[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Pages 16925-16950]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




     DISAPPROVING THE RULE SUBMITTED BY THE FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS 
   COMMISSION WITH RESPECT TO REGULATING THE INTERNET AND BROADBAND 
                 INDUSTRY PRACTICES--MOTION TO PROCEED

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I move to proceed to S.J. Res. 6.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, there will be 4 
hours of debate, equally divided and controlled between the two leaders 
or their designees.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, today's debate concerns S.J. Res. 6. 
In a larger context, though, we have been having this debate for 34 
months. The theme is, the Obama administration's relentless imposition 
of new and destructive regulations has not helped us get into a 
recovery and, in fact, I think is freezing our economy.
  We have seen it with the Environmental Protection Agency when it 
tried to regulate carbon emissions and greenhouse gases using the Clean 
Air Act, a purpose for which Congress never intended the law to be 
used. We have seen it with the National Mediation Board when it 
overturned nearly a century of precedent and issued a new rulemaking to 
allow unions to be formed more easily but harder to decertify.
  We have seen it with the National Labor Relations Board when it took 
the shocking step of challenging Boeing's decision to create new jobs 
by building a new factory in South Carolina, simply because South 
Carolina is a right-to-work State.
  Today's issue involves bureaucratic overreach into a symbol of 
American innovation and creativity, the Internet, because the Federal 
Communications Commission has now decided to regulate the Internet. 
Last December, three FCC Commissioners, on a party-line vote, voted to 
impose rules that restrict how Internet service providers

[[Page 16926]]

offer broadband services to consumers. Those rules, known as net 
neutrality, impose 19th century-style monopoly regulations on the most 
competitive and important job-creating engine of the 21st century, the 
Internet.
  This marks a stunning reversal from the hands-off approach to the 
Internet that Federal policymakers have taken for more than a decade. 
During the last 20 years, the Internet has grown and flourished without 
burdensome regulations imposed by Washington. Powered by the strength 
of free market forces, the Internet has been an open platform for 
innovation, spurring business development and much needed job creation.
  The former Democratic FCC Chairman, William Kennard, stated in 1999 
``[t}he fertile fields of innovation across the communications sector 
and around the country are blooming because from the get-go we have 
taken a deregulatory, competitive approach to our communications 
structure--especially the Internet.''
  The present FCC is reversing that policy that has been successful 
beyond our expectations. Broadband Internet networks have powered the 
information and communications industry, which in 2009 accounted for 
more than 3.5 million high-paying jobs and about $1 trillion in 
economic activity.
  This industry has been an engine for major economic growth even 
during these difficult times. Yet the FCC's rules could severely 
jeopardize this industry's vast potential. Net neutrality is intended 
to limit how Internet service providers develop and operate their 
broadband networks. The net neutrality order allows the FCC to tell 
broadband providers what kind of business practices are reasonable and 
unreasonable. The FCC, however, did not bother to clearly define in its 
rules what the agency considers to be reasonable.
  This point is vital to understand. With such an arbitrary and yet 
poorly defined standard, companies will be forced to err on the side of 
caution. Rather than risk possible punishment from the FCC, many 
companies will simply decide: Maybe we will not invest right now in new 
technologies. Maybe it is too risky to develop and deploy new services. 
At the very least, it will delay such investment.
  This kind of regulatory uncertainty will be crippling for companies 
and particularly small providers. We have heard exactly that from a 
small wireless Internet provider in Wyoming called LARIAT. This is a 
provider that is serving remote areas and trying to expand to other 
unserved years.
  LARIAT testified before Congress that these FCC regulations are 
already harming its ability to attract investors, grow its business, 
hire more workers, and serve new customers. Forcing broadband companies 
to ask the government for permission before moving forward is exactly 
what we should try to avoid when reviving our economy.
  This FCC regime will lead to stagnation in Internet innovation in the 
United States, placing us at a disadvantage against overseas 
competitors who are not burdened with similar rules. Moveover, Internet 
providers will end up spending resources on lawyers and lobbyists in 
order to comply with the FCC's rules, rather than investing those 
dollars in innovation.
  Small companies will find it even more expensive to navigate 
Washington, DC. This certainly will not help consumers, particularly in 
rural areas, and will only increase the costs they have to bear. Before 
any new regulations are forced on American businesses, it is the 
government's responsibility to clearly show, one, there is an actual 
problem that needs to be addressed. That should be foremost.
  With the FCC taking such a large departure from the agency's previous 
light-touch approach, one might think the FCC could point to a long 
list of net neutrality violations and problems that need to be fixed. 
That is not the case here. In a 134-page regulatory order, the FCC 
spent only three paragraphs attempting to catalog alleged instances of 
misconduct.
  Within those three short paragraphs, every alleged problem was 
addressed under the FCC's existing rule or, if not, it was fixed by the 
provider under pressure from the public or the competitive marketplace, 
where it should be fixed. As former FCC Commissioner Meredith Baker 
noted in her statement dissenting from the FCC's net neutrality order, 
the Commission was ``unable to identify a single ongoing practice of a 
single broadband provider that it finds problematic upon which to base 
this action.'' To put it simply, the FCC has issued new rules without 
even demonstrating that intervention is actually necessary.
  Despite protests to the contrary, these net neutrality regulations on 
broadband providers clearly establish the FCC as the Internet's 
gatekeeper, a role for which the government is not suited. Innovation 
does not work on a government timetable nor does it thrive through a 
maze of roadblocks.
  Ironically, supporters of net neutrality insist that providers are 
the ones who may become gatekeepers of the Internet. These people say 
the openness of the Internet is far too important to be left 
unprotected by the government. This is a false premise. In fact, the 
Internet has been an open platform for innovation since its inception, 
and it has not needed any sort of net neutrality rules from bureaucrats 
at the FCC.
  To make matters worse, Congress has never given the FCC the explicit 
authority to regulate how Internet providers manage their networks. 
That is why the new rules represent an unprecedented power grab by the 
unelected Commissioners at the FCC. In fact, current law states: ``It 
is the policy of the United States . . . to preserve the vibrant and 
competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet and 
other interactive computer services, unfettered by Federal or State 
regulation.''
  That is the law today. The FCC has lost this fight already in the 
courts. Last year, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the 
FCC's 2008 attempt to impose net neutrality in the Comcast v. FCC case. 
The court ruled that the FCC was acting beyond the reach of its 
congressionally provided authority and cautioned that regulations 
should be imposed only with explicit congressional direction.
  This was validation that regulatory agencies cannot make policy 
without congressional direction. Rather than back down, however, the 
FCC doubled down. The current FCC order tries an even more expansive 
interpretation of the law than was used in the Comcast case. FCC 
Commissioners inexplicably claimed the agency can impose heavy-handed 
Internet regulation under section 706 of the Telecommunications Act. 
This was a section of the law that was intended to remove regulatory 
barriers to broadband investment, not to raise them.
  If the FCC's legal theory is left unchallenged, the FCC will have 
nearly unbounded authority to regulate almost anything on the Internet. 
It is Congress's role, not the FCC's to determine the proper policy 
framework for the Internet. Over time, and aided by the current 
administration, regulators throughout the government have gradually 
tried to seize increasing control over so many facets of American life. 
It is time for the Senate to stop this overreach. We write the laws of 
this country, not unelected bureaucrats. That is why we are here today.
  Thanks to Senate majority leader Harry Reid, former Senator Don 
Nickles, and the late Senator Ted Stevens, one of the tools Congress 
has to stop rogue agencies is the Congressional Review Act. The 
Congressional Review Act allows Congress to review a rule before it 
takes effect and even to nullify that rule if Congress finds it is 
inappropriate, or if it overreaches, or if Congress itself hasn't 
delegated this power to an agency.
  As Senators Reid, Nickles, and Stevens said at the time of this 
bill's passage, ``Congressional review gives the public the opportunity 
to call the attention of politically accountable, elected officials to 
concerns about new agency rules. If these concerns are sufficiently 
serious, Congress can stop the rule.''
  We believe the concern about the FCC's net neutrality rules is 
sufficiently serious to warrant the consideration of Senate Joint 
Resolution 6,

[[Page 16927]]

the disapproval resolution Senator McConnell and I introduced to 
nullify the FCC's net neutrality order under the Congressional Review 
Act. The House has already passed its version of the resolution, and we 
need only a majority of Senators to send this bill to the President's 
desk. Even a net neutrality supporter, Senator Olympia Snowe, who has 
authored net neutrality legislation, is a cosponsor and supporter of 
our resolution today.
  While Senator Snowe and I don't agree on the need for a net 
neutrality law, we are in complete agreement--and she stated it 
beautifully--that Congress, not the FCC, should determine what the 
proper regulatory framework is for the Internet.
  If the Senate does not strike down these regulations soon, they will 
go into effect on November 20, further jeopardizing jobs in this 
fragile economy. I guess you could say that it will allow more lawyers 
to be hired, but more innovators? Probably not. That is not the mix we 
need to assure that our economy will get back on track in this country.
  Studies indicate that net neutrality rules could significantly affect 
our economy. If net neutrality reduces capital investment in broadband 
infrastructure by even 10 percent, it could cost our country hundreds 
of thousands of jobs over the next decade.
  We must preserve the openness of the Internet as a platform for 
innovation and economic growth. We must keep the competitive advantage 
that we have in this country for innovation. The last thing we ought to 
be doing is putting restrictions on our providers, when many countries 
that are also advanced in this area are not doing the same thing. So 
when we go to global competitiveness, we are putting our companies at a 
disadvantage. Why would we do that?
  We must stop the job-killing regulatory interference by our 
government today in so many areas, and we can start right here, right 
now, by keeping the Internet free, voting for this resolution of 
disapproval, and saying to the regulatory bodies in this town: Congress 
must authorize a delegation of authority for your agency to pass rules, 
and especially when Congress is in disagreement with those rules.
  This is a key policy decision for our body. We need to step up to the 
responsibility that Congress has. Our Constitution divided the powers 
between three branches of government. If Congress doesn't stand up for 
its one-third of the powers of this government and lets unelected 
bureaucrats run over our prerogatives, we will become a weaker branch, 
and our government will become weaker for it. We need to have three 
equal branches of government, and that means each branch must fulfill 
its responsibilities under the Constitution. Congress must delegate its 
authority explicitly for a rule to be made. That is the way the 
Constitution intended for Congress to fulfill its job as the elected 
representatives of the people of our country.
  The House has passed this resolution. I hope the Senate will 
tomorrow. I hope the people will speak and say that even if you 
disagree on the basic issue of net neutrality, it is not the right of 
the FCC to pass sweeping regulations that will affect the economy of 
this country without explicit authority from Congress, which it does 
not have.
  Mr. President, I ask my colleagues to come to the floor if they want 
to speak on this resolution. There is 4 hours, equally divided, and 
that time is now running. I say to my Republican colleagues that we 
have quite a list of those who want to speak. They must know that the 
time will run out in about 3\1/2\ hours now. I ask them to contact me 
if they wish to speak.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Schumer). The senior Senator from the 
great State of West Virginia.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I rise today to oppose the Senate 
Joint Resolution 6, which was brought under the Congressional Review 
Act--about which I wish to talk--to disapprove the FCC's open Internet 
rules, such as they are.
  Americans want the Internet to be free and open to them. They want to 
go where they want to go, see what they want to see, do what they want 
to do on the Internet. They don't want to have somebody blocking them 
or to have gatekeepers. They want it to be a nice, open forum for them. 
They care about the Internet. Everyone uses it. They want to be able to 
develop new businesses, and they want to read and watch video. They 
want to reach out to friends and family and community. And they want to 
do it online. They want to do all of these things on the Internet--
without having to ask permission from their broadband provider. The FCC 
has promulgated balanced rules that let Americans do all of these 
things, and keep the Internet open and keep the Internet free.
  Let us be clear from the outset. No matter how S.J. Res. 6 is dressed 
up in language that suggests it will promote openness and freedom, it 
will not do that. The resolution is misguided. It will add uncertainty, 
in fact, into the economy, and it will hinder small businesses 
dependent upon fair broadband access, where otherwise they might be put 
in a slower lane. They want to be in a fast lane. They want to be able 
to compete with other parts of the country. This resolution will, in 
fact, undermine innovation. It will hamper investment in digital 
commerce. It will imperil the openness and freedom that has been the 
hallmark of the Internet from the very start.
  The FCC's rules were the product of very hard work, consensus, and 
compromise. The agency had extensive input from stakeholders from all 
quarters. They opened up and said send in your comments. In fact, they 
had written input from more than 100,000 commenters. About 90 percent 
of those filing supported the adoption of open Internet rules. On top 
of this, the rules are based on longstanding and widely accepted open 
Internet principles, which were first articulated during the second 
Bush administration.
  These rules do three basic things. First, they impose a transparency 
