William Tauzin: “Mr. Speaker, the reason why the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey) and I and so many others came to the floor in…”

“Mr. Speaker, the reason why the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey) and I and so many others came to the floor in 1992 to try to create the capacity of direct broadcast satellite to bring television programming to America was because at the time we had just gotten through deregulating the cable companies. We in Congress had taken away the power of local franchising authorities to regulate the monopoly cable company. We thought it was pretty important if we were going to be responsible for taking away the power of local governments to regulate the monopoly cable company that we ought to make sure consumers in America had a competitive choice. That is what it was all about. In 1992, we had to fight our way over a presidential veto to accomplish that goal, but we accomplished it. We created the capacity of television satellites to deliver satellite programming in competition with cable, but we left one thing undone, and that was the capacity of those satellites to include the local network programming in the package.”