Senate Republicans aren’t expected to push for the repeal of President Obama’s net neutrality regulations when they markup legislation next week to reauthorize the Federal Communications Commission next week.
“I don’t think we’re going to see a lot of that,” Senate Republican Conference chairman John Thune, who also leads the Commerce Committee that is drafting the FCC reauthorization, told the Washington Examiner. “We want to get the FCC reauthorization done. We anticipate people will offer amendments, [and] we’re going to try to manage that process in a way that gets us to a result. And, there may be some [net neutrality] amendments, but I’m just not aware of that.”
FCC officials provoked a series of lawsuits when they decided last year that the 1934 Communications Act gives them the authority to regulate the Internet, to the dismay of service providers and Republicans across Capitol Hill. The regulations are designed to prevent Internet service providers from charging creators of content different prices for faster delivery of that content.
House and Senate Republicans haven’t agreed on a legislative response the regulations, a problem complicated by Democratic support for the agency’s decision.
Thune wants to keep the controversy out of the FCC reauthorization bill, which is poised to be the first revision of the agency’s legal authority since 1990. A markup of the legislation will take place next Wednesday, the committee announced Thursday.
“What we’re trying to do is get Congress in the habit again of actually reauthorizing these agencies and in doing its job of oversight,” he said. “Those types of contentious issues, I think, stand on their own and they’re going to require solutions that are probably independent.”
That would suggest that the FCC bill won’t touch the recent fight over whether the agency has the power to regulate broadband rates. FCC chairman Tom Wheeler said his agency doesn’t have any intention of setting internet prices, but nonetheless urged lawmakers not to ban him from doing so in the bill.
House Republicans ignored that request last week, but President Obama has promised to veto the bill if it ever reaches his desk. Congressional Democrats regard it as “an attack on consumers and an attack on the FCC’s net neutrality rules.”
“The idea that we could bring an FCC reauthorization bill up and somehow get a net neutrality fix on there when we haven’t agreed to one, you know, you’d end up with probably taking the bill down,” Thune said.
But Thune agreed that the agency overstepped its legal authority, adding that Congress is “ever-closer” to producing a legislative counter to the orders.
“Using Title II, the 1934 act, seems like going back 80 years to find a statuary hook; and then basically treating the Internet as a telecommunication service is, to me, is a far stretch,” he said. “So that’s why we think there needs to be legislative direction that provides clear rules of the road for a modern age, when things were very different back when that law was written.”
