Tom Carper: “I believe we have made pretty good progress, not just today but over the last several weeks, maybe the last several…”

“I believe we have made pretty good progress, not just today but over the last several weeks, maybe the last several months, in terms of narrowing our differences. I am encouraged by that. I hope others of us are as well. One of the great concerns some of us had was a moratorium on the ability of State and local governments to collect certain kinds of revenues that lasted forever. I am pleased that is not the case anymore. We have a moratorium of a finite duration, and the duration of the moratorium will be 4 years. I am encouraged that we entered into a healthy negotiation on just how can we make sure State and local governments which traditionally derive revenue from telephone operations continue to do that. We had a good-faith negotiation, and that led to an amendment offered by Senator McCain that was accepted unanimously. That was a very important provision. There is one more issue I believe needs to be addressed. It is addressed in the Feinstein amendment. If somehow the Feinstein amendment could be adopted, I believe we would have a bill--in fact, we would have a bill I would vote for.”