committee will please come to order today the committee considers two pieces of legislation the first bill we will be considering today is a bipartisan piece of legislation that will restrict the importation of low level radioactive waste into the united states the bill's sponsors mr gordon mr kerry and mr matheson have worked hard to craft a balanced bill as a result this bill has eighty co sponsors including democrats and republicans at last count thirty members of this committee are co sponsors as a witness from the nuclear regulatory commission pointed out during our legislative hearing on this bill there is a pure policy question here that congress needs to answer u s b importing and disposing of low level radioactive waste from other countries this legislation ensures that the us does not become a prime destination for the world's low level radioactive waste but it includes some sensible exceptions and a process by which the president can waive the prohibition to meet important national or international policy goals this isn't an anti nuclear bill on the contrary it ensures that there is adequate disposal capacity for the radioactive waste produced by our domestic nuclear industry and this isn't a not in my backyard bill utah is a likely disposal site for much of this imported waste but utah already disposes of ninety eight percent of our country's low level radioactive waste the state should be required to take radioactive waste from italy brazil and mexico to the second below you but considering is also bipartisan the commercial loudness mitigation act or the calm address the leading consumer complaints the startling increase in volume we often experience when television programming goes to a commercial the bill sponsor congresswoman eshoo as well as subcommittee chairman boucher have worked tirelessly to bring together industry and consumer groups to resolve this issue the bill has eighty two co sponsors including more than fifteen members of the energy and commerce committee i thank the sponsors of these bills for their efforts and encouraged my colleagues to support the radioactive import deterrence act and the call back and i'm looking forward to a productive markup here will recognize other members who wish to make radioactive waste into the united states at a time when both the government accountability office and the nuclear regulatory commission have testified there is not a class a disposal capacity problem so we have the space for this mature there's no need to deny because of space issue u s companies currently play an interpol role in the nuclear commerce in the nuclear commerce around the globe and are in a position to assist countries in reducing their carbon dioxide output through the accelerated construction of new nuclear plants however this legislation will prevent american companies from providing state of the art processing services internationally and all and untimely prevent the accelerated expansion of non greenhouse gas emitting power sources like nuclear power this bill would create an unnecessary trade barrier at a time when the administration is working on reducing trade barriers in the nuclear industry the department of energy recently signed to nuclear cooperation agreements with italy the call for expanding commercial relations in the field of nuclear services and the reduction of trade barriers if this bill were to pass the u s companies would not be able to offer nuclear services in emerging markets because a processing facilities are located in the united states this could mean fewer jobs and fewer tax dollars in the united states because of these reasons i encourage all my colleagues opposes legislation now the other bill we're considering the commercial advertisement loudness mitigation act of h r eighteen  four or the com act as a chairman mentioned now this issue is a little more complex than it appears many different entities are responsible for producing and distributing the content consumers see and hear on the televisions each element may be recorded provided at a different volume level moreover shows and movies have a down not namak sound range to cover everything from a quiet scene to an explosion commercials made while tend to have a narrow  volume levels are typically set for the programming which can throw up the volume levels for commercials two years ago the advance television systems committee established a subgroup on digital television allowed now this subgroup consists of the leading the special experts on audio technology from all the major broadcast networks cable production and postproduction manufacturing including education since it was  these audio technology experts have crafted a hard fought consensus on the recommended practice that should be employed across the t v industry to deal with t v loudness concerns i trust i trust the collective wisdom of these technical experts and subgroups and all their hard work to craft a solution to the t v loudness issue and i think they should be commended the common act would simply require the f c c to adopt standard established by this panel of experts within one year the com act also grants broadcasters the option of receiving up to two one year waivers if purchasing the equipment to implement the standards will create a financial hardship for broadcasters earlier there was a potential concern that there may be temporary equipment supply shortage in some of the smaller markets because the equipment manufacturers will first accommodate the large broadcasters who have large orders the smaller stations obviously will be forced to wait however it is now my understanding mr chairman that such concerns have been addressed and no equipment supply problem i obviously want to  important bipartisan bill that would ban the importation of foreign low level radioactive waste unless the president waves that the united states stands alone in the world as the only country that imports other countries low industries the medical facilities university research labs and utility companies as a matter of fact thirty seven states have ninety nine percent of our low level radioactive waste have no place to put it so urgent our colleagues to stand firm against the