[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 6]
[House]
[Pages 7950-7954]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




  FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION CONSOLIDATED REPORTING ACT OF 2012

  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the 
bill (H.R. 3310) to amend the Communications Act of 1934 to consolidate 
the reporting obligations of the Federal Communications Commission in 
order to improve congressional oversight and reduce reporting burdens, 
as amended.
  The Clerk read the title of the bill.
  The text of the bill is as follows:

                               H.R. 3310

       Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of 
     the United States of America in Congress assembled,

     SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

       This Act may be cited as the ``Federal Communications 
     Commission Consolidated Reporting Act of 2012''.

     SEC. 2. COMMUNICATIONS MARKETPLACE REPORT.

       Title I of the Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S.C. 151 et 
     seq.) is amended by adding at the end the following:

     ``SEC. 14. COMMUNICATIONS MARKETPLACE REPORT.

       ``(a) In General.--In the last quarter of every even-
     numbered year, the Commission shall publish on its website 
     and submit to the Committee on Energy and Commerce of the 
     House of Representatives and the Committee on Commerce, 
     Science, and Transportation of the Senate a report on the 
     state of the communications marketplace.
       ``(b) Contents.--Each report required by subsection (a) 
     shall--
       ``(1) assess the state of competition in the communications 
     marketplace, including competition to deliver voice, video, 
     audio, and data services among providers of 
     telecommunications, providers of commercial mobile service 
     (as defined in section 332), multichannel video programming 
     distributors (as defined in section 602), broadcast stations, 
     providers of satellite communications, Internet service 
     providers, and other providers of communications services;
       ``(2) assess the state of deployment of communications 
     capabilities, including advanced telecommunications 
     capability (as defined in section 706 of the 
     Telecommunications Act of 1996 (47 U.S.C. 1302)), regardless 
     of the technology used for such deployment, including whether 
     advanced telecommunications capability is being deployed to 
     all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion;
       ``(3) assess whether laws, regulations, or regulatory 
     practices (whether those of the Federal Government, States, 
     political subdivisions of States, Indian tribes or tribal 
     organizations (as such terms are defined in section 4 of the 
     Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act (25 
     U.S.C. 450b)), or foreign governments) pose a barrier to 
     competitive entry into the communications marketplace or to 
     the competitive expansion of existing providers of 
     communications services;
       ``(4) describe the agenda of the Commission for the next 2-
     year period for addressing the challenges and opportunities 
     in the communications marketplace that were identified 
     through the assessments under paragraphs (1) through (3); and
       ``(5) describe the actions that the Commission has taken in 
     pursuit of the agenda described pursuant to paragraph (4) in 
     the previous report submitted under this section.
       ``(c) Special Requirements.--
       ``(1) Assessing competition.--In assessing the state of 
     competition under subsection (b)(1), the Commission shall 
     consider all forms of competition, including the effect of 
     intermodal competition, facilities-based competition, and 
     competition from new and emergent communications services, 
     including the provision of content and communications using 
     the Internet.
       ``(2) Assessing deployment.--In assessing the state of 
     deployment under subsection (b)(2), the Commission shall 
     compile a list of geographical areas that are not served by 
     any provider of advanced telecommunications capability.
       ``(3) International comparisons and demographic 
     information.--The Commission may use readily available data 
     to draw appropriate comparisons between the United States 
     communications marketplace and the international 
     communications marketplace and to correlate its assessments 
     with demographic information.
       ``(4) Considering small businesses.--In assessing the state 
     of competition under subsection (b)(1) and regulatory 
     barriers under subsection (b)(3), the Commission shall 
     consider market entry barriers for entrepreneurs and other 
     small businesses in the communications marketplace in 
     accordance with the national policy under section 257(b).''.

     SEC. 3. CONSOLIDATION OF REDUNDANT REPORTS; CONFORMING 
                   AMENDMENTS.

