Maine Sens. Susan Collins, a Republican, and Angus King, an independent, made an eleventh-hour push for Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai to cancel Thursday’s vote to repeal net neutrality.
Collins is the first Republican senator to make such an appeal to Pai. Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colo. was the first Republican lawmaker to call for the vote to be delayed.
“This is a matter of enormous importance with significant implications for our entire economy,” Collins and King said in a letter to Pai on Thursday. “The process thus far in this important matter has not met that standard.”
The senators said they are worried about how a repeal of net neutrality will impact the free market, and also criticized the process by which the FCC considered its proposal to repeal net neutrality.
“Given that this change will affect every sector of the U.S. economy, we are also concerned about the speed of the process, the lack of public hearings, and the underlying rationale for repealing net neutrality without an adequate replacement,” Collins and King wrote to Pai.
The Maine senators also warned a repeal of net neutrality rules would damage the “innovation economy.”
“Access fees, fast lanes, and preferential treatment of content would undermine the openness of the Internet and disproportionately hurt startups’ and small businesses’ ability to compete with entrenched incumbents, discouraging investment in early state companies,” they said.
Numerous activist groups and Democrats in Congress have criticized Pai for his plan to undo the net neutrality rules, which are designed to ensure all web content is treated equally.
Proponents of the Internet rules have also taken aim at the comments filed with the commission over net neutrality, as millions were found to be fake or fraudulent.
More than 440,000 comments alone were submitted from a single mailing address in Russia, according to the FCC, and all were submitted on July 12, the “Day of Action to Save Net Neutrality.”
More than two dozen Senate Democrats asked Pai to delay Thursday’s vote due to the integrity of the comments submitted.
Despite their objections, the FCC is expected to repeal the net neutrality rules in a party-line vote.
