Communicators this week is a key member of congress when it comes to telecommunications policy. Mike doyle is a democrat from pennsylvania, chair of the energy and commerce subcommittee on communications and technology. Congressman doyle, the subcommittee is key to telecom policy, isnt it . Representative doyle it sure is. It is the Key Committee in congress that deals with telecommunication policy. A lot of interesting issues come before the committee, and more to come. Peter we are about to cover those in the next halfhour, but i want to start with news this week, the fcc declaring huawei zte corporations to be National Security threats. Representative doyle that is one of the reasons you saw the bill we passed in the energy committee. Now we are just waiting for appropriators to put money in it. It is going to take 1 million to 2 million to assist Smaller Companies that want that equipment, to make them whole so they can remove the equipment and put other equipment in. We have been generally supportive of that and our hope will be appropriators will put sufficient funds in the bill so that that can happen again. Peter here to help us explore the issues is chris roderigo. He is with the hill, and covers technology. Chris ask for having me. Im curious to know how the coronavirus pandemic has shifted the priorities of you and your subcommittee. Representative doyle it has obviously made it much more difficult to schedule hearings and do our normal course of business. We had a hearing last week on this information. Im sure we will talk about that later. We dont at this time know when our next hearing is going to be. There are six committees on energy and commerce, all competing for spots. There is also a limited amount of time left as we move into the recess, leadership 20 to get certain legislation to the floor, so those will take precedence, depending on the committee or subcommittee, so it has made the normal operations of the committee more difficult. But we are all learning this technology, zoom, webex and other media to conduct our hearings, and have been able to do it without many glitches. Chris do you see the potential for digital hearings moving forward . Representative doyle i am old school. I like that we are in the hearing room with colleagues. It is especially difficult during markups or contentious hearings to make sure we want to be recognized or whether there is a debate going on, it gives us what i think is a healthy debate, and it is on zoom with a bunch of frames and you are not sure who is talking. So it has its purpose, and given the situation right now, it is critical we are able to continue to conduct our business. My staff works remotely from their homes in pittsburgh, and in washington, and we are able to get our work done and respond to our constituents. We have to get our Committee Work done and make sure we are getting product to the floor that is important to the american people. So this tool has been critical. And the other thing this pandemic has illustrated is the importance of broadband. People are really dependent on this, not only for work, how we are educating students, ordering groceries, getting medicines, so much of what we depend on for everyday life, we wouldnt be able to do it if we didnt have productivity like this, and a lot of people in the country dont. So that is one of the challenges we have, making sure we fix that problem with the infrastructure. Chris Congress Sometimes moves slower than events happen in real life. How have you been able to, as you say, move product to the floor . Representative doyle we would like to do things through regular order. We talked about this a lot when House Democrats took effect the majority of the house, and to the extent the situation allows it, that is how we like to do business, have hearings in a committee, that is subcommittee, than the floor, especially when we are trying to get work done before the august recess. We still have a number of Appropriations Bills we have to get to the floor in these last weeks of july. We have the heroes act that is still waiting for Mitch Mcconnell to open his mouth and say something, whether he wants to sit down and negotiate. We have received proposals from mr. Waldon and senator wicker on covid, but we dont see numbers, because apparently in the senate and the administration, they are not ready to talk money. My hope is that during this recess, when we are still doing things virtually, and markups, our committee is scheduled to do markups not this week, but next week, that there are some discussions going on that when we get back in the next few weeks, we have something to vote on. Whether it takes the form of what we have in the heroes packager moves in another direction, we need to get something done in the august recess. And whatever bills we need to move to make that happen, those will be expedited. Twitter you hearing from zoom and webex and others on how you can assist them . Representative doyle this has been a primary this has been a valuable tool. I just got through a primary election. This was a very strange time to be running, and i had a competitive race. And normally you do a doortodoor campaign, you have debates, rallies. Everything moved to zoom. And you have debate formats like we are doing here with local television stations, that i have done with this format. So it has become invaluable for small businesses, for the conduct of businesses in this country during a pandemic, when so many of us are working from our homes, because it is not safe right now to work in large numbers inside and closed areas inside enclosed areas. So we want the technology to work and wanted to be safe and secure. I know that for official hearings on markups that we use webex technology, as opposed to zoom, because our technical folks think there is more security cap, but this technology will keep getting better, and we may use it more, not so much in hearings and markups in the congress, but you will see a lot of business continue being conducted this way. And