       (a) ORBIT Act Report.--Section 646 of the Communications 
     Satellite Act of 1962 (47 U.S.C. 765e; 114 Stat. 57) is 
     repealed.
       (b) Satellite Competition Report.--Section 4 of Public Law 
     109-34 (47 U.S.C. 703) is repealed.
       (c) International Broadband Data Report.--Section 103 of 
     the Broadband Data Improvement Act (47 U.S.C. 1303) is 
     amended--
       (1) by striking subsection (b); and
       (2) by redesignating subsections (c) through (e) as 
     subsections (b) through (d), respectively.
       (d) Status of Competition in the Market for the Delivery of 
     Video Programming Report.--Section 628 of the Communications 
     Act of 1934 (47 U.S.C. 548) is amended--
       (1) by striking subsection (g);
       (2) by redesignating subsection (j) as subsection (g); and
       (3) by transferring subsection (g) (as redesignated) so 
     that it appears after subsection (f).
       (e) Report on Cable Industry Prices.--
       (1) In general.--Section 623 of the Communications Act of 
     1934 (47 U.S.C. 543) is amended--
       (A) by striking subsection (k); and
       (B) by redesignating subsections (l) through (n) as 
     subsections (k) through (m), respectively.

[[Page 7951]]

       (2) Conforming amendment.--Section 613(a)(3) of the 
     Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S.C. 533(a)(3)) is amended 
     by striking ``623(l)'' and inserting ``623(k)''.
       (f) Triennial Report Identifying and Eliminating Market 
     Entry Barriers for Entrepreneurs and Other Small 
     Businesses.--Section 257 of the Communications Act of 1934 
     (47 U.S.C. 257) is amended by striking subsection (c).
       (g) Section 706 Report.--Section 706 of the 
     Telecommunications Act of 1996 (47 U.S.C. 1302) is amended--
       (1) in subsection (b)--
       (A) in the last sentence, by striking ``If the Commission's 
     determination is negative, it'' and inserting ``If the 
     Commission determines in its report under section 14 of the 
     Communications Act of 1934 that advanced telecommunications 
     capability is not being deployed to all Americans in a 
     reasonable and timely fashion, the Commission''; and
       (B) by striking the first and second sentences;
       (2) by striking subsection (c);
       (3) in subsection (d), by striking ``this subsection'' and 
     inserting ``this section''; and
       (4) by redesignating subsection (d) as subsection (c).
       (h) State of Competitive Market Conditions With Respect to 
     Commercial Mobile Radio Services.--Section 332(c)(1)(C) of 
     the Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S.C. 332(c)(1)(C)) is 
     amended by striking the first and second sentences.
       (i) Previously Eliminated Annual Report.--
       (1) In general.--Section 4 of the Communications Act of 
     1934 (47 U.S.C. 154) is amended--
       (A) by striking subsection (k); and
       (B) by redesignating subsections (l) through (o) as 
     subsections (k) through (n), respectively.
       (2) Conforming amendments.--The Communications Act of 1934 
     is amended--
       (A) in section 9(i), by striking ``In the Commission's 
     annual report, the Commission shall prepare an analysis of 
     its progress in developing such systems and'' and inserting 
     ``The Commission''; and
       (B) in section 309(j)(8)(B), by striking the last sentence.
       (j) Additional Outdated Reports.--The Communications Act of 
     1934 is further amended--
       (1) in section 4--
       (A) in subsection (b)(2)(B)(ii), by striking ``and shall 
     furnish notice of such action'' and all that follows through 
     ``subject of the waiver''; and
       (B) in subsection (g), by striking paragraph (2);
       (2) in section 215--
       (A) by striking subsection (b); and
       (B) by redesignating subsection (c) as subsection (b);
       (3) in section 227(e), by striking paragraph (4);
       (4) in section 309(j)--
       (A) by striking paragraph (12); and
       (B) in paragraph (15)(C), by striking clause (iv);
       (5) in section 331(b), by striking the last sentence;
       (6) in section 336(e), by amending paragraph (4) to read as 
     follows:
       ``(4) Report.--The Commission shall annually advise the 
     Congress on the amounts collected pursuant to the program 
     required by this subsection.'';
       (7) in section 339(c), by striking paragraph (1);
       (8) in section 396--
       (A) by striking subsection (i);
       (B) in subsection (k)--
       (i) in paragraph (1), by striking subparagraph (F); and
       (ii) in paragraph (3)(B)(iii), by striking subclause (V);
       (C) in subsection (l)(1)(B), by striking ``shall be 
     included'' and all that follows through ``The audit report''; 
     and
       (D) by striking subsection (m);
       (9) in section 398(b)(4), by striking the third sentence;
       (10) in section 624A(b)(1)--
       (A) by striking ``Report; regulations'' and inserting 
     ``Regulations'';
       (B) by striking ``Within 1 year after'' and all that 
     follows through ``on means of assuring'' and inserting ``The 
     Commission shall issue such regulations as are necessary to 
     assure''; and
       (C) by striking ``Within 180 days after'' and all that 
     follows through ``to assure such compatibility.''; and
       (11) in section 713, by striking subsection (a).

