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Floor Speech

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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, my friend from Kentucky is attacking a bipartisan bill with overwhelming support on both sides of the aisle. When I started in the U.S. Congress, one of the main operating principles under which we were able to make progress upon big issues-- and it went back to President Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn--was the Austin-Boston connection working together, Texas and Massachusetts, to make progress where we could. That is what this legislation is today. Senator Cruz and I agree that we have to ensure that, for public safety reasons, AM radio stays in the vehicles that Americans drive. And, as Senator Cruz said, 80 million Americans a month use AM radio.

And not only is the Senator from Kentucky proposing to strike our bill but also to actively harm American drivers and American workers. We are going from win-win to lose-lose for American drivers.

The electric vehicle tax credit helps Americans drive cheaper cars while driving manufacturing. Electric vehicle sales are soaring. Investments in new manufacturing capacity related to the electric vehicle supply chain also increased by more than 100 percent. It reached $35 billion in a single year since the passage of the tax credit. In total, since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, more than 84,000 new jobs have been announced in the EV sector.

In fact, most of the largest single Federal investment in the auto industry is going to Senator Paul's State of Kentucky. New Federal loans for three battery manufacturing plants are expected to create 5,000 construction jobs and 7,500 operations jobs--all to build batteries for Ford and Lincoln electric vehicles. My friend, I would hope, would want Kentucky to be the home of those new jobs, new opportunities, and new economic energy driven by the electric vehicle tax credit, and I am sure other States would be interested in stepping in.

We have union workers who have secured a historic victory over the Big Three with their recent strike. They have been clear that the electric vehicle revolution, which is kick-started by the tax credit, can be an engine for good-paying union jobs. So let's not pump the brakes on giving drivers the freedom to buy cheaper, cleaner vehicles. Let's not pump the brakes on new jobs in States across the country, including Kentucky. And let's not pump the brakes on ensuring that drivers and passengers can receive alerts during emergencies.

AM radio is the backbone of FEMA's emergency response system. It allows emergency responders and, if necessary, the President of the United States to communicate with the public during the most dire of circumstances.

In just the past 5 years, FEMA has invested more than $150 million to harden 77 radio stations across the country to withstand natural disasters, emergencies, and even a nuclear electromagnetic pulse. These stations are equipped with backup generators and other tools to stay online in the worst conditions, and FEMA has specifically chosen stations that would allow the President to communicate with more than 90 percent of the public. Those stations include WBZ-AM in Boston, MA, which beams all across New England. From Superstorm Sandy to the recent wildfires in Maui, when self-service and other communications channels went down, broadcast AM radio stations, especially those 77 hardened stations, remained on the air.

Despite its immense importance to our emergency response system, broadcast AM radio is under attack from automakers. Over the past few years, car manufacturers have increasingly removed broadcast AM radio from their vehicles, arguing that AM radio is outdated and unnecessary during emergencies.

Well, Senator Cruz and I know that is not accurate. That is why, a year ago, I sent letters to 20 automakers requesting additional information about their plans for broadcast AM radio. When I learned that eight companies had removed broadcast AM radio from their vehicles, Senator Cruz and I teamed up to introduce the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act, which would direct the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to require automakers to maintain broadcast AM radio in their vehicles. We now have 44 cosponsors from across the political spectrum, split evenly between Democrats and Republicans. We have built this broad coalition because this issue of access to AM radio is about public safety.

And don't take our word for it. All year the emergency response community has been sounding the alarm about the removal of broadcast AM radio from vehicles and urging lawmakers to pass our bill. In fact, every former FEMA Administrator since the Clinton administration has endorsed the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act and so have groups representing the local emergency response communities, including the National Emergency Management Association, the International Association of Emergency Managers, the International Association of Fire Chiefs, and Big City Emergency Managers.

Earlier this year, FEMA warned that ``millions of people could be prevented from receiving critical, lifesaving information if AM radios are not included in automobiles'' and called the removal of AM radio stations a ``public safety crisis'' for the United States. The current FEMA Administrator has warned that the removal of AM radio would have a significant impact on the emergency alert system.

So while automakers may argue that cell phones or streaming services can replace broadcast AM radio during emergencies, the emergency response community--the experts actually responsible for responding to emergencies--are universally saying just the opposite. They are saying that AM radio is important; that cell service often goes down, as we saw in Hawaii; that the key to an effective emergency alert system is redundancy.

Whom do you want to listen to--the automakers with a financial interest in removing AM from their vehicles or the experts warning that this is a crisis?

Every single day that passes is another day in which automakers put cars on the road without broadcast AM capabilities, putting their drivers and their passengers and their families in jeopardy. In matters of safety, we can't compromise. We have to listen to the experts when it comes to our national security. I urge my colleagues to stand with the tens of millions of AM radio listeners and the emergency response experts and support the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act, which Senator Cruz and I have introduced.

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