Spencer Cox: “We are all agreed on both sides of the aisle and on all sides of this question that the Government should not regulate…”

“We are all agreed on both sides of the aisle and on all sides of this question that the Government should not regulate the content of speech of noncommercial broadcasters and that the Government should not discriminate against some religious speech in favor of other religious speech. The legislation that is before us says, and I quote, ``the Commission,'' referring to the Federal Communications Commission, ``should not engage in regulating the content of speech broadcasted by noncommercial educational stations.'' That is the principle of this bill, to keep the Government out of the business of regulating speech. Now, the Markey amendment does something very straightforward, at least mechanically. It inserts a word, one word, the word ``educational,'' as an adjectival modifier in front of another word, ``religious,'' so that we have an adjective on an adjective, a modifier on a modifier, and we now have something called ``education religious programming.'' The term ``educational religious programming'' is nowhere defined in statute.”