Political Quotes

“This is clearly a problem that we need to work on. The chairman and I have worked together in talking about it and making sure that our military assets are protected as we deal with spectrum auctions. I look forward to having the conversation in conference committee about how to deal with this, but my concern is this is something that many on the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and I as well, have worked on for a number of years. We worked with the Department of Defense for years to try and make sure that their equities were protected. We talked with everyone we could conceivably talk with. This auction was originally set up to make sure that we protected those. Now we are hearing a slightly new argument. I certainly want to make sure that the Department of Defense's interests are protected, but I also want to make sure that they don't have absolute veto power on auctioning spectrum. That was sort of the law before all of the Committee on Energy and Commerce and others worked on, and it really tied up a very valuable national asset, as Mr. Pallone points out. I hope that as we get into conference committee we will figure out how to both protect the interests of national security and the Defense, but also make sure that, if spectrum can be safely made available, it is safely made available. As I said, this was something that was worked on for a very long time, and we thought we had it worked out.…”