     SEC. 4. EFFECT ON AUTHORITY.

       Nothing in this Act or the amendments made by this Act 
     shall be construed to expand or contract the authority of the 
     Federal Communications Commission.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from 
Louisiana (Mr. Scalise) and the gentlewoman from California (Ms. 
Matsui) each will control 20 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Louisiana.


                             General Leave

  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members 
may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks 
and insert extraneous material into the Record.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Louisiana?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, we're bringing forward H.R. 3310, the FCC Consolidated 
Reporting Act. If you look throughout the many different requirements 
that the FCC has, and the number of reports--this is just a small stack 
of the reports that FCC has been required to bring to Congress just in 
the last 2 years. Many of these reports not only place tremendous 
burden on the industry groups that have to provide this data, but many 
times, because of the way that they're structured, by the time the 
report is issued, the data is outdated and really doesn't look at any 
broad spectrum issues. They're mostly specific to an industry and a 
specific area of an industry instead of looking at the entire 
marketplace.
  So what we're doing with the FCC Consolidated Reporting Act is 
actually bringing forward a measure that reduces the size of government 
and actually reins in the heavy hand of government and takes eight 
different annual reports and consolidates them into one consolidated 
biannual report. And so you're taking eight reports that in many cases 
are outdated by the time they're released; and, in some cases the FCC, 
even though they're required to produce this data annually, because the 
reports are so burdensome on industry and on the FCC, they're not even 
able to produce these reports annually. In many cases, we've had 
reports that are due annually that haven't been submitted to us since 
2009. So we're actually making a much more commonsense approach to this 
reporting system.
  In addition to that, we're actually repealing some of the 
requirements that are still on the books--laws that Congress has passed 
over the last few decades that are not even required anymore by FCC or 
other agencies yet are still on the law books. And so we're cleaning up 
a lot of those.
  One of those I'll give as an example is we're still requiring a 
competitiveness report to be produced with the wire-line telegraph 
industry. I don't know anybody since Samuel Morse invented that 
technology in the 1800s that is still using that technology on a broad 
scale. But surely Congress doesn't need to still have on the books a 
requirement that we have a report submitted by the FCC on 
competitiveness in the wire-line telegraph industry.
  So this bill is a bipartisan approach to remove so many unnecessary 
requirements on our job creators who have to have compliance 
departments to comply with all these requests from the FCC; and, in 
many cases, they're getting these requests, and they know that when 
they submit this data the reports that they're submitting the data for 
aren't even going to be produced annually. And when those reports come 
out, they're going to be outdated, yet you still have to have massive 
compliance departments to go and gather all this information.
  I think it makes much more sense for us to tell our job creators 
that, instead of having these massive compliance departments to do 
unnecessary work, that dollar would be much better spent going out and 
creating jobs and building out those wireless networks that people all 
across this country so desperately need.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Ms. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 3310, the Federal 
Communications Commission Consolidated Reporting Act of 2012. This bill 
consolidates various technology-specific competition reports the 
Federal Communications Commission is required to make to Congress into 
a new, single communications marketplace report that will be submitted 
to Congress every 2 years.
  The FCC is required to assess the state of competition, deployment, 
as well as regulatory barriers to market entry and competition in the 
communications marketplace, taking into

[[Page 7952]]

special consideration Internet-based competition. I support efforts to 
streamline the FCC's reporting requirements, and I am pleased the 
committee majority, led by Communications and Technology Subcommittee 
Chairman Walden, worked with Democrats to improve the legislation 
throughout the markup process. These improvements include the adoption 
of an amendment offered by Ranking Member Eshoo that would ensure the 
FCC continues to have the ability to consider all forms of competition 
in producing the communications marketplace report.
  H.R. 3310 seeks to reduce the reporting burdens Congress had 
previously imposed on the FCC while encouraging the agency to analyze 
competition in the communications marketplace in a much more 
comprehensive way.
  Under Chairman Genachowski's leadership, the FCC has accomplished 
numerous reforms aimed at improving agency process. The FCC has 
improved the number of notices of proposed rulemakings that contain the 
full text of proposed rules from 38 percent to 85 percent. 
Additionally, the FCC has reduced average time between Commission vote 
and release of full text of the decision from 14 calendar days to 3 
calendar days. In addition, the FCC voluntarily complied with President 
Obama's Executive order in conducting retrospective analysis of the 
Commission's existing rules. During the process, the FCC has eliminated 
over 200 obsolete regulations, including the Commission's elimination 
of 25 data collections as part of the Data Innovation Initiative.
  Looking ahead, the FCC has a major task in implementing the public 
safety and spectrum provisions of the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job 
Creation Act. Specifically, the Commission will be undertaking arguably 
the most complex spectrum auction in history through an incentive 
auction of the broadcast spectrum. Congress must work closely with the 
FCC to ensure the auction's success.
  As a cochair of the bipartisan Federal Spectrum Working Group, I'm 
hopeful that we'll have the opportunity to work closely with the FCC 
and the NTIA and other relevant agencies in identifying underutilized 
Federal and commercial spectrum for repurposing.
  Mr. Speaker, our Nation continues to face a spectrum scrunch, 
particularly as more and more Americans opt for advanced technology and 
mobile devices and applications. We must ensure that we meet future 
demand.
  Finally, I want to applaud the FCC's recent efforts ensuring that all 
Americans have access to the communication tools they need to be 
competitive in the 21st century economy.