importation of low level radioactive waste in support this bipartisan bill as written and i would ask unanimous consent to be able to pass out the chart showing what states have no other place recognition for the purposes of an opening statement has had the exact opposite effect because people really dive for the mute button this problem has been discussed for decades but never really properly addressed not by the certainly not by licensees who have the obligation to protect the public interest i think the issue has been ignored by the major stakeholders until the legislation was introduced what i'm pleased about is that  stern said we have worked with people in industry they have come up with the standards but i think a very important point needs to be made here unless there is an force meant by the  ill just turn into a volley terry endeavor and i don't think that's good enough for consumers so the bill takes really control of the sound and puts it back in the place where it should be with consumers so they can protect themselves i'll be introducing the substitute amendment to make technical corrections to the version of the column act that was passed by the subcommittee and i'll just you know discuss the  differences at that time to say that today's version is different than what i originally introduced because we worked with the industry and their concerns and answered each issue this is a bipartisan bill it does have ninety co sponsors in the house and i look forward to its passage and i also want to commend our colleague mr gordon for the radioactive import deterrence act because it really  takes a commonsense approach to low level radioactive waste disposal our country should not be as he said the dumping ground for other country's nuclear waste and i think that this is a  i'll be brief but a couple of comments i'd just like to address on the low level radioactive waste bill our hearings before this committee and actions in our federal court system have established that there is uncertainty associated with our current national policy on low level radioactive waste that's why i call congress needs to act on this i think this bill is the appropriate way to act i don't think anyone could argue that there is uncertainty about where federal policy is right  y people think this is going to limit the expansion nuclear power i take issue with that in fact we have one location in this country for thirty seven different states that take ninety nine percent of our low level radioactive waste seems capacity issue that is really not what came out of the hearings that we held before this committee in fact when the g a o made its study which by the way was based on one years waste and they just projected that one years waste total out over the future which any first year m b a student would tell you is not the way you make projections and i happen to be a lawyer that they use their baseline year even then they said twenty years thirty years that was kind of a battery well i don't see a whole bunch of states rushing forward to build new nuclear waste storage facilities in their state around this country right now twenty years or thirty years take your pick that's not a long amount of time when we talk about looking at this issue in fact it's a rather short amount of time so let's be careful about making blanket statements that there's no capacity problem when in fact for most states there's only one place this can go in the capacity depending on how you want to look at the numbers according to here and we had before this committee said it's between twenty and thirty years and finally i'd like to trade i'm a real pro trade you can check my voting record but i just don't think that argument holds any water thank you again mr chairman for scheduling this i encourage my colleagues to vote for this bipartisan legislation and look forward to its passage  legislation there is as mr matheson was just pointing out there is no other nuclear waste producing country in the world that allows the importation and disposal of foreign nuclear waste  why should the united states take italian nuclear waste if they won't take ours i think the answer is simple we on this committee will not allow the united states to be the world's nuclear dumping ground this bill is pro nuclear because it will preserve existing u s disposal sites for our own domestic low level nuclear waste today we have a few sites in the country which dispose of our low level waste from the moment this is adequate however it is extremely difficult to establish new disposal sites it is only practical that we carefully manage what existing domestic low level nuclear waste disposal capacity we have to ensure that we do not face a crisis in the future when this will be even more critical if new nuclear reactors built in this country in the one nine hundred eighty s when this committee established a low level radioactive waste policy it was never envisioned that foreign nuclear waste would ever be brought to the united states for disposal i can say that with confidence because i chaired the subcommittee of jurisdiction at that time in one nine hundred eighty five eighty six the bill which we are considering today  calls bill h r five one five the radioactive import act the clerk will report the bill carrier five one five a bill to prohibit the importation of certain low level radioactive waste into the united states the version before the committee is a five one five as amended by the subcommittee on energy and the environment without objection the bill is considered as read open to amendment at any point legislation and mr gordon staff had talked to our staff about seeing if we might be able to reach some agreement and we genuinely appreciate their extending that offer but during the discussions it became obvious that we just had different views on this are and then that i believe clarifies a number of issues of concern that has been expressed first of all i would note that with the opportunity to obtain more i might also say that over the last twenty years or so fourteen licenses have been granted to bring low level waste into this country now these companies that put four or will put four plants in united