[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 97 (Tuesday, June 11, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3302-S3305]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Net Neutrality

  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I rise today in defense of net neutrality. 
In April the House of Representatives took an important step in passing 
the Save the Internet Act, legislation that would overturn the Trump 
administration's Federal Communication Commission's wrongheaded 
decision and restore net neutrality protections. Another way of saying 
it is that net neutrality is nondiscrimination online. That is what it 
is. It is the principle of nondiscrimination online so that large 
companies just can't discriminate against smaller voices, smaller 
companies, and startups.
  In the Senate, we have already successfully passed the same proposal 
last year. In April of 2018, my Congressional Review Act resolution 
passed in the Senate on a bipartisan vote of 52 to 47. In April 2018, 
on a bipartisan basis, we debated net neutrality and the Senate decided 
to join the majority of Americans and support a free and open internet.
  In that vote we sent a message to President Trump about what that 
means: an internet, free of corporate control and open to all who want 
to communicate, engage, and innovate. We made it clear that Congress 
will not fall for President Trump's special interest agenda and his 
broadband baron allies who just want to block, slow down, or 
discriminate against content online just to charge Americans more on 
their cable bills.
  Unfortunately, the rules for the Congressional Review Act that allow 
just 30 Senators to force the majority to schedule a vote is not an 
option in this Congress. So, instead, on this, the 1-year anniversary 
of President Trump's net neutrality repeal going into effect, we will 
call for an immediate vote on the Save the Internet Act. Unfortunately, 
our Republican colleagues are failing to listen to the voices of their 
constituents and plan to block the vote from happening.
  Let's be clear. Net neutrality is just another way in which the 
Republican Party refuses to side with the ordinary people in our 
country--regular families, small businesses, and startup software 
companies. How do they get access to the internet in a way in which 
they cannot feel that corporate pressure restricting their ability to 
use this incredible invention to further the democratization of access 
to opportunity or, at the same time, to innovate in a way which 
continues to change not only our own country but our own world?
  We can't let big companies discriminate against individual consumers. 
We can't let big companies stifle speech. Once you pay your monthly 
internet service bill, you can go anywhere you want on the internet 
without your provider slowing down or blocking your path to a website 
of your choosing.
  This is a fight. It is a fight for innovation, for 
entrepreneurialism, for the American economy, and a fight for free 
speech--the cornerstone of our democracy--and a fight for the most 
powerful platform for commerce and communications in the history of the 
planet. The Save the Internet Act does exactly what the American people 
want. It restores the rules that ensure that families aren't subject to 
higher prices, slower internet speeds, and even blocked websites 
because the big broadband providers want to pump up their profits.
  Under Senator McConnell's leadership, the Republicans are trying to 
bury this bill in a legislative graveyard. Instead of acting on 
legislation, which, again, passed the Senate a year ago--it just passed 
in the House in April of this year--Leader McConnell has been doing 
little but confirming unqualified, extreme-right nominees for the Trump 
administration.
  Just listen to the bills the Senate Republicans refuse to act on: the 
Violence Against Women Act, no votes out here on the Senate floor; 
voting on democracy reform, no votes out here on the Senate floor; gun 
background checks, passed in the House but no vote here in the Senate; 
paycheck fairness; the Paris climate agreement--no, no, no.
  But the Senate majority leader and his Republican colleagues can keep 
populating the legislative graveyard at their political peril because 
this is the agenda that the American people want to see the Senate 
debating, and they want to see these laws put on the books to protect 
families in our country. That is because the issues they are blocking 
are enormously popular, most with strong bipartisan support.
  Take net neutrality. Now, 86 percent of Americans do not approve of 
the

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Federal Communication Commission's action to repeal net neutrality 
rules, including 82 percent of Republicans, and we are not going to 
have a vote out here on the Senate floor.
  On background checks for gun purchases, 97 percent of Americans 
support requiring background checks for all gun buyers, but we are not 
going to have a vote out here on the Senate floor.
  On staying in the Paris climate agreement, nearly 70 percent of 
registered voters believe the United States should keep its promise and 
stay in that historic agreement to combat climate change, but the 
Republicans will not allow us to even have a vote on that out here on 
the Senate floor.
  The only place where these issues don't have Republican support is in 
Senator McConnell's office. Across the country, there are huge 
bipartisan numbers on each and every one of those issues. It is time 
that we do right by the American people, and we can start with the Save 
the Internet Act to protect the internet as we know it.
  More than 100 outside advocacy organizations wrote to Senate 
leadership today urging a vote on the net neutrality legislation. They 
want action now, and Democrats are committed to fighting on their 
behalf.
  I am joined today by some of our greatest fighters for net neutrality 
in the Senate and across our country. The ranking member of the 
Commerce Committee, Maria Cantwell from Washington State, will be out 
here in a few minutes, but now I am joined by Senator Ron Wyden of 
Oregon.
  Senator Wyden and I introduced net neutrality legislation 15 years 
ago in the House and in the Senate. Nobody understands this issue 
better than Senator Wyden does. Partnering with Senator Cantwell, we 
are going to continue this battle. Whether it is on the floor of the 
Senate or in the House or whether it is in the courts, we will not stop 
fighting until net neutrality is restored.
  So, from my perspective, right from the very beginning, Senator Wyden 
and I have been on the right side of history. We have been fighting for 
an issue that has overwhelming public support, and we are not going to 
give up until we have won this fight.
  At this point, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I am pleased to be able to join my friend 
Senator Markey here today. It has been exactly 1 year since the Trump 
FCC engineered the repeal of net neutrality, and I am going to spend 
the next few minutes making sure people understand what the effect of 
that has been. I want to begin by picking up on a point Senator Markey 
made with respect to what this is all about.
  Net neutrality may still be a term that some people aren't familiar 
with, but what it is all about is a free and open internet. It means, 
in simple English, that after you pay your internet access fee, you get 
to go where you want, when you want, and how you want. That is what net 
neutrality is all about, and that is the essence of a free and open 
internet. As Senator Markey said, we wish we had had this policy 
embedded once and for all in Federal law. We wish it had happened eons 
ago, because we have been working both in the Senate and in the House 
to do it.
  Now, if you are just picking up on this, you probably want to know: 
Well, the Senators are saying how the Trump FCC changed things in the 
last year; exactly what has happened? I am not sure the sky is falling 
and the like. So what I am going to do for a few minutes is to talk 
about actually what has happened over the last year.
  Suffice it to say that the big cable companies are counting on making 
these changes. As for these changes, which are going to hurt consumers 
in a steady, creeping way, my sense is that the American people ought 
to know, for example, what these changes are doing to them and their 
service and what they pay for it.
  There is one example that you have already seen. The big carriers are 
selling so-called unlimited data plans that totally throw away the 
definition of the word ``unlimited.'' To understand the complicated 
limits on internet access in these kind of new, newfangled unlimited 
plans, you almost need a degree in big-cable legal jargon. Consumers 
might be forced to swallow hard and accept it, but that doesn't make it 
acceptable.
  Big cable companies and the entertainment giants are also reshaping 
their industries through megamergers. As big carriers merge, there is 
less competition and consumers have fewer choices. Some of those new 
megacorporations also own the content they distribute, and they want to 
reach as many consumers as possible. That means that what is happening 
now is that the internet is starting to fracture.
  Sign up for internet service with one company, and you will be able 
to see their preferred bundle of content in high definition at top 
speeds. If you want to go outside their bundle of websites and 
streaming services, plan to pay a whole lot more.
  That is a bad deal for the American consumer. American consumers 
ought to be able to access what they want and when they want to. As 
Senator Markey and I and Senator Cantwell have talked about, it is also 
a nightmare for the startup companies, the engines of innovation in 
America that will not be able to afford special treatment and will not 
be able to compete with these behemoths.
  Now, the Trump FCC repealed net neutrality--and I will close with 
this--by making some very farfetched promises. They said, for example, 
that there would be new innovation. They can produce new innovation, 
Senator Markey, without any regulation. That hadn't happened.
  The Trump FCC said the level of private investment in telecom would 
boom. We are still waiting on that one too. The Trump FCC spun a tale 
about voluntary net neutrality. We could all do this voluntarily--
claiming that the big cable companies would do the right thing on their 
own. That doesn't even pass the smell test.
  By the way, colleagues, if the companies were fine with net 
neutrality, why would we need to get rid of it? They sure put a lot of 
effort into getting rid of this altogether.
  The bottom line is, the Trump FCC has put consumers, from sea to 
shining sea--from Oregon, all the way across the country--basically at 
the hands of Big Cable. That is what they did when they repealed net 
neutrality.
  I want to take some time to outline the changes we have seen in just 
the last year because not all of these changes are going to come at 
once. In fact, I think it is fair to say the big cable companies are 
counting on Americans not noticing sometimes when the terms of their 
contracts get worse, but, bit by bit, people are going to notice when 
their prices start rising. The fractures in the internet--I guess the 
big cable companies will try to figure out a way to say that, too, was 
a good deal for consumers, a discount on the content within one bundle 
rather than a price increase and data limits on everything else.
  I will close with just one final point. That last example violates 
everything that Senator Markey, Senator Cantwell, and I have stood for, 
which is an open and free internet after you pay your internet access 
fee. I say this today, as Senator Cantwell gets ready to close this for 
us, we still envision what Senator Markey and I proposed, as I call it, 
eons ago. We still have made it clear that we are going to be out here 
fighting to embed, once and for all, in Federal law, an open and free 
internet. That means, after you pay your access fee, you get to go 
where you want, when you want, and how you want, and nothing less--
nothing less--keeps pace with the American consumer.
  I thank my colleagues, Senator Markey, for his leadership on this, 
and Senator Cantwell, our leader on the Commerce Committee, and I look 
forward to working with both of them.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I come to the floor to join my 
colleague, the Senator from Oregon, who has been a long proponent of a 
very strong internet economy and privacy rights. I very much appreciate 
his leadership on so many of these technology issues. He and I 
represent a very strong technology economy in the Pacific Northwest, 
and we want to fight to keep that innovation.
  He and I actually held a summit in our adjoining communities just 
about the app economy. This was several years ago--probably 7 or 8 
years ago

[[Page S3304]]

now. He and I worked together to formulate, with our colleges, 
Washington State University and Oregon, literally just the app economy.
  I think about the applications we saw 7 years ago. Some of them were 
for hiking trails, some of them were for solutions for our law 
enforcement to have better information, and some of them were just pure 
business applications. I think about how much we have grown that app 
economy in the last 7 to 10 years and how much it will be impacted by 
an internet that is not an open internet and universal in giving people 
access to service. I say this because those new startups know more than 
anybody else that if they are not the big behemoth in the market and 
they are a new interest competing against an existing business or if 
they have a new idea and they don't have the clout to have fast 
internet speeds, they are not going to reach consumers; they are not 
going to reach their clients; and they are not going to have a business 
model that is successful.
  So I thank Senator Wyden for his leadership for decades on these 
important issues. I thank my colleague Senator Markey for organizing us 
this morning to say one thing loud and clear: After 1 year, we already 
know what is happening on the internet. One thing the Senate can do is 
protect consumers from big cable companies from overcharging them. That 
is why we are out here to say that we should have a vote to protect 
consumers, to protect companies that produce 20 percent of our economy 
over 377,000 jobs in my State. I guarantee you I will be here this 
morning to articulate why an internet service needs to be protected. We 
know we have to fight back against companies that want to gouge 
consumers or suppress competition.
  It has been 1 year since the FCC decided to turn back protections for 
the internet. We are here today because we know we have already seen 
the inklings of what is more to come--companies that are doing things 
such as slowing down speeds or charging consumers more. We know more 
than 20 million people stood up and told the FCC they want strong 
internet protections, and they do not want to see large-scale companies 
overcharging or gouging them.
  I don't even know how we can talk about getting broadband service if 
there are not going to be strong rules on the internet that protect 
consumers from being overcharged. The truth is, we know today that the 
internet is a great economy for us. It is helping us to research. It is 
helping us in lifesaving healthcare. We had one of the FCC 
administrators out in the Northwest looking at healthcare applications, 
and they are phenomenal for helping everything from PTSD to looking at 
ways to deliver just-in-time healthcare for those who are in remote 
parts of our State.
  We know the internet is a great equalizer. It is helping people from 
different backgrounds participate in the economy, and it is helping 
with economic empowerment, but innovative businesses in every small 
town and every city need to have an internet that is going to give them 
access to create jobs and move their local economies forward. Today, in 
the United States, three cable companies--just three cable companies--
have control of internet access for 70 percent of Americans, and 80 
percent of rural Americans still only have one choice for high-speed 
broadband for their homes and businesses. We are not likely to get 
competition where the consumer can just say: You are artificially 
slowing me down and charging me too much; I am just going to the 
competition. That is not likely to happen. That is why we need a strong 
FCC approach to protecting an open internet and saying they shouldn't 
block, throttle, and manipulate internet access. Without these 
protections, Big Cable can move faster in charging more. So I ask my 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle to say it is time to hold 
these companies accountable and put consumers ahead of these big cable 
profits.
  I can guarantee that the American people know better. Literally, it 
doesn't matter what political affiliation you have, the majority of 
Americans all oppose repealing protections that make for an open 
internet. They know it is time for us to protect consumers and that 
this is only going to get more complex as our economy depends more and 
more on an open internet.
  As my colleague from Oregon has said, the Trump FCC has given a green 
light to companies, basically, to keep doing whatever they want and to 
continue to take more out of consumers' pockets.
  Today, on the Senate floor, we have an opportunity. My colleague from 
Massachusetts, who has been as much a great leader on these issues and 
has been working to protect an open internet for decades, has an 
opportunity to say where we stand in protecting the American consumer. 
Just last year, a bipartisan majority in the U.S. Senate--49 Democrats 
and 3 Republicans--joined together to overturn the FCC's repealing of 
internet protections. We were here together to say we want the internet 
protected.
  Now the House of Representatives has done its job. It has basically 
protected the internet and taken an initiative. It is time for Leader 
McConnell to put the big cable companies on notice and to allow debate 
on the Senate floor and hold them accountable so we can say we want an 
open internet, and this type of practice should be fought against.
  I hope our colleagues will be given the opportunity for this debate, 
to look at why it is so important to protect consumers, the innovation 
economy, and a free and open internet.
  Tomorrow there is an FCC hearing before the Senate Commerce 
Committee, and I hope we will be able to ask these important questions 
about why cable companies are continuing to gouge consumers in many 
areas.
  I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I think Senator Cantwell and Senator Wyden 
have done an excellent job in laying out the parameters of the problems 
that exist if we do not have net neutrality enshrined as the law of the 
land.
  We believe the principles of nondiscrimination--the principles that 
ensure that the internet is open and accessible to the smallest voices 
as well as the largest voices. We need laws to protect the smallest 
voices. We need protections to ensure that they are going to be heard, 
that they can innovate, that they can take their entrepreneurial zeal, 
their insights into the additional changes that can be made in this 
longstanding--now a 20-year history of dynamic changes that have taken 
place in the online commercial world and that they will be able to 
innovate.
  They should not have to get permission to innovate. They should not 
have to get permission to be able to change the way in which people 
communicate in our country. We shouldn't have to hire lawyers to 
negotiate with the lawyers of the biggest companies in the United 
States in order to ensure that investors aren't going to lose all their 
money as the small company gets tipped upside down and has all of their 
resources absolutely devastated by anticompetitive activity. That is 
what this is all about--democracy and capitalism, entrepreneurial 
spirit, the ability to innovate, the ability to be able to go to the 
marketplace.
  In order for capitalism to work, it has to have a conscience. 
Capitalism without a conscience allows for unfettered large 
corporations to take advantage of small companies, startups, and 
individuals in our society. It has to have a conscience. Net neutrality 
is the conscience for the online world we live in. It ensures that 
there is fairness, openness, and it ensures that the apertures that are 
there cannot be narrowed just because of the corporate agenda of an 
individual huge company.
  That is the essence of this whole debate. It is something we believe 
is at the heart of what this 21st century platform of commerce should 
include. It will be, in a lot of ways, the defining issue of whether 
this entire era is one that is characterized by fairness or one that is 
characterized by monopolistic or duopoly practices.


