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'There Will Be a [Senate] Vote' To Reinstate Net Neutrality, Schumer Says (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he will force a vote on a bill that would reinstate the Federal Communications Commission's net neutrality rules. Legislation to reverse the repeal "doesn't need the support of the majority leader," Schumer said during a press conference Friday, according to The Hill. "We can bring it to the floor and force a vote. So, there will be a vote to repeal the rule that the FCC passed." The Federal Communications Commission voted to repeal its own net neutrality rules last week, and the repeal will take effect 60 days after it is published in the Federal Register. But Congress can overturn agency actions by invoking the Congressional Review Act (CRA), as it did earlier this year in order to eliminate consumer broadband privacy protections. A successful CRA vote in this case would invalidate the FCC's net neutrality repeal and prevent the FCC from issuing a similar repeal in the future. This would force the FCC to maintain the rules and the related classification of ISPs as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act. A CRA vote lets Congress "undo regulations with a simple majority," without the possibility of a filibuster, as a Washington Post story said in February. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) announced a plan to file the CRA resolution last week. "It's in our power to do that and that's the beauty of the CRA rule," Schumer said. "Sometimes we don't like them, when they used it to repeal some of the pro-environmental regulations, but now we can use the CRA to our benefit, and we intend to."
Just need a simple majority. Doug Jones will be in the Senate, they can't likely wheel McCain's corpse in for a vote, and Collins (R) supports Net Neutrality. Couple this with only 16% of Americans and ignorant enough to believe repealing NN is somehow a good thing for them, the Senators that have a fight on their hands for re-election are going to do whatever they can to get re-elected, even if it means voting to kill off the FCC vote. BTW, fuck Ajit Pai.
Fuck Ajit Pai
Now we find out exactly how unified the GOP is. Spoiler: They're not unified at all. If it's a simple majority I think Ajit Pai is going to have his ass handed to him by Congress, and rightly so.
Maybe Ajit Pai will be the next high profile departure? Wouldn't that be nice?
A big part of the FCC's action was based on a belief that unelected FCC commissioners should not be writing regulations that supercede state control and FTC protections.
Laws passed by our elected representatives in Congress are a completely different story than FCC regulations. It is perfectly possible to support a law mandating net neutrality and also support Pai withdrawing the FCC-level mandate.
Of course, using the CRA to reinstate net neutrality is just plain stupid, because it leaves the unelected FCC in control of the regulations. A CRA resolution would stop the FCC from changing the common-carrier classification, but it would leave the doors wide open to totally changing the meaning of "net neutrality". That is, you could have your net neutrality and find out it only applies to content under the creative control of the ISPs (like Fairness Doctrine) or even more egregious, has something to do with connections of neutral wires to lightning arrestors. To anyone who actually thinks the net neutrality repeal is about pleasing the big corporations rather than federal-state and FCC-FTC balancing, handing the reins back to the same three FCC punks sounds like the worst possible outcome.
Personally, I think that Pai's "net neutrality repeal" which actually is a common carrier reclassification that takes the FCC out of the picture, together with state or municipal regulation, is the correct answer. But I'm far less upset by the possibility of Congress passing an actual law defining net neutrality compared to the "save net neutrality but only until the composition of the FCC board changes again" side that has been making such a big fuss.
Step back and think about this on a purely tactical level.
If the measure passes, the Democrats will be given credit even if every single Republican voted for it.
If the measure loses, the situation for the Republicans is not any different than it was today since it's something almost no-one will every know about, and certainly very few voters will care about way off in November.
Republicans voting for this can only lose, there is literally nothing to gain.
Some may still do so though, so it may pass. Not sure what the repercussions are of passing something that denies the FCC has the ability to choose what to do, but if you actually think about things long term it seems like a super-bad precedent to set in terms of choices other agencies make being overridden in similar ways.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I find it weird Americans are more divided over whether or not to support having health care than they are over whether they're okay with slow Internet connections. They'd rather be dead than have porn that buffers.
And the only "free market" is one that is open for buyers and sellers to freely enter to exchange money for goods and services. The only way to maintain openness is through a set of rules that are constantly and evenly enforced. There's a term for consistent and evenly enforced rules.
Regulation.