                              {time}  1720

  Today, one-third of Americans have not adopted broadband, and these 
numbers are particularly high among lower-income Americans, seniors, 
rural Americans, residents of tribal lands, and people with 
disabilities.
  The commission recently approved responsible reforms to parts of the 
Universal Service Fund, including the creation of pilot programs to 
promote broadband adoption. These pilot projects will help make 
broadband more affordable for lower-income Americans and address other 
challenges to broadband adoption, including digital literacy and the 
cost of devices.
  I commend the FCC for these efforts, and I look forward to working 
with the commission when these pilot projects are announced.
  I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I am honored to yield 2 minutes to the 
gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), a member of the committee 
and subcommittee.
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, and I do rise to 
support the Federal Communications Commission Consolidated Reporting 
Act. It's a commonsense piece of legislation, much like Mr. Walden's 
process reform bill for the FCC that was passed in this House in March 
on a bipartisan vote.
  The FCC Consolidated Reporting Act, as Mr. Scalise said, will 
streamline eight annual and triennial FCC reports into one single 
biennial communications marketplace report. The effect is to ease some 
of the reporting obligations while providing the FCC a better platform 
to analyze the converged nature of today's competitive communications 
marketplace.
  It's important to get the reporting in check because the FCC has 
control over one-sixth of our Nation's economy. This legislation would 
simply bring back some efficiency and transparency to an agency that is 
clearly lacking in both categories. We need to redirect the FCC away 
from its antiquated approach to regulatory policymaking. A streamed and 
consolidated reporting system that better reflects today's competitive 
marketplace is necessary to help in this process, especially for those 
who understand that we need wholesale change and deregulation at the 
Nation's leading communications governing agency.
  I support the legislation to simplify the FCC's reporting measures. I 
encourage my colleagues to support the legislation.
  Ms. MATSUI. I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, at this time I would like to yield 3 
minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Walden), the chairman of the 
Telecommunications Subcommittee.
  Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Mr. Scalise for his 
leadership on this issue, and I want to thank Ms. Matsui for hers as 
well, and for the work that we are all doing on the subcommittee to 
improve the processes and procedures at the FCC, bring about 
efficiencies and accountability, and look for Federal spectrum that 
might be freed up to help grow jobs and spur innovation in America.
  This particular piece of law, as we move it forward, H.R. 3310, gets 
about trying to reduce some waste. It really starts with Congress 
because this is all stuff that is in statute that we have to change. 
Believe it or not, the Communications Act still requires the Federal 
Communications Commission to assess the state of telegraph--telegraph--
competition. This is not just unhelpful; it's a waste of taxpayer 
funds. The American public expects and deserves an efficient Federal 
Government that keeps pace with changes in the market, and this bill 
helps get us there.
  Rationalizing the industry reports the FCC issues not only reduces 
some of the FCC'S administrative burdens but also helps make sure that 
the agency, the public, and stakeholders have a realistic picture of 
the marketplace upon which to make their policy judgments.
  The communications and technology sector is very competitive. It's 
very innovative. It's creating jobs, and it's one of the most open 
sectors of our economy. From fiber optics to 4G wireless service, from 
the smartphone to the tablet to the connected TV, this sector has been 
creating new services, new devices, and the high-quality jobs that come 
with high-tech innovation and investment.
  Despite even a lackluster economy, wireline, wireless, and cable 
providers invested $66 billion of private capital in broadband 
infrastructure in 2011. The U.S. is leading in cutting-edge wireless 
technologies. Industry convergence has led to a boom in competition; 
voice, video, audio, and data providers are competing across different 
platforms. And the market is simply moving faster than the law. Despite 
the convergence of the industry, the FCC is still required by law to 
evaluate stove-piped industry segments each year. For example, they 
have to write two reports each year on the satellite industry and two 
reports on the cable industry, and yet it is one market and there 
should just be one report covering both.
  The FCC Consolidated Reporting Act consolidates eight separate 
congressionally mandated reports on the communications industry into a 
single comprehensive report with a focus on competition among 
technology platforms, deploying communications to unserved communities, 
eliminating regulatory barriers, and empowering small businesses.
  The marketplace report is synched to the congressional calendar. 
That'll improve our oversight abilities, and it'll help reduce costs. 
The bill also eliminates 12 additional outdated reports

