Congress signals subsidy for TVs

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The federal government wants to pay for some U.S. residents to be able to watch television -- the only question is how much.

The Senate's budget bill, which passed last week, contains a $3 billion subsidy for owners of televisions that are not ready to handle the eventual transition to digital television.

The House budget bill, which ran into trouble Thursday but which will be on the floor this week, contains slightly less than $1 billion.

Both bills set a date when broadcasters must return their current licenses and instead broadcast a digital signal on a different part of the electronic spectrum.

The subsidy would go to pay for converter boxes, which would take the digital signal from the broadcasters and convert it so that it can be displayed by analog TVs. Televisions hooked up to cable or satellite would not need the converters, nor would televisions capable of receiving a digital signal.

"There are enough low-income Americans that would have difficulty coming up with the $40 or the $50 for a conversion box, so we want to help them out on a one-time basis," said House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe L. Barton, Texas Republican, who is pushing for finishing the transfer to digital broadcasting.

"Since it's a federal law that we're saying you have to broadcast digitally, and we have lots of TV sets in this country that are still good that aren't digitally capable, I think it's reasonable to have a modest subsidy on a one-time basis," he said.

Some say the government shouldn't be paying at all.

"What the taxpayers are being asked to suffer is a transfer of money from their pocket basically to the living rooms of the television-watching public," said Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican.

He offered an amendment to strike the entire $3 billion from the Senate bill, but it failed by voice vote.