obligation on providers of broadband Internet service. This means that 
all broadband providers are required to publicly disclose to consumers 
accurate information regarding the network management practices.
  Second, the rules prohibit fixed broadband providers from blocking 
lawful content, application, services, and devices. This means 
consumers and innovators will continue to have the right to send and 
receive lawful Internet traffic, with mobile broadband service 
providers subjected to a more limited set of prohibitions. I will speak 
about that in a moment.
  Third, the rules aim to ensure that the Internet remains a level 
playing field by prohibiting fixed broadband providers from 
unreasonably discriminating in transmitting lawful network traffic--
which they have done.
  Finally, the rules are meant to apply with the complementary 
principle of reasonable network management, which provides broadband 
providers the flexibility to address congestion or traffic that is 
harmful to the network. These are principles that I believe everyone 
can support. I see nothing wrong with them. The word ``reasonable'' 
somehow doesn't scare me. Maybe it should, but it doesn't.
  I ask my colleagues, what is wrong with transparency? Why would we 
want to promote Internet blocking or discrimination? Why would we want 
to have some people on the fast lane and some on the slow lane, 
depending on whether you paid your Internet provider enough money? What 
is unreasonable about reasonable network management?
  I believe that the FCC's effort, along with ongoing oversight and 
enforcement, will protect consumers, and I believe it will provide 
companies with the certainty they need to make investments in our 
growing digital economy.
  While many champions of the open Internet would have preferred a 
stricter decision--and I am one of them; I myself have real 
reservations about treating wireless broadband differently from wired 
broadband--I think the FCC's decision was nevertheless a meaningful 
step forward. In a moment, I will talk about other people who feel the 
same.
  Supporters of the joint resolution fail to acknowledge that the FCC's 
open

[[Page 16928]]

Internet rules have received overwhelming support from broadband 
Internet service providers, consumers, and public groups, labor unions, 
as well as high-tech companies.
  AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson stated earlier this year that while he 
wanted ``no regulation,'' the FCC's open Internet order ``ended at a 
place where we have a line of sight and we know and can commit 
ourselves to investments.''
  Time-Warner Cable said at the time of the order's release that the 
rules adopted ``appear to reflect a workable balance between protecting 
consumers' interests and preserving incentives for investment and 
innovation by broadband Internet service providers.''
  Numerous analysts from major investment banks have found that the 
open Internet order removes what they call regulatory overhang and 
allows telecom and cable companies to focus on investment.
  Google, Facebook, Twitter, eBay, Skype, and other leaders in 
innovation all urged the FCC to adopt ``commonsense baseline rules . . 
. critical to ensuring that the Internet remains a key engine of 
economic growth, innovation, and global competitiveness.''
  More than 150 organizations wrote Congress to oppose this joint 
resolution. I hate reading lists, but I am going to do it anyway: the 
Communications Workers of America, the AFL-CIO, the NAACP, the U.S. 
Conference of Catholic Bishops, the American Library Association, the 
American Association of Independent Music, the Leadership Conference on 
Civil and Human Rights, the League of United Latin American Citizens, 
the National Organization for Women, and Technet. There are a lot of 
folks at Technet who have a lot at stake. I have their letters here.
  I ask unanimous consent that these letters be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                                 October 14, 2011.
       Dear Majority Leader Reid, Minority Leader McConnell, 
     Chairman Rockefeller and Ranking Member Hutchison: We write 
     to urge your support for the FCC's open Internet rule and 
     rejection of S.J. Res 6, a resolution of disapproval under 
     the Congressional Review Act. Americans have come to depend 
     on reliable open Internet access for their daily life and 
     work. Yet without a light touch FCC rule, households, 
     students and small businesses lack any recourse at all if 
     their Internet Access Provider (IAP) decides to prioritize 
     its own content and affiliated services or block other end 
     user choices.
       The FCC's December 2010 decision was adopted after several 
     lengthy proceedings and unprecedented public input. The 
     result is a very modest rule designed to preserve open non-
     discriminatory Internet access. In deference to the wishes of 
     IAPs, the FCC completely avoided Title II common carrier 
     regulation. The rule allows flexible network management and 
     does nothing to inhibit broadband network deployment, while 
     it affirmatively facilitates innovation and investment in new 
     online services, content, applications and access devices by 
     providing some minimal assurance they will not be blocked 
     arbitrarily.
       CRA repeal would actually leave the American public worse 
     off than with no open Internet rule, as it would also rescind 
     FCC authority in this area. Congress has repeatedly entrusted 
     the FCC with a duty to protect the public interest in 
     nationwide communications by wire and radio. No other agency 
     can help your constituents with Internet access trouble if 
     FCC authority is terminated.
           Sincerely,
                                                         Ed Black,
                                            President & CEO, CCIA.
                                                       Rey Ramsey,
     President & CEO, Tech Net.
                                  ____



