WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Rep. Bob Latta (OH-5) appeared yesterday morning before a breakfast meeting of The Ripon Society, delivering remarks about the importance of deploying broadband across the country and other priorities he believes the Energy & Commerce (E&C) Committee should tackle in the coming year.
Latta is a member of the E&C Committee and serves as Chairman of the panel’s Subcommittee on Communications & Technology. He has also announced his candidacy to become Chairman of the full Committee in the 119th Congress, taking over for the current Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA-5), who will be retiring at the end of this year. Latta talked about the E&C Committee and the vision he would bring to the job of Chairman in his remarks. But he opened his remarks by talking about his view of leadership and governing, and sharing a lesson about politics and public service that he learned from his father, the late Ohio Congressman Del Latta.
“There are two types of people who want to get involved in government service,” he said his father told him, “those who want to be politicians, and those who want to be public servants. Politicians see what they can take from the people they represent and represent themselves. Public servants see how much they can give of themselves to the people they represent. My goal always has been to see how much I can give back, because I’ve been blessed. And I truly mean it — I’ve been blessed. I thank God every morning that He allows me to be in the Capitol building to work for the people I represent.
“And I’ve really been blessed being on the Energy & Commerce Committee, because it is the greatest committee. We have the broadest jurisdiction and we cover so much. Yesterday, I had four meetings back-to-back in my office. Not one was the same meeting. You never get bored. It’s always different. The other thing about serving on the Energy & Commerce Committee is this — when you sit up on that dais, you’re looking over the horizon five to ten years because there are innovators and entrepreneurs who are coming before us to make sure that we get things right here in the United States, so things are developed here and made here. We want to make sure we get things right. That’s why it’s so important.”
First elected to the House in 2007, Latta has been a member of the Energy & Commerce Committee since 2010, during which time he has served on all six of the panel’s subcommittees. He has served as Chairman of the Communications & Technology Subcommittee since January of 2023 after serving as the Subcommittee’s Ranking Member in the 116th and 117th Congress.
He said one of the keys to doing a good job is listening to Americans outside the Washington Beltway who are most impacted by the rules and regulations that federal bureaucrats believe it is their right to hand down from above. Latta recalled a meeting he had with two regulators about a rule that would affect a facility in his district in Ohio, and how it became obvious they had little to no understanding in that regard.
“I said I don’t want to embarrass you,” the veteran lawmaker recounted, “but can I ask you a question? Have you ever been in a facility you regulate? And you know what they said? No. And I said, how do you write regulations if you don’t even know what’s going on out there? One guy got kind of snippy. And then I had to say to him, do we actually pay you by the word? So that was kind of the end of the conversation.”
Latta also highlighted one challenge facing Americans that has been one of his priorities as Chairman of the Communications & Technology Subcommittee – broadband deployment.
“We have about eight million households that don’t have any broadband,” he stated. During the pandemic, he added, the problem became even more pronounced, creating an advantage for those communities who had broadband, and a real disadvantage for those communities and families that did not.
“A lot of communities didn’t have any broadband,” he noted. “So what happened was, if the kids could get there, they went to the local library or one of the fast-food chains where they might have had Wi-Fi and they sat in the parking lot at night in their family car trying to do their homework there. So we’ve got to get this deployed – we’ve got to get it done. Other countries are getting it done way ahead of us.”
In addition to broadband deployment, Latta also pointed to permitting reform, lower health care costs, and energy independence as three other priorities he believes the E&C Committee should focus on in the coming year. With regard to energy independence and the importance of adopting an all-of-the-above approach to meeting America’s energy needs, the Ohio Republican was blunt:
“We need more energy in this country, not less,” he declared. “I have 86,000 manufacturing jobs in my district. I have the largest farm income-producing district in Ohio. And one thing I’ve got to have is power.”
To view Latta’s remarks before The Ripon Society yesterday morning, please click the link below:
