Peter Welch

I have an amendment at the desk. The Acting CHAIR. The Clerk will designate the amendment. The text of the amendment is as follows: Page 16, after line 6, insert the following: (6) An analysis of succession planning and hiring as it…

Our work on the rural caucus and in this committee is incredibly important.

The challenges facing rural America are acute. There is a significant population shift into urban areas.

The big carriers don't want to do it because they can't make as much money as they want.

We have to have the same speed, we have to have the same access and the same quality in rural America as in urban America.

There is a lot of plagiarism in this bill.

Everything that needs to be said has been said. I appreciate the work of my colleague from Texas (Mr. Olson), and I really do appreciate as well the leadership of the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Cartwright), who has been very, very…

I actually think it is the exception. There is a big misconception.

The single largest reason that you had that vehicle available was the California Low Emission Vehicle program.

Let me make a final point on the ZEV program which is not greatly implicated here.

Affordable transportation is critical to personal mobility and freedom, essential to economic empowerment and a key driver of national productivity.

Employees are not going to be thinking at the time they may want to do something that they shouldn't be doing whether this is a violation of subsection 4 of article 5 in chapter 2.

We can have personnel policies and we can write down the this's and the that's and it can be 10 pages or 500 pages.

The National Park Service is a great treasure.

We don't have to write anything and we can take care of it by having management make it clear that any unwanted advance is totally out of line.

They have to say it and mean it.

Actions will be louder than words in this in terms of the accountability.

I don't think it takes a big meeting. It is like, look, folks, any unwanted advances just aren't allowed.

You know, this is hammering that Vermonter who has that Hobson's choice, but it's also very tough on taxpayers.

I'm all in if there are things we can do that won't compromise safety.

And what is important for it is that it is an indication that this committee is sincerely committed to making certain that the tools of the modern economy, let alone the telephone, are available to folks in rural America.

Just think about it, that that short window of time, it depends on the phone system working, and it doesn't work right now.

But this is about basic telephones. And it is pretty astonishing when you think about it that you can't have confidence as a business or as an individual that your call is going to go through.

So we have this situation where, in the Senate bill that we are now considering, there is an acknowledgment that there should be a label, but it contains a label that is impossible to read. So if there is an acknowledgment about the right…

Can we have some assurance that the rules that will be promulgated will take into account the extraordinary challenges that have existed in rural America about having access to the infrastructure that is essential for it to have the…