i am not quite sure a lot of businesses are ever going to go back to the way they used to do things once we get through this pandemic and hopefully have a vaccine so we can get back some degree of normalcy. Chris one policy issue you hinted at his broadband taking on more importance with people relying on the internet. Earlier this week, the accessible portable internet for all act move forward, investing 100 billion to build up broadband in certain areas as well as affordable broadband offerings for anyone who receives the funding. Do you perceive that being independent legislation from the moving forward act, given opposition from the president and the Senate Majority leader to the move forward act . Representative doyle there is going to be negotiation. There was a lot of comment on the floor by republicans about, what is a broadband package doing in a transportation bill . Then this city to move a large infrastructure bill in the country, when we talk about infrastructure, we are not just talking about roads and ridges. Broadband is the infrastructure of the future. This is going to be the basis of how the 21st century economy works. So it is critical we not just put money in to get broadband in certain areas, we are talking about upgrading the entire system to increase speed and efficiency. We are talking about using it to close the homework gap. We dont know if kids are going back to school in fall. We hope they do, and i have a lot of parents kids at home that hope they are going back to school, but we dont know that. Distance learning is still going to be a real thing and we still have people in this country that dont have access to broadband, and we have to close that homework gap. Part of what we did in this packages to do that too. And we want to update our 911 package, that is important. So much of what congress is doing is digital now in the United States should be at the forefront, so we think the investment in broadband is important. Jim clyburn ordinarily doesnt work in this space, and has stepped forward, he has worked very closely with myself and mr. Pallone on this package. Whether it moves forward as part of the infrastructure package we just voted on, we dont know. We know that we still have to negotiate with our senate counterparts, still have to. Money, there has got to be agreement about how much money to enable broadband, and then work with Senate Republicans on how we get legislation passed. But we cant work when the over there cant work on the other side doesnt open their mouth and say something. We are anxious to work with Mitch Mcconnell and the president. Senator wicker has said there is no money attached to these things, so my hope is that during the next two weeks we are at home, there will be hearings and negotiations so that we can start something in the next few weeks to get something on the table. It is very important. Chris two particular areas of come out of the broadbent discussion, telehealth and closing the homework gap. On telehealth, the cares act passed by congress appropriated 200 billion. You and the energy and commerce chair, representative pallobne representative pallone sent a letter to the fcc chair. Have you gotten a response on that yet . Representative doyle we want to get more information about the program. Grants are being sent out to various organizations and we want more transparency on how that process works and who is getting these grants. The current sent that the concern has been, to date there hasnt been transparency. We have written chairman pai, asking him to make sure that this is a program not only run efficiently, but transparently, and we have a quested information on what organizations have received funding, and the criteria being used to judge who gets an award in 2000. We are still waiting to get that information. Chris are there further steps you are considering to put capital oversight over that fcc process . Representative doyle if we arent getting cooperation and dont think the process is transparent, it will come under scrutiny of the committee. That is part of our oversight responsibilities and something we will look into. Our hope is that we get answers from the chairman and make sure the program is running a way that is transparent. Chris there is also other legislation proposed on telehealth, including one in the senate that would make changes in the cares act permanent, allowing the Health Department to waive geographical look waive geographical locations for medicare recipients on telehealth. Representative doyle i cant give you a definite answer on the. We want to expand telehealth answer on that. We want to expand telehealth across the country and i just have to take a closer look at the Senate Language before i answer that. Chris beyond the reduction in risk by using telehealth three coronavirus, what are the other advantages for telehealth . Representative doyle i live in pittsburgh. A lot of people think of pennsylvania as philadelphia and pittsburgh, and in between is a whole bunch of farmland and dairy farms. It is a very rural state if you know it well, and a lot of time these folks find themselves hundreds of miles from certain types of health care. Pittsburgh has the largest Academic Medical Center in pennsylvania, so we have many, many things available at our fingertips in pittsburgh, but if you live in central, those facilities arent available, especially Specialty Health care. This is where telehealth fills the gap. The brightest surgeons work in our hospitals in pittsburgh and philadelphia and they can consult, look at xrays, it is almost like bringing that talent right into those areas without people getting into a car and driving 200 miles for an appoint meant with someone for an appointment with someone. So it is very important. Chris speaking of rural areas, the rural Digital Opportunity fund, 20 billion Funding Amount the fcc has to distribute to Rural Communities for broadband, have there been discussions in your committee about possibly moving the october date, as democratic