Jay Rockefeller: “There is another aspect which worries me greatly. I have heard so many people talk about the importance of technology…”

“There is another aspect which worries me greatly. I have heard so many people talk about the importance of technology and the importance of understanding that technology is our future and the fact that so many of the people in our rural areas and in our urban areas are not hooked up to the Internet and hooked up to all of the advantages that technology and the computer brings us. It was with that in mind that during the consideration of the Telecommunications Act, a number of Senators, led by Senator Snowe of Maine, put forward an amendment which would allow, for the very first time, money to be used with the full consent of the carriers, to be used to wire up 116,000 schools in this country, endless numbers of public libraries, enormous numbers of rural health clinics so that they could develop in the practice of telemedicine and other new technologies that are now and will be available. If what is being contemplated by those who are working on the reconciliation process is the use of universal service money to plug up a potential shortfall in the spectrum auction, the entire Snowe amendment, which relates to whether or not we are going to have a first- or second-class citizenry in this country --first-class being those who have the money to have computers in their schools and at home and then the second class, and that being the majority, being those who do not--all of that will go down. I make the further point that this is not the Government's money.”