On the recordMay 16, 2018
my colleague has said it very well. It is what I saw last week in these nine townhall meetings, and almost all of them were in rural Oregon. People joked and asked: Ron, why are you here? We have more cows than people. I said: My hometown is Portland. I love Portland. My only frustration, as my friend knows, is I didn't get to play for the Trail Blazers. I am not a Senator from the State of Portland. I am a Senator who represents every nook and cranny of Oregon, however small. What I would say to my friend and, I hope, to my colleagues--because the Senate represents a lot of rural terrain--is what I heard in places like Burns and Prairie City last week. If they have to pay more for less content, which, I think, could easily happen under these trickle-down telecommunications policies of Mr. Pai's, then it is not just going to be Portland, OR, and Springfield, MA. It is going to be rural America-- literally, from sea to shining sea--that is going to wake up very soon and find its bills going into the stratosphere.
