[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 79 (Tuesday, May 15, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2672-S2673]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Net Neutrality

  Mr. President, I also want to take a moment to discuss the partisan 
net neutrality resolution that we will be taking up this week. There is 
support among Senators of both parties for passing net neutrality 
legislation, and Democrats know that. But instead of moving forward 
with bipartisan discussions on a net neutrality bill, certain Democrats 
decided they wanted to play politics. So instead of bipartisan 
legislation this week, we are taking up a partisan resolution that will 
do nothing to provide a permanent solution on the issue of net 
neutrality.
  For most of its existence, the internet thrived under a light 
regulatory touch from Washington, DC. Washington avoided weighing down 
the internet with burdensome regulations, and the internet flourished 
as a result, becoming a vehicle for an endless stream of innovation and 
economic growth.
  During the Obama administration, Democrats became convinced that we 
needed to heavily increase the Federal Government's role, so the Obama 
FCC reclassified the internet under a regulatory regime that was 
developed more than 80 years ago to govern monopoly telephone services. 
That decision posed a number of problems for the future of the 
internet. For starters, heavyhanded government regulations tend to 
stifle the kinds of growth and innovation that have always flourished 
around the internet.
  There was also serious reason to be concerned that this new 
regulatory regime would discourage companies from investing in upgrades 
to their networks and infrastructure to expand access to broadband. 
That is a big concern for my State of South Dakota, where too many 
individuals still lack reliable internet access. In fact, the FCC has 
since found that the decision to regulate the internet under the 1934--
that is right, 1934--telephone regulatory regime has slowed investment, 
which has restricted the improvement of internet services for rural 
Americans like those I represent in South Dakota.
  In response to these problems, the FCC recently decided to restore 
the light-touch regulatory regime that the internet had thrived under 
and which had been in place for two decades prior to 2015 under 
administrations from both political parties. That, in turn, created the 
opportunity for us to adopt net neutrality legislation to permanently 
address concerns about blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization--
and to deal with these concerns under a regulatory regime suitable for 
the 21st century internet. So that is why the FCC went back to the 
light-touch regulatory regime, rather than the heavyhanded 1934 law 
that would treat the internet like a Ma Bell-type public utility.
  Instead of taking this opportunity to work with Republicans to 
develop bipartisan legislation, Democrats have decided to play 
politics. The internet,

[[Page S2673]]

like any industry, needs stability to grow and thrive. Internet 
innovators need to know what the rules of the game are now, and they 
need to know what the rules of the game are going to be in the future. 
We can't have a situation where internet regulations vary from 
administration to administration or, worse yet, from year to year. 
Imagine a basketball game where the rules changed every quarter or 
after every timeout. Well, it is pretty safe to say that players would 
quickly get fed up and start quitting the game, and that is exactly 
what will happen if we don't have stable rules for the internet.
  Too many Americans are not going to be interested in taking risks or 
investing in innovation if they can't predict what the rules will look 
like a year down the road. So internet regulation is a serious issue 
that will affect our Nation for decades to come. This is too important 
of an issue for partisanship. Yet here we are with just more political 
theater with a partisan resolution that everybody acknowledges isn't 
going anywhere.

  So, in the wake of the FCC's decision--which gives Congress the 
perfect opportunity to step in to provide clear guidance and clear 
rules of the road for the future regarding how the internet is going to 
be regulated--we have Democrats in the Senate who are in the midst of a 
political stunt, instead of sitting down and having a serious 
conversation about net neutrality legislation.
  It is time to put together a bipartisan bill and establish long-term 
stability on internet regulation so the internet can continue to grow 
and thrive long into the future and not be subject to the whims of one 
administration or the next administration and rules and regulations 
that are going to go back and forth with the winds of whatever 
political party is in the White House or, worse yet, end up spending 
all the time in court and spending millions of dollars on litigation 
that could be spent investing in infrastructure that could deliver 
better services to people all across this country, including those in 
rural areas like South Dakota.