roundtable: 1995-07-31 President Statement on House Telecommunications Bill (fwd)

roundtable: 1995-07-31 President Statement on House Telecommunications Bill (fwd)

1995-07-31 President Statement on House Telecommunications Bill (fwd)

Vigdor Schreibman - FINS (fins@access.digex.net)
Tue, 1 Aug 1995 17:58:49 -0400 (EDT) 

Date: Tue, 1 Aug 1995 17:58:49 -0400 (EDT)
From: Vigdor Schreibman - FINS <fins@access.digex.net>
To: Vigdor Schreibman - FINS <fins@access.digex.net>
Subject: 1995-07-31 President Statement on House Telecommunications Bill (fwd)
Message-Id: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950801175638.22558E-100000@access2.digex.net>


FYI

forwarded by
Vigdor Schreibman
<fins@access.digex.net>

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 1 Aug 1995 16:39-0400
From: The White House <Publications-Admin@WhiteHouse.Gov>
To: Public-Distribution@clinton.ai.mit.edu
Subject: 1995-07-31 President Statement on House Telecommunications Bill





                            THE WHITE HOUSE

                     Office of the Press Secretary

________________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                                      July 31, 1995

		 STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT ON H.R. 1555 


   My Administration is committed to enactment of a telecommunications
reform bill in this Congress.  Such legislation is needed to stimulate
investment, promote competition, provide open access to information
networks, strengthen and improve universal service and provide for
flexible regulations for this important industry.  Consumers should
receive the benefits of lower prices, better quality and greater choices
in their telephone and cable services, and they should continue to
benefit from a diversity of voices and viewpoints in radio, television
and the print media.

   Unfortunately, H.R. 1555, as reported by the Commerce Committee and
amended by the managers' amendment, does not reach any of these goals.
Instead of promoting investment and competition, it promotes mergers and
concentration of power.  Instead of promoting open access and diversity
of content and viewpoints, it would allow fewer people to control greater
numbers of television, radio and newspaper outlets in every community.

   H.R. 1555 with the managers' amendment would:
   -- Allow a single owner to acquire television stations that can reach
50 percent of the nation;
   -- Allow the acquisition of an unlimited number of radio stations in
every community and across the nation;
   -- Repeal the newspaper/broadcast and broadcast/cable cross ownership
bans that currently exist;
   -- Permit the Bell Operating Companies to offer long distance service
before there is real competition in local service, with less-than-minimum
structural safeguards and without requiring a determination by the
Department of Justice that entry will not impede competition;
   -- Allow an excessive number of in-region buyouts between telephone
companies and cable operators, substituting consolidation for competition
and leaving consumers in rural areas and small towns with no rate
protection in most cases and no foreseeable expectation of competition;
   -- Deregulate cable programming services and equipment rates before
cable operators face real competition and without providing any consumer
protection provision after deregulation;
   -- Preempt the states from implementing certain rate regulation
schemes and opening their local phone markets to certain types of
competition as they choose; and
   -- Not include the V-chip proposal the Senate adopted.

   The cumulative effect of these provisions would be to harm competition
and to weaken the benefits to the public.  If H.R. 1555 with the
managers' amendment is sent to me without deletion or revision of a
significant number of these provisions I will be compelled to veto it in
the best interests of the public and our national economic well-being.

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