                                      Open Internet Coalition,

                                 Washington, DC, November 4, 2011.
     Hon. John D. Rockefeller IV,
     Chairman, Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and 
         Transportation, Washington, DC.
     Hon. Kay Bailey Hutchison,
     Ranking Member, Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and 
         Transportation, Washington, DC.
       Dear Chairman Rockefeller and Ranking Member Hutchison: The 
     Open Internet Coalition (``OIC'') respectfully submits this 
     letter to indicate our opposition to a vote under the 
     Congressional Review Act to vacate the Federal Communications 
     Commission's Open Internet Order, which would preclude any 
     future action in this area by the Commission.
       The OIC believes that such a vote would hurt consumers and 
     innovation, and respectfully asks the Senate to reject the 
     CRA measure.
           Sincerely,
     The Open Internet Coalition.
                                  ____

                                                 October 12, 2011.
     Majority Leader Harry Reid,
     Minority Leader Mitch McConnell
     U.S. Senate,
     Washington, DC.
     Chairman Jay Rockefeller,
     Ranking Member Kay Bailey Hutchison,
     U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and 
         Transportation, Washington, DC.
       Dear Majority Leader Reid, Minority Leader McConnell, 
     Chairman Rockefeller, and Ranking Member Hutchison: We, as 
     leaders and communicators representing many diverse religious 
     traditions, write to share our strong support for Internet 
     freedom. Specifically, we support the Federal Communication 
     Commission's Open Internet rules and urge you to oppose S. J. 
     Res 6 which would repeal these rules using the Congressional 
     Review Act. These rules are important for underserved 
     communities as well as the faith community.
       The Internet is a critical tool for nonprofits and other 
     institutions nationwide. In particular, institutional 
     networks such as health care providers and institutions of 
     higher learning, as well as social service agencies and 
     community organizations use the Internet for communication, 
     organizing, and learning. The Internet is an increasingly 
     important tool that helps needy persons access the education 
     and services they need to improve their lives and the lives 
     of their families. In these difficult economic times, the 
     Internet is an essential tool for those seeking to get back 
     on their feet.
       Not only are the open Internet rules important for those 
     the faith community serves, it is important for the religious 
     community itself. As the National Council of Churches 
     Communications Commission recently stated, Internet 
     communication is ``vital'' to faith groups to enable them to 
     communicate with members, share religious and spiritual 
     teachings, promote activities on-line, and engage people--
     particularly younger persons--in their ministries. As the 
     resolution noted, ``Faith communities have experienced uneven 
     access to and coverage by mainstream media, and wish to keep 
     open the opportunity to create their own material describing 
     their faith traditions.'' Without robust open Internet 
     protections, our essential connection to our members and the 
     general public could be impaired. Communication is an 
     essential element of religious freedom: we fear the day might 
     come when religious individuals and institutions would have 
     no recourse if we were prevented from sharing a forceful 
     message or a call to activism using the Internet.
       We are particularly concerned about the way Congress has 
     chosen to address this issue. Members of Congress have 
     already initiated action under the Congressional Review Act 
     to eliminate all open Internet protections. Even for 
     legislators who might not agree with every aspect of the 
     FCC's new rules, the proposed use of the Review Act is 
     extreme.
       After many months of public hearings and reviewing 
     thousands of public comments, the FCC last December sought to 
     strike a balance between the needs of Internet providers and 
     the general public. The agency's compromise rules were 
     designed to guard against the most severe forms of abuse. The 
     result was a set of regulations that competing parties in the 
     industry and public sector were able to support. A number of 
     the new rules are critical to ensuring that all citizens can 
     gain access to high speed Internet.
       Among other things, the new disclosure rules will make it 
     easier for low-income families to choose an Internet provider 
     at a price they can afford.
       In addition to new policies, the rules adopted last year 
     reestablished a number of non-controversial common-sense FCC 
     policies, including protecting the right of an Internet user 
     to access any lawful Internet content. If the Review Act is 
     used to void the FCC regulations, not only would it restrict 
     the FCC's ability to protect Internet users in the future, it 
     would also dismantle even these limited and essential 
     protections put in place during the Bush Administration.
       We hope that the House and Senate will reject the use of 
     the Congressional Review Act to overturn these important 
     rules. We hope that Congress will instead work to preserve 
     openness online, and to ensure that all people, particularly 
     people of faith, are able to take full advantage of the power 
     of the Internet.
           Sincerely,
         Andrea Cano, Chair, United Church of Christ, OC Inc.; 
           Rev. Robert Chase, Founding Director, Intersections 
           International; Barb Powell, United Church of Christ, 
           Publishing, Identity, and Communication; Rev. Dr. Ken 
           Brooker Langston, Director, Disciples Justice Action 
           Network; Reverend Peter B. Panagore, First Radio Parish 
           Church of America; Gradye Parsons, Stated Clerk, Office 
           of the General Assembly Presbyterian Church (USA); Dr. 
           Riess Potterveld, President, Pacific School of 
           Religion; The Rev. Eric C. Shafer, Senior Vice 
           President, Odyssey Networks; Dr. Sayyid M. Syeed, 
           National

