Christopher Shays: “competition, yes. Competition, yes. But now we do not have competition. Ninety-seven percent of all systems do not have…”

“competition, yes. Competition, yes. But now we do not have competition. Ninety-seven percent of all systems do not have competition. And this bill, unamended, allows for those companies, most of them, nearly 50 percent of them, to be deregulated. We say yes, we are going to allow the small companies to be deregulated, the small ones, under 600,000 subscribers. Six hundred thousand subscribers is small? That system is worth $1.2 billion. We do not have competition now. Deregulate when you have competition. There are 97 percent of the systems that do not have competition. The whole point here is to make sure that companies that are not competing, that have a monopoly, are not allowed to set monopolistic prices. One of the reasons why we overrode the President's veto, 70 of us on the Republican side, we recognized that consumers were paying monopolistic prices. Deregulate when you have competition. The bill in 1992 said when you had competition, there would not be regulation. The reason why we have regulation is these are monopolies. I know Members have not had a lot of sleep, but I hope the staff that is listening will tell their Members that we are going to deregulate these companies and they are going to set monopolistic prices, and they are going to come to their Congressman and say, 'Why did you vote to deregulate a monopoly?'”