[[Page 7953]]

from the Communications Act, including reports repealed more than a 
decade ago. The bill is bipartisan, and it's supported by CTIA, NAB, 
NCTA, USTelecom, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and I urge my 
colleagues to join in this bipartisan piece of work out of your 
Subcommittee on Communications and Technology and pass it into law.
  Ms. MATSUI. I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 2 minutes to the 
gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey).
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman.
  I rise today in strong support of H.R. 3310, the FCC Consolidating 
Reporting Act of 2012. I commend the author of this legislation and 
fellow member of the Communications and Technology Subcommittee, Steve 
Scalise of Louisiana, for his work on this issue. And I also applaud 
the work of subcommittee chairman Greg Walden, who ensured that we 
moved this legislation through regular order.
  H.R. 3310 consolidates eight congressionally mandated studies into a 
single report with a focus on intermodal competition, deploying 
communications to underserved and unserved communities, eliminating 
regulatory barriers, and empowering small businesses. This legislation 
will also make the FCC more efficient by eliminating a number of 
duplicative, repealed, or outdated reports that are still listed in 
statute. For example, in the 21st century, it is simply not necessary 
for the FCC to provide the report on competition between wire telephone 
and wire telegraph providers. Think Morse code.
  Mr. Speaker, H.R. 3310 passed the full Energy and Commerce Committee 
by a voice vote on March 6, 2012. It will alleviate the unnecessary and 
antiquated reporting standards and replace them with an analysis of the 
21st century marketplace and its demands on the telecommunications 
industry. This legislation represents solid policy. I urge my 
colleagues, support H.R. 3310.
  Ms. MATSUI. I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
Florida (Mr. Stearns), the chairman of the Oversight Subcommittee.
  Mr. STEARNS. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this bill. It streamlines, 
as mentioned, eight separate congressionally mandated reports into one, 
a single comprehensive report.
  As chairman of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and 
Investigation, as Mr. Scalise mentioned, I, along with Chairman Walden, 
have looked into the backlog and workload of the FCC. In a report we 
released in November, we found that annual reports to Congress, such as 
the Satellite Competition Report and Video Programming Report, have not 
been completed in years. This is just disconcerting, particularly since 
the Telecom Act of 1996 was designed with a deregulatory slant--
requiring the FCC to conduct these competition reports to determine 
whether regulation was indeed necessary. How can the FCC appropriately 
make these decisions and regulate an industry it has not 
comprehensively analyzed in more than 4 years? This bill is aimed at 
reducing some reporting burdens on the FCC to ensure that these annual 
reports are just that--they are simply reported annually.
  At the same time, this bill encourages the agency in today's age of 
convergence to analyze competition in the marketplace as a whole, 
rather than based on archaic technology-specific silos. We no longer 
need to consider the Internet, satellite, and cable industries in a 
vacuum, as they compete head to head in most markets across this 
country.