[[Page 16929]]

           Director, Office for Interfaith & Community Alliances, 
           Islamic Society of North America; Jerry Van Marter, 
           Director, Presbyterian News Service, Presbyterian 
           Church, Chair, Communications Commission, National 
           Council of Churches; Linda Walter, Director, The AMS 
           Agency, Seventh-day Adventist Church.
                                  ____

                                         The Leadership Conference


                                    On Civil and Human Rights,

                                 Washington, DC, October 12, 2011.
     Hon. Harry Reid,
     Majority Leader, U.S. Senate,
     Washington, DC.
     Hon. Mitch McConnell,
     Minority Leader, U.S. Senate,
     Washington, DC.
     Hon. John D. Rockefeller, IV,
     Chairman, U.S. Senate,
     Washington, DC.
     Hon. Kay Bailey Hutchinson,
     Ranking Member, U.S. Senate,
     Washington, DC
       Dear Majority Leader Reid, Minority Leader McConnell, 
     Chairman Rockefeller, and Ranking Member Hutchinson: on 
     behalf of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human 
     Rights, a coalition charged by its diverse membership of more 
     than 200 national organizations to promote and protect the 
     rights of all persons in the United States, along with the 
     undersigned organizations, we write to urge you to oppose the 
     use of the Congressional Review Act (CRA), S. J. Res. 6, to 
     repeal the Federal Communication Commission's (FCC) Open 
     Internet rules. Though the organizations represented by this 
     letter have taken different views on the Open Internet rules, 
     we are united in the view that congressional plans to 
     overturn these rules using the CRA would cause significant 
     harm, particularly to the constituencies represented by our 
     organizations, and divert attention from other critical media 
     and telecommunications issues that are so vital to our 
     nation's economic and civic life.
       The CRA, 5 U.S.C. 801-808, is a blunt instrument. The terms 
     of the Act require complete repeal of the agency action in 
     question in a simple ``yes or no'' vote. For this reason, use 
     of the CRA would mean that critical long-established 
     protections will be repealed along with newer proposals 
     adopted for the first time in December. Use of the CRA would 
     eliminate the FCC's authority to enforce its reasonable Open 
     Internet principles, including those that prevent private 
     blocking of constitutionally-protected speech.
       A free and open Internet is of particular concern to civil 
     rights organizations because the Internet is a critical 
     platform for free speech. It is also a tool for organizing 
     members and for civic engagement; a chance for online 
     education and advancement which is essential to economic 
     development and job creation; a means by which to produce and 
     distribute diverse content; and an opportunity for small 
     entrepreneurs from diverse communities who might not 
     otherwise have a chance to compete in the marketplace.
       As you know, the FCC adopted Open Internet rules in 
     December after an extensive and detailed process. As a 
     result, the Commission for the first time adopted a set of 
     enforceable rules that many diverse parties agree will 
     protect against severe abuse, promote free expression on the 
     Internet, and encourage job-creating investment in broadband 
     networks. These rules include a number of non-controversial 
     commonsense policies, such as the right of a consumer to 
     reach any lawful content via the Internet while preserving 
     network providers' ability to manage their networks. The 
     rules adopted in December will help get all Americans online: 
     for example, consumers with low incomes will be better able 
     to select a service at a price they can afford under the 
     Commission's new transparency rules.
       We also urge Congress and the Commission to move forward on 
     other critical media and telecommunications policy 
     initiatives. As we explained to the FCC last fall, we believe 
     it is critical for the Commission to renew its focus on 
     expanding broadband adoption among people of color; closing 
     the digital divide; extending universal service support to 
     broadband services; adopting provisions to protect consumer 
     privacy; and implementing the 21st Century Communications & 
     Video Accessibility Act of 2010.
       In closing, we strongly urge you to oppose use of the 
     Congressional Review Act to repeal the Federal Communications 
     Commission's Open Internet rules. We also hope that Congress 
     and the Commission will move forward expeditiously to 
     implement the National Broadband Plan to expand deployment 
     and adoption of new technologies and high-speed Internet for 
     all Americans. Should you require further information or have 
     any questions regarding this issue, please contact The 
     Leadership Conference Media/Telecommunications Task Force Co-
     Chairs, Cheryl Leanza, at 202-904-2168, Christopher 
     Calabrese, at 202-715-0839, or Corrine Yu, Leadership 
     Conference Managing Policy Director, at 202-466-5670.
           Sincerely,
         American Civil Liberties Union; Common Cause; 
           Communications Workers of America; Disability Rights 
           Education & Defense Fund; NAACP; The Leadership 
           Conference on Civil and Human Rights; National Hispanic 
           Media Coalition; National Organization for Women; 
           United Church of Christ, Office of Communication, Inc.
                                  ____