members of the agency have mentioned they might need more Data Collection first . Representative doyle yeah, we want to have good data if we want to good result. It doesnt make it lot of sense it doesnt make a lot of sense to me. We know the mapping is horrendous, so why do we want to spend all this money before we have good maps and good data . Many of us on the committee and some members of the fcc have expressed the desire, lets not put the cart ahead of the horse, lets get this mapping issue solved first and then make sure that money gets spent in the most efficient way, that we are putting it where it really needs to go. Peter congressman doyle, it seems that for years people have complained about the mapping. Why is this such an issue . Representative doyle as long as i have been on the committee, quite some time, we have had this discussion. It is just mindboggling that, given the technology and abilities we have today, that we cant get accurate mapping so we are making sure that, as we spend these precious dollars that art growing on trees, that we are getting deployment where we need deployment. Quite frankly, a lot of the carriers, for whatever reasons, there maps claim they have service where they dont have service. And we know that has been going on for years. But the last hearing we talked about this in the legislation, there was almost unanimous, bipartisan consent that this was a problem in the system and needs to be fixed. Democrats and republicans on the committee both agreed on this. Why in the world would the fcc push forward on this before we get this problem fixed . That is basically what we said to the chairman, that we really need to get this done right, and it seems to me we would be throwing 20 million out the window if we did this without the updated maps. Chris another Major Initiative is closing the homework gap, something you have been working on even before coronavirus came. Is there more energy and congress to move the legislation, given the pandemic . Representative doyle i hope so. And any legislation that moves out of the house will include this. This is very important to House Democrats. And i believe there are many republicans that also support closing the homework gap. We can agree on a lot of things in congress, democrats and republicans, until it gets to how we pay for it. That is world the talks seem to always break down. We have a much more aggressive figure, 9 billion out of 100 billion into closing the homework gap. We think it is very important to the future of the country, people getting educated, especially in times this were schools are being shut down times like this when schools are being shut down, and we have basically two societies, the connected society and the unconnected society, where some have to drive up to a mcdonalds just to get a connection to do their homework thats not fair. We have those kinds of disparities. This is important to us, and we are going to push for maximum levels of funding in any negotiation. Peter is using broadband as an infrastructure tool, is there bipartisan support for that . Representative doyle people are starting to understand how important it is. The pandemic has brought a lot of this to light, that people see the importance of broadband a lot more in their everyday lives that maybe they did prior to the pandemic. I said at the beginning that rod band is the infrastructure of the future broadband is the infrastructure of the future, when we talk about the investments we are going to make to ensure our place in the world. It should be painfully obvious to people at this point that having the best connectivity, best networks, is critical to our success in a Global Economy and critical to the success of our students who are trying to learn, it is critical for our health care industry. Just about everything you can think of is touched by broadband. Think of our political discourse in this country, the role it plays in our democracy, and the threat many of us feel it currently poses to our democracy if something doesnt change these platforms that are bent on giving people what they want to hear, that causes so Much Division in this country. And i hope the people that run these platforms can see the country they have created, and step up and something about it. Thats why our last hearing had a big focus on disinformation. Peter is there a fear that Net Neutrality and regulating broadband and the internet is a utility could be part of this package . Representative doyle i am a big supporter of Net Neutrality. It is important to have a cop on the beat. A lot of things isps say they wont do anymore, they were doing at one point, which rot the regulation upon them which brought the regulation upon them. There was always something new that happens in technology, and while we dont specifically say, we know we arent going to do certain things anymore, but there are other things that can pop up. And frankly, the federal trade commission doesnt have the manpower or expertise or authority to do much about this, unless there is a [indiscernible] so the fcc is the agency that can be the cop on the beat. What we are saying, if we catch nsf an isp acting in a competitive nature, then the fcc should have the authority to do something about that. So if Internet Companies arent to anything art doing anything, that if the Internet Companies so if the internet policies arent doing anything in terms of anticompetitive policies, the fcc should have the ability to step in if they see something wrong, based on those definitions we have already agreed to. The American Public gets that, democrats, republicans and independents. And that was seen during the notice period, where record numbers of people talk to the fcc about this. Democratic ort a republican issue except in washington, d. C. Capital get outside the [indiscernible] given todays climate and the makeup of the senate and the white house we see today, the chances of getting a Net Neutrality bill as part of the package probably are not good. What we cani