To amend section 1464 of title 18, United States Code, to provide for the punishment of certain profane broadcasts, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, 100 million people viewed this year's Super Bowl. It was a great football game. Unfortunately, most of the publicity did not focus on the football game, it rather focused on the half-time show and a few ads. Matter of fact, there were 200,000 complaints concerning some of the indecency that were filed. I think this illustrates the culture war we are currently experiencing, because most in the entertainment industry really could not understand the outcry. This is pretty much business as usual. Yet those in middle America were not quite so enthralled. They were hit right between the eyes by the media content that our children are immersed in almost daily.

Many Members of Congress, myself included, were concerned and somewhat outraged, and I just am concerned that this outrage may be short-lived if we look at the history of such things. In 2003, 240,000 complaints were filed with the FCC concerning indecent and obscene programming, yet there were practically no responses by the FCC or by Congress. Few of these complaints were even answered by the FCC. Complaints are often bundled, they are not counted separately, so there may have been well over 240,000 complaints filed. Only a handful of citations were issued, which resulted in minimal fines, roughly four or five citations. No TV station has ever been fined in the history of the FCC for broadcasting indecent material. Since the FCC began in 1934, no broadcast license has ever been suspended.

The FCC receives $278 million from Congress annually, yet it is largely derelict in the enforcement of its duties. On June 2, 2003, the FCC increased the market share media conglomerates can control from 35 percent to 45 percent. What does that mean? It means in a major media market, one conglomerate can own three TV stations, one newspaper, and eight radio stations. So there has been a huge amount of concentration in the media industry.

As media control is more centralized, and there is less local control, there is more emphasis on indecent programming. There is a focus on the bottom line; simply what will sell. Locally-

owned outlets are more sensitive to community standards and are less likely to broadcast indecent material. Congress, I think, needs to reverse this trend towards concentration and move back to that 35 percent of the market that was originally the standard.

Our children are paying a price. The average young person by the age of 18 witnesses 200,000 violent acts and 40,000 murders on television. They average roughly 6 hours of media exposure per day. Research by the Congressional Public Health Summit in 2000 indicated that children exposed to media violence are more violent later in life; more apt to commit crimes of violence. Studies show that children watching sexually explicit programming adopt more permissive attitudes towards premarital sex and become more promiscuous.

Our out-of-wedlock birth was 5 percent in 1960, and today it is roughly 33 percent. One out of every three children coming into our culture are born with a huge disadvantage. They have two strikes against them. These children, and really all of us in our culture, pay a great price. So what I would urge, Mr. Speaker, is that Congress needs to stay the course, play its part, and hold the FCC to its charge.

The gentleman from California (Mr. Baca) and I have started a caucus, the Sex and Violence in Media Caucus, which we hope people will join. Several weeks ago, Bono uttered an obscenity four times during prime time, and the FCC refused to penalize the broadcast network because they said he used the obscenity as an adjective. As a result, the gentleman from California (Mr. Ose) has introduced the bill Clean Airways Act, H.R. 3687, which defines eight obscene words, and it says if these words are used, no matter whether used as adjectives, verbs, adverbs, pronouns, whatever, they are still subject to penalty. Also, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Upton) has introduced H.R. 3717, the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act, which increases penalties for obscenity from $27,500 to $275,000, a tenfold increase, which may get some people's attention.

I urge my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, to hold the broadcast media to a higher standard and to require the FCC to enforce commonly held standards of decency.