[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 35 (Tuesday, February 27, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1231-S1232]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Net Neutrality

  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I would like to speak on behalf of my 
constituents and the tens of millions of Americans who rely on a free 
and open internet.
  Make no mistake, we are locked in a historic battle to preserve the 
core principles of competition, innovation, and consumer choice that 
have made the internet the world's greatest platform for commerce and 
communications; a historic battle to restore the hallmark of American 
innovation and democratization; a historic battle to protect America's 
innovation incubator and job generator--a battle for net neutrality.
  In December, the Trump FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, 
eliminated net neutrality. These rules prevented your internet service 
provider--Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, and Charter--from indiscriminately 
charging more for internet fast lanes or slowing down or even blocking 
certain websites entirely, the very rules that allow inventors, 
entrepreneurs, and small businesses, the lifeblood of the American 
economy, to connect to the internet.
  The reason why is simple. The Trump administration sides with the 
rich and the powerful first and consistently puts everyday American 
lives last. We have seen them wage an all-out assault on healthcare, on 
climate change, and now on net neutrality, but today the internet is 
fighting back, and we have a powerful tool at our disposal that will 
allow the average consumer to have their voices heard right here on the 
floor of the U.S. Senate.
  Today I am officially introducing a CRA--Congressional Review Act--
resolution that will fully restore net neutrality. The entire Senate 
Democratic caucus is now standing with the millions of Americans who 
want to reverse the FCC's partisan actions and restore net neutrality.
  Net neutrality is not and should not be a partisan issue. I thank 
Senator Susan Collins for supporting my CRA, and I encourage other 
Republican colleagues to stand with all of us who support net 
neutrality. We are just one vote away in the Senate from restoring net 
neutrality. There will be a vote right here on the floor of the Senate 
sometime this spring. The clock is ticking. We just need a simple 
majority for passage, and that is just one more vote.
  When we take that vote, every one of my colleagues will have to 
answer the simple question: Whose side are you on? Do you stand with 
hard-working American families for whom the internet is essential or do 
you stand with the Big Money corporate interests and their army of 
lobbyists? We should all be on the right side of history.
  Millennials are motivated. Momentum is building. Citizens are joining 
together demonstrating, writing letters, calling their Members of 
Congress, and taking this message to social media. They are joined by 
groups that include Fight for the Future, Demand Progress, Free Press, 
the Center for Digital Technology, the Center for Media Justice, Color 
of Change, Common Cause, Consumers Union, Engine, the National Hispanic 
Media Coalition, the Open Technology Institute, Public Knowledge, and 
many others out across the country that are organizing right now as 
part of an effort that is going to bring millions of voices into the 
offices of every Senator and every House Member in our country.
  This fight is not limited to the Halls of Congress. We are seeing a 
historic groundswell of activity at the State and local level. The 
Governors in Hawaii, New Jersey, Vermont, Montana, and New York have 
issued executive orders promoting net neutrality.
  State legislatures in more than half of the United States are 
currently considering net neutrality legislation. Just today, 76 mayors 
across the Nation signed a letter opposing net neutrality repeal, and 
23 State attorneys general have filed suit to reinstate the rule, and 
we plan to stand by them throughout this entire battle, in the court 
and out here on the floor of Congress.
  We cannot let net neutrality be another example of Congress 
disregarding public opinion and putting donor interests first. Net 
neutrality is our 21st century right, and we will fight to protect it. 
In fact, 83 percent of all Americans in polling say they want to 
protect net neutrality. By the way, that is pretty much every 
millennial, because for millennials, the internet is like oxygen. I 
will say that if you are 35 years old or younger, the poll is at pretty 
close to 100 percent.
  I can see all the pages nodding their heads as I am speaking. They 
know no life without a device that they are carrying around. This is 
the world in which we are living, and they do not want to have any 
discrimination introduce itself into the relationship they

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have between the internet and their ability to control their own lives. 
That is what the battle is all about, those nodding heads of the pages 
in the well of the Senate. Those are the people who are going to be 
making a difference, the millennials, the generation Z young people who 
want this to be open for entrepreneurial activity and for democracy.