John Cornyn: “in 1928, Herbert Hoover ran for President based on the slogan ``a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.''…”

“in 1928, Herbert Hoover ran for President based on the slogan ``a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.'' Under the provisions of this bill, the American taxpayer is being asked to subsidize television--digital television to be specific--to the tune of $3 billion. I congratulate the leadership and particularly Chairman Gregg for the good work he has done trying to save the beleaguered American taxpayer quite a bit of money and to reduce the Federal deficit. What we are being asked to do here, what the taxpayers are being asked to suffer is a transfer of money from their pocket basically to the living rooms of the television-watching public so we can transition from analog to digital TV. But to make things even more ironic, what this $3 billion is supposed to do is to provide converters so they can take the digital signal and transition it back to the analog and reverse the action of this Congress. It makes no sense. We can do better than this. I urge my colleagues to support the amendment.”