states to use a specific process that uses mercury put them out of business today where if this bill passe committee and indications are that it will we're going to pass another bill that makes it impossible for us companies to conduct illegal business which they have been certificate in past all the compliance tests to do so i know it's messy and difficult to deal with the reality of the world and that there are products that if not used properly are harmful and they need to be disposed of properly to prevent contamination to the population but the fact of the matter is that that's reality and luckily we have companies in the united states and processes in the united states that are the best in the world to put some radioactive isotopes in your body to see if the cancer is spread that's a good thing when we when we conduct have an x ray of our body and the technician has to use certain protective clothing and then you have to dispose of that clothing that's good and so i'm just troubled mr chairman that my good friend from tennessee who served in this take inventory of the disposal capacity united states and if it's adequate and if the company that wants to import this to that facility got a license we'll let that happen pretty straightforward it's kind of a conditional thing we still have the n r c is the watchdog the protector of our our workforce in the protector of our population i think we could accept this and it would improve the bill so while i don't hold out any great hope mr chairman i support the bill and would ask the members of the committee to support it with that are you about germany back is time for the discussion of  importing this type of nuclear radioactivity which is sort of a class very minor class of radioactivity  depositions and so at this point it appears this bill a court case and in fact a court case is being appealed so i'm not sure the bill is even required the gentleman from utah mentioned that there are no new material from italy so obviously other countries are involved with this at least the export exporting of it but as i understand france is also storing it so i rise in support as a compromise  amendment because in the end he saying that if by golly we have the capacity and the nuclear and decides that they have the capacity why not let them make the decision and let the capacity so who's in charge here making this decision state of utah don't want to the northwest compact says they don't think they should be allowed they took a vote to disallow this because it was coming from a foreign country the  court is questioning whether or not the state or the compact even have the authority to do that and the n r c says we don't have the authority to make that decision that's not part of what we do so that's the whole point of this court case however come it points out that there's a  component to our current low level radioactive waste that's why we ought to be here what we ought to be talking about this bill and i mention the court case right now is on appeal we don't know how that's going to turn out but this is really a policy issue i don't think this is one where the courts ought to be saying what our policy ought to be the courts are instead deciding under the laws that exist today who has the authority to make these decisions that's the essence of the court but our who has the authority to make a decision rather than just preempt and say that none of this material shall be allowed into the united states if your argument is there's ambiguity right now in the current while that is where the decision is  not introduce a bill that clarifies the decision under what circumstance my response from my perspective is i think congress ought to be they want to make that decision i think that's why we ought to pass this bill you may have a difference of opinion i think a regulatory agency ought to make a decision about the rest of people are operating within the law and this legislation is going to change that so there is a policy these other facilities are operating within the well i have to confess that wrong well let's go this way i don't see a lot of states in this country begging for foreign radioactive waste or operate you mentioned i don't see this happening anywhere else i told the texas is trying to open up the next year reclaiming my time perhaps there's another facility open i have yet to see that represents ninety nine percent of the volume of low level radioactive waste throughout this country so the court case is what it is i'm just suggesting it's also exposes gaps in federal policy that you'll back to only us back as timers or further discussion the gentleman not only struck the last word he struck the last note mr chairman do you wish to be recognized for a song i don't know i'm not going to put us through that i didn't know dean martin i miss harman version before the committee is h r eighty four as abetted by the subcommittee on communications technology and the internet mr chairman the committee is not nor correct the committee will please come back to ed commercial law during the i'm not going to sing it during the subcommittee markup on this bill i agreed to work with the committee staff and to review the industry concerns prior to bring in the bill to the full committee and i'm pleased to say that we kept that promise in fact we've been working with industry since the bill the subcommittee mark already reflected significant changes to the act structure instead of and that's why congress needs to that's the standard and in force the time line it's taken almost half a century after the problem was first identified to come up with a response so the substitute tweaks the current version to provide some clarifying point first the amendment will delete the word severe from modify financial hardship waivers for broadcasters and multi video providers so that it's clear that bankruptcy would not be the only qualification for a waiver in line with other commission waivers second to let the language limits the f c c rule making to the adoption of these standards something i did to satisfy  national association of broadcasters complained about a prolonged rule making that might create standards third clarifying