                              {time}  1730

  In 1992, when we passed the Cable Act, cable occupied about 96 
percent of the market. The FCC's most recent data cable now only 
occupies about a third of this market, competing with FIOS, satellite, 
Netflix, and the Internet. The report that looks at the marketplace as 
a whole will inform both the FCC and Congress more sufficiently, and 
it's a long time due. Therefore, I hope my colleagues will join me in 
supporting this important legislation, and I appreciate its authors.
  Ms. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, in closing, H.R. 3310 is a step forward to 
further ensuring transparency by requiring consolidation of various 
telecommunication reports by the FCC.
  As broadband continues to play a critical role in our economy, it is 
important that we fully understand any and all barriers to Internet 
services while continuing to allow the Internet economy to grow and 
innovate.
  Again, I want to thank my colleagues on the Energy and Commerce 
Committee for working in a bipartisan manner on this bill. I urge my 
colleagues to support this legislation, and I yield back the balance of 
my time.
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentlelady from 
California for the bipartisan work that she's done on this legislation. 
Especially, I want to thank Chairman Upton and Chairman Walden for 
allowing us to bring this bipartisan legislation forward that takes a 
commonsense approach to so many reports and requirements that are 
placed on industry and the FCC, frankly, that require a whole lot of 
work to produce reports that are outdated before they're even filed. 
The job of government and regulators should not be just to make 
companies go and do busy work, to file reports just for the sake of 
building up reams and reams of papers that nobody can read and nobody 
can really do anything with because the data is not useful.
  So what we're doing with this legislation is taking eight reports--
eight reports that all look at very specific sector areas, but don't 
really tell a picture of what's happening in the industry--and we 
consolidate those into one report rather than annual, a biannual, and 
reducing a lot of requirements on business that just have to have these 
compliance departments because when they're asked by the FCC to provide 
data, they've got to go provide it, even though they know this data is 
not going to be used, and in some cases the data is not going to be 
useful in the context of the report that's going to be filed.
  In addition to that, we often hear about all of the laws that are 
passed in Congress. People say why don't you go and repeal laws that 
have been sitting on the books for decades that serve no purpose. So we 
actually do that too with this bill. We go and repeal 12 different 
reports that are no longer used. As the example has been given a number 
of times, the telegraph report that is still a law that's on the books, 
we repeal that as well.
  So it's a commonsense approach that tells the people that are out 
there building this infrastructure, building these wireless networks 
that so many people, millions and millions of people, in our country 
use every single day to improve their lives, their quality of life--and 
frankly the effectiveness of the job creators and our small businesses 
out there--and it says you don't need to have massive compliance 
departments to comply with things that nobody reads. You can actually 
go out and use those resources to create more jobs, to build out that 
network so that we can do even more innovative things with the 
technology we have today and that we'll have in the future.
  With that, I urge all of my colleagues to support H.R. 3310, and I 
yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. UPTON. Mr. Speaker, Americans have demanded a more efficient 
government that eliminates outdated and unnecessary bureaucracy; a 
government that takes a hard look at the market before deciding to 
regulate it--in short, a government that works. The FCC Consolidated 
Reporting Act accomplishes those goals, all at no cost to the taxpayer.
  Today, the FCC is required to write eight separate reports on 
discrete components of the communications marketplace. Eight separate 
reports multiplies the number of hours the FCC spends writing reports, 
multiplies the number of employees working on such reports, and 
multiplies the number of times industry has to respond to information 
requests from the Commission.
  The FCC Consolidated Reporting Act takes a smarter approach. It 
consolidates these

[[Page 7954]]

eight reports into a single, comprehensive report on the state of the 
communications marketplace, and eliminates twelve other reports from 
the Communications Act.
  I want to thank Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman 
Greg Walden and Representative Steve Scalise for working on this 
important legislation. I support it, and I urge my colleagues to 
support it as well.
  Mrs. CHRISTENSEN. Mr. Speaker, although, H.R. 3310 is intended to 
streamline the Federal Communication Commission's reporting 
requirements. There are concerns that FCC's statutory authority on data 
collection could be affected and certain pertinent reporting 
requirements could be eliminated.
  H.R. 3310 would consolidate eight separate reports of the FCC into a 
single comprehensive report in order to reduce the reporting burdens on 
the FCC while encouraging the agency to analyze competition in the 
marketplace as a whole. I believe that this bill is not only 
unnecessary but harmful to the process especially since under Chairman 
Genachowski many reforms have been made to address the issues the 
Republicans have indicated they want to fix.
  While the FCC has sufficient existing authority to collect data for 
statutorily required reports, the language contained in Sec. 4 could be 
construed as denying the Commission its ordinary data collection 
authority with respect to certain provisions of the bill.
  While I support the general intent of the bill to streamline FCC 
reporting requirements, I did not support it at committee level in its 
present form and no significant changes were made to improve the bill 
before it was brought to the House floor.
  I urge my colleagues not support this bill.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the 
gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Scalise) that the House suspend the rules 
and pass the bill, H.R. 3310, as amended.
  The question was taken; and (two-thirds being in the affirmative) the 
rules were suspended and the bill, as amended, was passed.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

                          ____________________