''It is wrong for five unelected, appointed commissioners to be able to establish a tax on every telephone line in the United States.''
By DAN SEWELL AP Business Writer, June 8
ATLANTA (AP) -- House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Monday he'll help lead a House effort to prevent telephone customers from being charged to pay for cheap Internet hookups for schools, libraries and rural health care.
Speaking to a communications industry trade show here, Gingrich said that new telephone fees popping up on phone bills to pay for, among other things, the cheap hookups under a program administered by the Federal Communications Commission is ''explicitly wrong.''
''We'll probably block it in the next two weeks,'' said the Georgia Republican, who didn't give details, but added to applause: ''It is wrong for five unelected, appointed commissioners to be able to establish a tax on every telephone line in the United States.''
The discounted Internet connections are financed through fees on telephone and other telecommunications companies, which pass them on to customers.
Opponents have dubbed it the ''Gore tax'' because the Internet helps meet Vice President Al Gore's pledge to connect the nation's schools by 2000. Supporters dispute that the fees are a tax. Gingrich himself characterized it as the Gore tax.
Gore, however, said he will fight to salvage funding for the Internet program.
''Let me be clear: I strongly oppose any effort to pull the plug on the e-rate (education rate) program,'' Gore said in a statement. ''I call on both Congress and industry to put politics aside and work with us to put 21 century educational technology in every classroom and library.''
Debate has heated up as the FCC is deciding how much money -- if any -- should be collected from telecommunications companies to pay for the hookups in the second half of this year.
The FCC said Monday it would give itself at least until Friday to decide the funding issue. Republican chairmen, ranking Democrats on Congress' telecommunications committees and consumer groups have asked the FCC to stop collecting money for the program. They believe it will make phone bills go up. The FCC disagrees.
Gingrich said the private sector could help the goal of getting schools on-line, but at the least the effort should be ''decentralized'' and taken from federal bureaucrats.
Gingrich also suggested that the Year 2000 computer problem looms as a political liability for Gore's expected presidential candidacy that year.
''I think it's a big problem, not a small problem,'' Gingrich told participants in the Supercomm show.
A House panel led by Rep. Steve Horn, R-Calif., last week gave several government agencies failing grades on their progress in resolving the problem for their systems. Experts have warned for years that many computers originally programmed to recognize only the last two digits of a year will fail on Jan. 1, 2000, because they will read the date as 1900.
Clinton's Council on the Year 2000 Conversion said last week that it believes agencies are making progress, but should pick up the pace.
Gingrich said Congress ''will give them whatever resources'' needed.
He drew laughter from the audience by commenting: ''I want to assure you that you can absolutely expect the federal government to meet its standards. I'll let you decide what that means, or whether or not you can travel on the first of January 2000 or within a month of that date.'' |