                  Unanimous Consent Request--H.R. 1644

  Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Cantwell and Senator Wyden and 
myself, I ask unanimous consent, as in legislative session, that the 
Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 74, H.R. 
1644, a bill to restore the open internet order

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of the Federal Communications Commission; that the bill be considered 
read a third time and passed; and that the motions to reconsider be 
considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or 
debate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. WICKER. Mr. President, reserving the right to object--
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Mississippi.
  Mr. WICKER. Mr. President, I don't think the answer to the question 
is going to be a surprise to my friend from Massachusetts. I will only 
say this, and I will try to do it briefly. I have been amazed, over the 
last 1\1/2\ years and even longer, at the intense, overblown rhetoric 
about this issue of net neutrality and the hyperbole we have heard on 
the floor of the Senate and elsewhere.
  About 1\1/2\ years ago, the FCC voted on the Restoring Internet 
Freedom Order. It went into effect. It repealed what most of us 
considered a heavyhanded approach based on a law that took effect back 
in 1934.
  When the FCC implemented this new restoring internet freedom order 
back a year and a half ago, I was just astounded by what was being said 
by my friends on the left. One Senator warned that this was practically 
the end of Netflix, YouTube, and Amazon. Another cautioned:

       They want to get rid of the Federal Communications 
     Commission's net neutrality rules so that . . . Internet 
     Service Providers can indiscriminately charge more for 
     internet fast lanes, slow down websites, block websites, make 
     it harder and maybe even impossible for inventors, 
     entrepreneurs.

  One tweet from my friends on the Democratic side said: ``If we don't 
save net neutrality, you'll get the internet one word at a time.'' That 
quote got three Pinocchios from even the Washington Post.
  These things never happened. As a matter of fact, people on the other 
side of the issue who actually have taken the position of the Senator 
from Massachusetts have admitted that ISPs are delivering on consumers' 
expectations. They are not throttling websites.
  As a matter of fact, here is what has happened since the FCC order 
went into effect a year and a half ago: Broadband providers large and 
small have deployed fiber networks to 5.9 million new homes--the 
largest number ever recorded. More Americans are connected at higher 
speeds than ever before. Capital expenditures have rebounded from the 
slump they suffered when the internet was subjected to title II.
  This should surprise no one because the internet has thrived during 
Democratic and Republican administrations and during Democratic 
majorities on the FCC and Republican majorities on the FCC when we have 
taken the light-touch regulatory approach.
  The issue seems to be title II regulation of rates. I would simply 
say to my brothers and sisters on the other side of the aisle that we 
can pass a law tomorrow afternoon providing Americans with all the 
protection they want from blocking, throttling, and preventing paid 
prioritization. What we will not do and what this President will not 
sign is legislation authorizing the Federal Government to set internet 
rates in the old 1934 Bell System of title II regulations. For that 
reason, I do object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, despite the Republican objections today, 
Senator Cantwell, Senator Wyden, and I, and tens of millions of people 
across this country will not stop fighting until net neutrality is 
fully restored. Whether in the Halls of Congress or in the courts of 
our country, this is going to be a fight that is fought until it is 
finally won.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.