Patrick Leahy: “as a conferee last year on the satellite television bill, I worked hard to include, along with several of my colleagues…”

“as a conferee last year on the satellite television bill, I worked hard to include, along with several of my colleagues, a provision that would have ensured that the benefits of that bill would also be shared by rural Americans through a loan guarantee program. Those benefits include providing local-into-local television over satellite--which simply means that rural Americans would be able to receive their local network stations over satellite if they owned a satellite dish, along with the full range of weather, movie, superstation, sports and a host of other channels. We wanted to ensure that rural Americans would get the same level of television service over satellite as urban Americas would enjoy. As it turns out, urban Americans can now receive the full array of local network channels over satellite--but the great majority of rural Americans can not. Unfortunately, the Chairman of the Banking Committee objected to the provision--at the end of last year--that would have helped finance such service to rural areas and we have been unable to resolve this matter. At the time I was very worried this would happen which is why I discussed it at some length on the floor. I want to stress, once again, to all of my colleagues that this is very important to our constituents. We need to work together so that we can resolve this problem and make sure that rural America is not left in the dark. I am here today, to again stand with rural Americans.”