Barney Frank: “The argument we hear against auctioning off the spectrum to the broadcasters, as we have just heard from my friend from…”

“The argument we hear against auctioning off the spectrum to the broadcasters, as we have just heard from my friend from Louisiana, after all, they operate with public interest obligations. I have been here with him 15 years, and that is the nicest I have ever heard him talk about public interest obligations. The broadcasters successfully work to reduce those public interest obligations to mean virtually nothing. The only time they raise them is when they can use them as an excuse to get the superhighway, as the gentleman from North Carolina said, for free. I do not think that my friend from Louisiana believes that that public interest standard will ever be amounting to much. It is simply a flag they wave so they can get this for free.”