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KEEP USF FAIR: 1.5 MILLION LETTERS SENT TO CONGRESS AND FCC OPPOSING ANTI-CONSUMER CHANGES TO PHONE TAX
Drive for “Numbers”-Based Tax Shift Stymied in 2007, Major Role Played by Nearly Four Year Old Coalition.
WASHINGTON, D.C.///December 19, 2007///The drive to shift the federal “Universal Service Fund” (USF) phone tax to a numbers-based methodology lost much of its steam in 2007, thanks in large part to the ongoing efforts of the Keep USF Fair (KUSFF) Coalition (http://www.keepusffair.org).
Today, the broad-based Keep USF Fair Coalition announced that it has reached the milestone of 1.5 million letters sent to Congress and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) opposing any movement to the anti-consumer numbers-based approach for calculating the Universal Service Fund tax on phone bills. The KUSFF Coalition has maintained that the shift would be particularly harmful for seniors and a wide range of low-income, rural and minority consumers.
In 2007, KUSFF mounted major campaigns in New York State, Michigan and Massachusetts. It also took out advertisements underscoring the anti-consumer nature of a shift to the numbers methodology. (See a representative ad at http://keepusffair.org/img/gv2/custom_images/KeepUSFFair/ad_0307.gif.)
Maureen Thompson, executive director, Keep Universal Service Fund Fair Coalition, Washington, D.C., said: “We certainly aren’t resting easy, but the Keep USF Coalition does believe that major progress has been made to ensure that the FCC and Congress understand the strong U.S. consumer opposition to a regressive, per-line flat line fee that would treat Bill Gates and your grandmother as though they were exactly the same kind of phone consumer.”
Thompson added: “We intend to keep up our efforts in 2008 to spread the word that the USF collection method must remain fair. Congress and the FCC should focus on getting the Universal Service Fund’s house in order before they even look at changing the USF methodology. The FCC Inspector General said in recent weeks that more than 20 percent of high-cost USF funds can’t be accounted for today. Clearly, straightening out the USF mess has to be Job 1. With the USF in such a state of disarray, it would just add insult to injury to stick millions of America’s most vulnerable consumers with higher phone taxes.”
Thompson said: “The Keep USF Fair Coalition supports a sustainable, effective and fair Universal Service Fund that meets the goal of assuring affordable telephone service to all Americans. We believe that this goal now is in serious jeopardy and that Congress and the FCC must act to assure that the Fund is more efficiently and effectively managed and that the spiraling growth in the size of the Fund is contained, if not actually decreased. Strong and meaningful controls on the size of the Fund are critically important to the continued viability of this program.”
ABOUT THE KEEP USF FAIR COALITION
Now counting more than 115,000 individual members in its ranks, The Keep USF Fair Coalition was formed in April 2004. Current organizational members include Alliance for Public Technology, Alliance For Retired Americans, American Association Of People With Disabilities, , American Council of the Blind, California Alliance of Retired Americans, Consumer Action, , Latino Issues Forum, League Of United Latin American Citizens, Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition, National Association Of The Deaf, National Consumers League, National Grange, National Hispanic Council on Aging, National Native American Chamber of Commerce, Pennsylvania Alliance of Retired Americans, The Seniors Coalition, Utility Consumer Action Network, Virginia Citizen’s Consumer Council and World Institute On Disability.
On November 17, 2005, the Keep USF Fair Coalition released a report entitled “Losing Numbers: How America’s Most Vulnerable Consumers Could Suffer Under Universal Service Fund (USF) ‘Reform.’” That report concluded: “The currently consumer-friendly ‘pay for what you use’ approach to funding the Universal Service Fund would be replaced under the … (connections-based) plan with a regressive, flat-fee arrangement of $1-$2 or more per phone line – regardless of whether or not consumers even make a long-distance call. For a consumer who now dials only a handful of long-distance calls per year and pays correspondingly low USF taxes, the effective tax rate under the … (connections-base) plan would soar by more than 1,000 percent on an annual basis! With low-income and elderly consumers already socked with high gas prices, higher home energy costs and the prospect of soaring summer cooling bills and continued inflation in medical prescriptions, the wide range of diverse groups in the Keep USF Fair Coalition are opposing the (industry-backed) ‘numbers’ based plan. These groups caution against balancing USF finances on the backs of the very consumers who use long-distance the least and are unable to afford phone bills that would rise under ‘numbers’ simply in order to subsidize high-income/high-volume callers.”
CONTACT: Ailis Aaron Wolf, (703) 276-3265 or aaaron@hastingsgroup.com.
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