Willie Hefner: “without going into the technical part of broadcasting, I have some experience with broadcasting. I own radio stations…”

“without going into the technical part of broadcasting, I have some experience with broadcasting. I own radio stations, and sponsors that buy spots on one's radio station or television station, they have to justify that they are reaching so many people in their market. There is not an investor, there is not a corporation in the United States that would pay the tariff to carry the television to Marti. This is absolutely a total waste of money. From a practical standpoint, this is money, and the priorities are absolutely ridiculous. In the first place, it is probably the highest cost per listener of any station in the United States or anywhere else because unless the government pays it, one could not afford to broadcast this into this area, and to me we have our priorities kind of messed up here. Mr. Chairman, in the Committee on Appropriations we did away with the heating assistance to our poor people and our older people, and we are spending these millions of dollars on Television Marti that is absolutely producing no results. And to me that is a total waste of money, a total waste of priorities, and we should go ahead, just go ahead and kill this thing and be done with it because it is absolutely useless for the purpose that it was supposedly set up to do. Mr. Chairman, it is absolutely not working, and it is a waste of taxpayers' money.”