Political Quotes

“I am here to speak about the extension of the Affordable Connectivity Program. COVID was brutal, but something good came out of it. And that was a recognition by the U.S. Congress-- Republicans and Democrats--that access to high-speed internet was absolutely essential all across America. Before COVID, there were many of us who represented rural States-- Republicans and Democrats--who were making the case, when people were arguing for high-speed internet, that we had no-speed internet. And our concerns were really dismissed by many of our urban colleagues. With the effect of COVID, it was apparent: You couldn't go to work if you didn't have internet. Your kids couldn't do homework without internet. You couldn't get a doctor's appointment unless you could do it online. And we had come to the conclusion as a Congress that high- speed internet was as essential to all of America today as electricity was in the 1930s. And in the 1930s, when the debate was whether we build out electricity, there wasn't an economic argument that was made, although that was important; it was a commitment to the social cohesion of this country that we are all in it together. And whether you lived on a dirt road on a farm in Iowa or you lived in Manhattan on Fifth Avenue, you needed electricity. We made the same decision during COVID in the U.S. Congress, and we allocated billions of dollars to start building out high-speed internet across the entire country.…”