language ensures that everyone has more than enough time to comply and that's very important in addition to the time it takes the commission to adopt the rules broadcasters and multi channel providers will have a one year period to comply with the rules and purchase the necessary electronics equipment  so mr chairman thank you for your leadership to mr boucher who has been a consistent supporter and helper on the legislation to all of the co sponsors i thank you i look others were there were there efforts to technically improve the bill but having said that this is not an issue that i think is worthy of the federal preemption there's so many things you can do if you don't particularly like a commercial you don't have to watch that channel you can mute it you can do some sides watch t v you can go out and play with your children or as i need to do you could go wash the laundry i'm washing laundry in a month or so i mean there's all kinds of things you could do but if we're going to begin to federally dictate the noise level what about commercials where people wear funny hats what about commercials that advertise products that we don't particularly care for what about some of these crazy used car commercials where you know friendly television i remember when t v came out in the night when we got our first t v set in the nineteen fifties and there have been commercials on t v ever since i've been watching it rather not have watched so while all of a sudden we have to commercial thank you i think i did thank the gentleman and you know we've worked on lots of things together and while i appreciate your saying what you're saying i don't agree and let me just make a couple of  comments here we're not regulating content number one and that's a that's a very important thing to set forth these very loud commercials these loudness issues are within the the f c c to to enforce and we work with all the stakeholders lastly and i think most importantly i think we all need to remind ourselves that broadcasters use the public airwaves are not private airwaves they're public and so this is not the be all and end all legislation when it comes to the problems that we have and the huge challenges in our country but i do think it's a consumer issue and consumers have weighed in at the f c c for decades it is the top complaint of consumers across the country to the f c c so while i think it is  an important step perhaps a small one relative to the issues that the then the challenges the country faces i have to tell you if you took a vote of the spouses club around here  my memory's going but it seems like in the early days of saturday night live there were some characters on saturday night live that they were always complaining about everything and they were always kind of cranky and they just  thing after the other i think it should tell us something if this is the number one compliant at the last fifty years and they haven't acted upon it there is a there's a reason and that's because we still expect people to take some responsibility for their actions and again we don't force people to watch these commercials we don't force people to watch so why in the world are we going to set standards for the audio level because people are  just we reported this measure by voice vote from the subcommittee it was broadly supported at the time and i think for good reason we're all very frustrated when the commercial has a volume that's much greater than the program with which it's associated we scramble for the remote control and we turn the volume down then we have to pick it up again and turn the volume back up when when the on the commercials over it's just frustrating and annoying and we have an opportunity here to do something about it and let me simply point out that the industry has accommodated and indoors this approach the standard that will be adopted by the f c c is the standard that has been developed by the industry based standards committee and this can well be accommodated by the t v station we also have a waiver in this measure for any t v station that has financial hardship and meeting standards and so this certainly does no harm i think it does a great deal of good and i hope it's the committee's pleasure to committee the established a subgroup on digital television allowed this and all these experts in production post production manufacturing education broadcast network cable all came together as a result of all these complaints to the end they cannot came up with a solution now one of the arguments that i made during the subcommittee is that why not let private industry solve this problem because private industry has put together this subgroup and they came up with the generator from california said that there would be a severe cry hardship for some of these small small broadcast because once this quitman is sold you've got to pay for it and second of all all the big broadcast of all by the small ones might not get it and yet these companies get this waiver the original one year waiver an option of receiving up to two year one year waivers in the bill but your technical language which i commend you for doing a better and easier and i would comment to her and also to the ranking chairman mr boucher that in the event the bill starts moving into a conference or those technical language is needed to protect some of these small manufacturers in the event equipment is not available for them to get it  organization that came up with the standards i think everyone should note that they came up with them november ninth of this year so the legislation has had a positive effect on  different ways in boston it's when the red sox are playing the seattle mariners angels angels the game starts at eleven o'clock at night well but red and now we're there and we are planning actually sleeping on the couch but the advertisement just doing a lie with commercials during recess we want to be is at the same level as the excess of celebration at the event which everyone who has a view on this has been loud and clear i would like i mean can i say to mr markey when coach belichick makes those kind of judgments you have no celebration in boston then you have to do you have to calm down the