                            Association of Research Libraries,

                                                 October 14, 2011.
     Hon. Harry Reid,
     Majority Leader, U.S. Senate.
     Hon. Mitch McConnell,
     Minority Leader, U.S. Senate.
     Hon. Jay Rockefeller,
     Chairman, U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and 
         Transportation.
     Hon. Kay Bailey Hutchison,
     Ranking Member, U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science 
         and Transportation.
       Dear Leader Reid, Leader McConnell, Chairman Rockefeller, 
     and Ranking Member Hutchison: The American Library 
     Association (ALA), the Association of Research Libraries 
     (ARL), and EDUCAUSE respectfully ask you to oppose S.J. Res. 
     6 and any other legislation to overturn or undermine the 
     ``Net Neutrality'' decision adopted by the Federal 
     Communications Commission (FCC) in December 2010.
       ALA, ARL and EDUCAUSE believe that preserving an open 
     Internet is essential to our nation's educational 
     achievement, freedom of speech, and economic growth. The 
     Internet has become a cornerstone of the educational, 
     academic, and computer services that libraries and higher 
     education offer to students, teachers, and the general 
     public. Libraries and higher education institutions are 
     prolific generators of Internet content. We rely upon the 
     public availability of open, affordable Internet access for 
     school homework assignments, distance learning classes, e-
     government services, licensed databases, job-training videos, 
     medical and scientific research, and many other essential 
     services. It is crucial that the Internet remains a ``network 
     neutral'' environment so that libraries and higher education 
     institutions have the freedom to create and provide 
     innovative information services that are central to the 
     growth and development of our democratic culture.
       The following data points illustrate why open, non-
     prioritized Internet access is so critically important to the 
     public that we serve:
       a. 80% of college students live off-campus. Net neutrality 
     is vitally important so that these students receive the same 
     quality of access to web-based information as on-campus 
     students;
       b. 97% of public two-year colleges have online distance 
     education programs;
       c. 99% of public libraries provide patrons with access to 
     the Internet at no charge; in 65% of communities, public 
     libraries are the only provider of such access.
       The attachment to this letter provides several specific 
     examples of critical Internet-based applications that our 
     communities have developed to serve students, teachers, the 
     elderly, the disabled and other members of the public. As 
     these examples demonstrate, libraries and higher education 
     increasingly depend on the open Internet to fulfill our 
     missions to serve the general public. Without an open and 
     neutral Internet, there is great risk that prioritized 
     delivery to end users will be available only to content, 
     application and service providers who pay extra fees, which 
     would be an enormous disadvantage to libraries, education, 
     and other non-profit institutions. In short, Internet Service 
     Providers (ISPs) should allow users the same priority of 
     access to educational content as to entertainment and other 
     commercial offerings.
       The FCC's Net Neutrality decision last December was an 
     important step forward. The decision includes a non-
     discrimination standard for wireline Internet services, and 
     it limits the opportunities for paid prioritization. The 
     FCC's decision also explicitly protects the rights of 
     libraries, schools, and other Internet users. While the FCC's 
     decision falls short in some other areas, particularly with 
     regard to mobile wireless services, the decision 
     appropriately requires ISPs to keep the Internet open to 
     educational and library content.
       For these reasons, ALA, ARL and EDUCAUSE believe that the 
     FCC's decision should be upheld and it should not be 
     overturned by Congressional action. While the FCC's decision 
     can certainly be improved, we strongly believe that the FCC 
     should be able to oversee the broadband marketplace and 
     respond to any efforts by ISPs to skew the Internet in favor 
     of any particular party or user. The Internet functions best 
     when it is open to everyone, without interference by the 
     broadband provider. We urge you to uphold the FCC's authority 
     to preserve the openness of the Internet and to oppose any 
     proposal to overturn or undermine the FCC's Net Neutrality 
     decision.
           Respectfully Submitted,
     Lynne Bradley,
       American Library Association (ALA).
     Gregory A. Jackson,
       EDUCAUSE.
     Prudence S. Adler,
       Association of Research Libraries (ARL).

[[Page 16930]]

     
                                  ____
                                              American Association


                                         of Independent Music,

                                   New York, NY, November 4, 2011.
     Hon. Jay Rockefeller,
     Chairman, Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation, 
         Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, DC.
     Hon. Kay Bailey Hutchison,
     Ranking Member, Committee on Commerce, Science & 
         Transportation, Russell Senate Office Building. 
         Washington, DC.
     Hon. Harry Reid,
     Majority Leader, Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, DC.
     Hon. Mitch McConnell,
     Minority Leader, Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, 
         DC.
       Dear Senators, The American Association of Independent 
     Music (A2IM) is a non-profit organization representing a 
     broad coalition of independently owned music labels from a 
     sector that comprises more than 30 percent of the music 
     industry's U.S. market, nearly 40 percent of digital sales, 
     and well over 80 percent of all music released by music 
     labels in the U.S. A2IM's label community includes music 
     companies of all sizes throughout United States, from Hawaii 
     to Florida and all across our country, representing musical 
     genres as diverse as our membership.
       Unfortunately, economic reward has not always followed 
     critical success due to barriers to entry for independents in 
     both promotion and commerce. A2IM members share the core 
     conviction that the independent music community plays a vital 
     role in the continued advancement of cultural diversity and 
     innovation in music at home and abroad, but we need your 
     help.
       Of all the technological developments in recent history, 
     the Internet represents the most potent platform for 
     entrepreneurship and expression our community has witnessed. 
     Despite the many unresolved questions surrounding the 
     protection of intellectual property online, we remain 
     optimistic that open Internet structures are our best means 
     through which to do business, reach listeners and innovate in 
     the digital realm.
       Independent labels would not fare well under any regime 
     that allows Internet traffic to be prioritized based on 
     business arrangements between ISPs and the largest corporate 
     entities, as our sector is not capable of competing 
     economically. This is why we have consistently gone on record 
     in favor of clear, enforceable rules of the road for the 
     Internet, whether accessed on personal computers or mobile 
     devices.
       We are not convinced that the FCC's recent Order goes far 
     enough to preserve the dynamics that make the Internet such a 
     unique and promising marketplace for creative commerce. We 
     are particularly concerned about the lack of clarity in the 
     mobile space, as well as the possibility of our sector being 
     priced out of the most desirable online delivery mechanisms.
       Nonetheless, it seems shortsighted for Congress to seek to 
     eliminate the FCC's ability to oversee this vital space, as 
     it is an essential part of a free market driven by 
     enterprise, ingenuity and competition. We therefore urge the 
     United States Senate to forego any attempt to stymie the 
     FCC's authority to preserve the underlying dynamic of the 
     Internet.
           Sincerely,
                                          The American Association
     of Independent Music (A2IM).
                                  ____

