DTV Delay Act

Floor Speech

DTV DELAY ACT -- (House of Representatives - January 27, 2009)

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Mr. SCALISE. I'd like to thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding, and I rise in opposition to this bill to delay the transfer to digital. I think if we look at what this could do for our economy, number one, we are talking about the problems that we are having in our economy right now, and we want to create good jobs. There are billions of dollars of investment that are sitting on the sidelines right now, waiting to move, waiting to create new technologies, and create good new jobs in our economy, that this delay will further hamper.

In addition to that, I think we need to be very concerned about what this means to our first responders. It was just read into the Record from the president of the National Fraternal Order of Police, but also what this would mean for our firefighters as they try to implement interoperable capabilities, something that we experienced after Katrina, we saw after September 11, something we need to get to. Something, again, this delay will only hurt their ability to make those changes that they want so desperately to make for the safety of our people all throughout the country.

So there are many strong reasons why we are ready to get this implementation to take place and why we should oppose any delay.

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