Bob Kerrey: “I would love to vote for a piece of legislation. I hope the conference committee comes back with one in a form I am able…”

“I would love to vote for a piece of legislation. I hope the conference committee comes back with one in a form I am able to vote for it. I am prepared not to just embrace the future but to make a bet, based on my strong belief that there is tremendous opportunity in education, tremendous opportunity for jobs in these new technologies. But there are 100 million households in this country and each one of those individual households has very little economic power. When it comes time for them to make a purchase of cable service or phone service, when they are buying information services they are not buying at $1 million a month. They are buying at $20, $30, $40, $50 a month; very little economic power, very little. And the 16,000 school districts in America that operate individual schools at the local level, they have very little economic power. Both as a consumer of telecommunications services and as somebody who has been working with school districts in Nebraska, trying to get them hooked up to the Internet, trying to get them enhanced information services, I can tell you that when you do not have much economic power you do not have much choice. You do not have much leverage. You do not have much opportunity. These guys who are doing these deals, they have real power. When you have a couple of billion dollars you can leverage an awful lot.”