                                        Future of Music Coalition,
                                 Washington, DC, November 4, 2011.
     Hon. Jay Rockefeller,
     Chairman, Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation, 
         Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, DC.
     Hon. Kay Bailey Hutchison,
     Ranking Member, Committee on Commerce, Science & 
         Transportation, Russell Senate Office Building, 
         Washington, DC.
     Hon. Harry Reid,
     Majority Leader, Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, DC.
     Hon. Mitch McConnell,
     Minority Leader, Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, 
         DC.
       Dear Senators, Since its inception, the internet has 
     represented a powerful tool for the exchange of information 
     and ideas. In recent years, it has also contributed greatly 
     to the emergence of novel platforms for the dissemination of 
     creative content. It is as members of the arts community who 
     have come to depend on these structures that we write to you 
     today.
       Creators, in particular, depend on open internet structures 
     to engage in a variety of ways, including direct interaction 
     with audiences, fans and patrons, as well as collaboration 
     with other artists. From musicians to filmmakers to writers 
     to independent labels to arts and service organizations, 
     today's creative community depends on the internet to conduct 
     business and contribute to the rich tapestry that is American 
     culture.
       Today's creators are taking advantage of technologies 
     fostered by the internet to deliver a diverse array of 
     content to consumers, while creating efficient new ways to 
     ``do for ourselves'' in terms of infrastructure. The access 
     and innovation inspired by the web helps us meet the 
     challenges of the 21st century as we contribute to local 
     economies and help America compete globally.
       It hasn't always been so. Traditionally, the media 
     landscape relied heavily on hierarchical chains of ownership 
     and distribution, controlled by powerful gatekeepers such as 
     large TV and movie studios, commercial radio conglomerates, 
     major labels and so forth.
       It would be tremendously disadvantageous to creative 
     entrepreneurship if the internet were to become an 
     environment in which innovation and creativity face 
     tremendous barriers to entry due to business arrangements 
     between a select few industry players.
       This is why we support clear, enforceable and transparent 
     rules to ensure that competition and free expression can 
     continue to flourish online. Although many of us feel 
     strongly that the recent FCC Order does not go far enough in 
     its protections (particularly with regard to mobile broadband 
     access), we recognize the importance of having a process in 
     place by which concerns can be addressed and transparency 
     pursued.
       We believe that Congress has a role to play in establishing 
     guidelines that preserve a competitive, accessible internet 
     where free expression and entrepreneurship can continue to 
     flourish. We also believe that stripping the FCC's ability to 
     enforce these core principles as proposed in S.J. Res. 6 runs 
     counter to the values shared by members on both sides of the 
     aisle, as well as prior and current FCC leadership. 
     Therefore, we strongly urge against a broad repudiation of 
     the Commission's Order.
           Sincerely,
     Fractured Atlas.
     Future of Music Coalition.
     National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture.
                                  ____

