Jeff Bingaman: “amendment No. 1740 is straightforward. It would prohibit the Secretary of the Interior, working through the Park…”

“amendment No. 1740 is straightforward. It would prohibit the Secretary of the Interior, working through the Park Service, from issuing any permit allowing a special event on The National Mall unless the permit expressly prohibited the use of structures or signs bearing commercial advertising. The amendment does provide that there can be sponsor recognition of special events, but it makes clear we intend to have the Park Service interpret that in a way that is consistent with the special nature of The National Mall. We would also require that the lettering or design that identifies the sponsor not be more than a third the size of the lettering identifying what the special event is. I have shown this photograph before. I will show it again so people have an idea of what prompted my amendment. This is a special event that the Park Service approved and issued a permit for a couple of weeks ago on The National Mall. This event was a football and music festival entitled ``NFL Kick-off Live From The National Mall Presented by Pepsi Vanilla''. This photograph is from the Washington Post. This is an enlarged photograph that was in the Washington Post. You can see that there are a whole series of banners up and down The Mall. There is one for Verizon, and this one is for Pepsi Vanilla, and here is a giant football with NFL signs on it. It seemed clear to me that this was commercial advertising any way you look at it.”