Butterfield visits VOA, speaks at luncheon

Small business support and protection of a local Voice of America transmission site were the focus of U.S. Rep. G.K. Butterfield’s Tuesday afternoon visit to Pitt County.

Butterfield, a Democrat who represents North Carolina’s 1st Congressional District, toured the 47-year-old transmitter site about 15 miles east of Greenville. He also spoke about his support for small business during a monthly luncheon of the Greenville-Pitt County Chamber of Commerce.

Small business drives the American economy, Butterfield said. While the last two years have been difficult, he reminded the audience the United States economy is three times the size of the Japanese economy and 50 percent larger than the Chinese economy.

The economic downturn was especially hard on small businesses which need fewer taxes, easier access to capital and fewer governmental regulations, Butterfield said.

“In whatever manner we go forward we must protect and grow small business,” he said.

The House has approved a $30 billion plan to make lending available to small businesses. Butterfield said Senate leaders have promised to take up the legislation in September.

He talked about the difficulty the Obama administration faced when it took office in 2009 with more than 2.5 million lost jobs and a deficit of $11 trillion.

“My friends, for the past 18 months we’ve been trying desperately to rescue the American economy,” Butterfield said.

While the administration’s efforts to fix the economy increased the deficit to $13 trillion, Butterfield said he believes there are signs it helped create or preserve jobs and it has given communities money to improve infrastructure.

Congress wants to reduce the deficit, Butterfield said. The House of Representatives has reinstituted the “pay-as-you-go” process started in the 1990s during the Clinton administration to only fund projects that can be paid for and no more deficit spending except in times of war or disaster.

Butterfield said the president’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform will present a report in December detailing what steps are needed to reduce the deficit.

Butterfield said the recommendations likely will be painful but are needed.

Butterfield was asked if he reads the legislation he votes on. It’s impossible to read every piece of legislation, especially bills dealing with local issues such as the naming of post offices, he said. However, major legislation is read by him and the majority of representatives.

Butterfield was then asked if he read the health care legislation adopted by Congress last year before it was passed.

Butterfield said while he didn’t read every footnote, “I knew essentially every point of that bill,” he said.

Butterfield did not discuss the ethics committee’s investigation of ethics violations by ranking Democrats Maxine Waters of California and Charlie Rangel of New York. He also didn’t address statements made by Ashley Woolard, a Beaufort County Republican challenging him in November, calling on Butterfield to return money Rangel donated to his campaign or step down from the ethics committee.

After the chamber event, Butterfield and his staff traveled to Black Jack to visit the 28,000-acre Voice of America Site B facility.

Earlier this year, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees all government-funded, civilian international broadcasting organizations, proposed closing VOA Site B. Its staff of 23 broadcasts shortwave radio programming to the Caribbean, Latin America and northern Africa. The broadcasting board says it wants to focus on upgrading its satellite, digital and other broadcasting technologies, and closing the local site would save about $3.1 million.

Site B is the only VOA shortwave site operating in the United States, Butterfield said.

“We have one advantage over the Internet — no one can stop us,” Al Bailey, an electronics technician at the facility, said. Stopping Internet delivery is as simple as cutting a phone or fiber optic line or padlocking the server location, he said. Internet programming also can be traced. The equipment needed to jam shortwave radio signals is expensive, he said.

Although the Pitt County site broadcasts to three regions, its signal can be heard worldwide, Bailey said. The site can quickly change its transmitter frequencies and programs. When Haiti was struck by an earthquake in January, an international charity distributed shortwave radios throughout the country. The local VOA site started broadcasting 15 hours of programming each day to the country.

Butterfield and Pitt County’s other congressman, U.S. Rep. Walter B. Jones Jr., the Farmville Republican who represents the 3rd Congressional District, each sent a letter to the House subcommittee overseeing the broadcasting board requesting that no money from the pending budget be used to close the Pitt County site.

The bill is in committee, and it’s unknown if Butterfield and Jones’ request will be included.

VOA Site B not only needs to remain open, its technology needs to be upgraded, Butterfield said.

“It’s in our national interest to have Voice of America and 125 million people worldwide listing to its news and content,” he said.

Contact Ginger Livingston at glivingston@reflector.com or (252) 329-9570.