the free market has rejected.
  We should be expanding the lifeline program to broadband and mobile 
phones, technologies that are in high demand, and empower consumers to 
pursue a job, an education, or new career training.
  For all of these reasons, I strongly oppose this Amendment, and urge 
my colleagues to do the same.

                          ____________________