Below are remarks by Senator John McCain on the floor of the Senate in 2000. McCain has introduced legislation in 2001 that would restore some of the integrity of the original FCC low-power FM initiative. Visit the Senator's web page for details.

Mr. President, there is a great example of the influence of special interests, which I am told has been inserted into the Commerce-State-Justice, the Judiciary, and related agencies appropriations conference report, without a debate on this floor, without a vote on this floor.

Mr. President, I understand that legislation restricting low-power FM services has been added behind closed doors to that appropriations bill. The addition of this rider illustrates, once again, how the special interests of a few are allowed to dominate the voices of the many in the backdoor dealings of the appropriations process.

Low-power FM radio service provides community-based organizations, churches, and other nonprofit groups with a new, affordable opportunity to reach out to the public, helping to promote a greater awareness within our communities, about our communities. As such, low-power FM is supported by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the National League of Cities, Consumers¹ Union and many religious organiza-tions, including but not limited to, the U.S. Catholic Conference and the United Church of Christ. These institu-tions support low-power FM because they see what low-power FM¹s oppo-nents also know to be true-that these stations will make more programming available to the public, and provide outlets for news and perspectives not currently featured on local radio stations.

But, the special interests forces opposed to low-power FM-most notably the National Association of Broad-casters and National Public Radio have mounted a vigorous behind-the-scenes campaign against this service. Let me repeat-and my dear friend from Nebraska joined me in this effort. Together, we tried to stop the National Association of Broadcasters and National Public Radio. Simply put, they have won again.

I believe the Senator from Nebraska will agree with me there is no way they could have carried that vote on the floor of this Senate. There is no way they could have deprived all of these communities, all of these small business people, all of these religious organizations, all of these minority groups-but they stuck it into an appropriations bill, a piece of legislation that never had a single bit of debate and would never have passed through the Commerce Committee, of which I am the chairman, if it had been put to a vote.

Earlier this year, Senator Kerry and I introduced the Low Power FM Radio Act of 2000, which would have struck a fair balance between allowing low-power radio stations to go forward while at the same time protecting existing full-power stations from actual interference. Under our bill, low-power stations causing interference would be required to stop causing interference- or be shut down-but noninterfering low-power FM stations would be al-lowed to operate without further delay. The opponents of low-power FM did not support this bill because they want low-power FM to be dead rather than functional.

Congress should not permit the appropriations process to circumvent the normal legislative process. Mr. President, low-power FM is an opportunity for minorities, churches and others to have a new voice in radio broadcasting. In the Commerce Committee, we constantly lament the fact that minorities, community-based organizations, and religious organizations do not have adequate opportuni-ties to communicate their views. More-over, over the years, I have often heard many Members of both the Committee and this Senate lament the enormous consolidation that has occurred in the telecommunications sector as a whole and the radio industry specifically. Here, we had a chance to simply get out of the way, and allow noninterfering low-power radio stations to go forward to help combat these concerns. Instead, we allowed special interests to hide their competitive fears behind the smokescreen of hypothetical interference to severely wound-if not kill- this service in the dead of night.

Mr. President, speaking for my side of the aisle, we are the party of Abraham Lincoln. We constantly endorse the importance of religious speech to American culture. How can we possibly stifle an opportunity for minority and religious organizations to communicate more effectively with their local communities? By permitting special interests to stifle these voices we are truly compromising the most fundamental principles of our party and our Nation.

I stand before these community-based organizations, these religious organizations, these people throughout these small communities all over America and say: I apologize. I apologize to you for this action-behind closed doors-that we are going to de-prive you of a voice, of a very small FM radio station. And I will tell you who did it. The National Public Radio and the National Association of Broadcasters- the same organization that got $70 billion worth of free spectrum of public taxpayer-owned property. And, by the way, they are not giving back their analog spectrum, which is the subject for another speech.

I say to the National Association of Broadcasters and the National Public Radio, shame on you.