Hello, I'm Dick Durbin. I want to take this opportunity to say a final thanks to all of you who took part in the first stage of our interactive bill writing process last week. In particular, I'd like to thank Jim Baller, Paul Morris, John Windhausen, Andrew McNeill, and Waldo McMillan for their participation on Friday evening, as well as the numerous other experts who participated over the course of the week.
The last week has given me a great deal to think about. I figured at the outset that if I gave the broader public a chance to comment on these issues, a few good ideas would emerge. I was wrong. What I found instead was a significant number of well-reasoned perspectives and ideas that I had not previously considered. These ideas covered the gamut of policy areas, including net neutrality, incentive programs, spectrum policy, and community broadband.
In addition to the importance of the policy ideas you generated, the first stage of our Legislation 2.0 experiment demonstrated the potential of this innovative, democratic, and transparent legislative process. The online community proved to me that there is a significant interest in more transparency in legislating and that we have the technology to make this process more practical and convenient than ever before.
To my knowledge, this was the first time that participants spread thousands of miles apart were brought together for the express purpose of crafting federal legislation. By all accounts, I believe that we were successful. My challenge now is to incorporate the ideas you've shared into a piece of federal legislation. Once drafted, I'll be posting legislation online and will ask for your input once again.
Thank you again for all of your help. We'll be in touch shortly.
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