. >> senator merckly. >> thank you.thought i would turn to a piece of the picture i hear about a lot that hasn't been mentioned yet and that's rural broadband. everywhere i go in oregon, folks note the importance of it to the success of their rural communities. so i wanted to explore this a little bit because as i understand it, usda recently rewrote the broad band loan program regulations to reflect the changes in the 2014 farm bill and it really has kind of just gotten going but i believe you're now proposing eliminating this, meanwhile, the grant program which has increased is a distinctively different program. the grant program serves a small number of poor unconnected communities, the number of communities that focused on last -- well, in '15 was five communities and so i think there's concern that there's going to be a sacrifice of a program that serves large expanses for assisting a small number of communities and whether or not that really reflects the demand for rural broad band and probably a lot more thinking