                                                 October 13, 2011.
     Hon. Harry Reid,
     Senate Majority Leader, Hart Senate Office Building, 
         Washington, DC.
     Hon. Mitch McConnell,
     Senate Minority Leader, Russell Senate Office Building, 
         Washington, DC.
     Hon. John D. Rockefeller,
     Chairman, Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, DC.
     Hon. Kay Bailey Hutchison,
     Ranking Member, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, 
         DC.
       Dear Majority Leader Reid, Minority Leader McConnell, 
     Chairman Rockefeller, and Ranking Member Hutchison: The below 
     signed organizations support an Open Internet and oppose S. 
     J. Res 6, legislation that would repeal the Federal 
     Communication Commission's (FCC) Open Internet rules through 
     the Congressional Review Act. Utilizing the Congressional 
     Review Act would not only eliminate the current FCC rules, it 
     would eliminate the FCC's ability to protect innovation, 
     speech, and commerce on broadband platforms on behalf of the 
     American people.
       The Internet has been and must remain an open platform. 
     Regardless of political or social values, an Open Internet 
     increases opportunities for all persons and communities, 
     increases diversity of opinions and thought, and ensures that 
     consumers and entrepreneurs alike can engage in and benefit 
     from the opportunities afforded by access to the Internet. An 
     Open Internet is also an engine for economic growth, 
     innovation, and job creation.
       The FCC has adopted a framework that the agency believes 
     will preserve the Open Internet. We wholeheartedly support 
     preservation of the FCC's authority to implement such rules. 
     This framework was adopted in a proceeding in which broadband 
     service providers, Internet companies, civil rights groups, 
     labor organizations, and public interest groups all 
     participated.
       We urge Congress not to utilize the Congressional Review 
     Act, given the negative consequences of its enactment. 
     Instead, we hope that Congress will work to preserve openness 
     online and to move forward expeditiously in implementation of 
     the National Broadband Plan. Undertaking such initiatives 
     would improve broadband deployment and adoption opportunities 
     for all Americans, including individuals in typically rural 
     and other underserved populations and in communities of color 
     too often denied a meaningful opportunity to participate in 
     the new economy.
       For these reasons, we urge you to ensure that all your 
     constituents can continue to benefit from an Open Internet, 
     and we stand ready to work with Congress to preserve an Open 
     Internet.
           Respectfully submitted,
       Access Humboldt; ACLU; AFL-CIO; Alliance for Community 
     Media; Alliance for Retired Americans; Applied Research 
     Center; Arizona Progress Action; Art is Change; Association 
     of Free Community Papers; Association of Research Libraries; 
     Bold Nebraska; Breakthrough.tv; CCTV Center for Media and 
     Democracy; Center for Democracy and Technology; Center for 
     Media Justice; Center for Rural Strategies; Center for Social 
     Inclusion; Coalition of Labor Union Women; Communications 
     Workers of America; Community Media Workshops.
       Consumer Federation of America; Consumers Union; Democracy 
     for America; Durham Community Media; Esperanza Peace

[[Page 16931]]

     and Justice Center; Evanston Community Media Center; Free 
     Press; Future of Music; Coalition; Global Action Project; 
     Harry Potter Alliance; Highlander Research & Education 
     Project; Houston Interfaith Worker Justice; Institute for 
     Local Self Reliance; International Brotherhood of Electrical 
     Workers; Keystone Progress; Labor Council for Latin American 
     Advancement; LAMP; Latinos for Internet Freedom; Latino Print 
     Network; League of United Latin American Citizens.
       Line Break Media; Main Street Project; Media Access 
     Project; Media Mobilizing Project; Mid-Atlantic Community 
     Papers Association; NAACP; National Alliance for Media, Art, 
     and Culture; National Consumers League; National Hispanic 
     Media Coalition; National Latino Farmers and Ranchers Trade 
     Association; National Network for Immigrant and Refugee 
     Rights; Native Public Media; New America Foundation; Ohio 
     Valley Environmental Coalition; One Wisconsin Now; OnShore 
     Networks; Open Access Connections; Open Source Democczracy 
     Fund.
       Participatory Culture Foundation; Peoples Press Project; 
     Peoples Production House; Philly CAM; Progress Now; Progress 
     Now Nevada; Progress Ohio; Prometheus Radio Project; Public 
     Radio Exchange; Reel Grrls; Southwest Organizing Project; 
     Southwest Workers Union; The Highlander Research & Education 
     Center; The Peoples Channel; The Praxis Project; The Writers 
     Guild of America; West UNITY Journalists of Color; Women In 
     Media & News; Youth Media Project.

  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, to be sure, there are those who 
disagree with the FCC's open Internet rules, and there is an avenue for 
these complaints. It is called the judicial system. Some are using it. 
Two companies have filed lawsuit claiming that the FCC went too far. 
Several public interest groups have filed lawsuits claiming that the 
FCC did not go far enough. It is their legal right to go to the courts, 
and when they choose to do that, they can do so.
  So let's think for a minute what a world would look like without a 
free and open Internet.
  In a world without a free and open Internet, consumers and 
entrepreneurs would have no transparency as to how their broadband 
providers would manage their network--no ability to make informed 
decisions about their broadband providers.
  In a world without a free and open Internet, there would be nothing 
to prevent their broadband providers from steering them only their to 
preferred Web sites and services, therefore limiting their choices as 
consumers.
  For rural Americans, broadband Internet access has the power to erase 
distances and allows them to have the same access to shopping, 
educational matters, and employment opportunities as those living in 
urban areas. That is a time-honored principle around here--but not if 
the Web site they seek to access is blocked by their broadband 
providers. Consumers, entrepreneurs, and small businesses need the 
certainty they can access lawful Web sites of their choice when they 
want, period.
  In a world without a free and open Internet, there would be nothing 
to stop broadband providers from blocking access to Web sites that 
offer products that compete with those of its affiliates. That happens, 
Mr. President.
  In a world without a free and open Internet, companies could pay 
Internet providers to guarantee their Web sites open more quickly than 
their competitors.
  In a world without a free and open Internet, companies could pay 
Internet providers to make certain their online sales are processed 
more quickly than their competitors with lower prices.
  Well, that is not the American way. This is particularly disturbing 
in tough times like these.
  In a world without a free and open Internet, there would be nothing 
to prevent Internet service providers from charging users a premium in 
order to guarantee operation in the ``fast lane.'' If someone is trying 
to start a small business, struggling to make ends meet and cannot 
afford to pay the toll, they run the risk of being left in the ``slow 
lane''--that is not good--with inferior Internet service--that is not 
right--unable to compete with larger companies. That is very wrong.
  What if an innovator or a start-up company has the next big idea? 
With broadband, the next big idea does not have to come from a suburban 
garage or from Silicon Valley, it can come from rural America or from 
anywhere. A free and open Internet is all that is required to give that 
big idea a global reach.
  In a world without a free and open Internet, the ability of the next 
revolutionary idea to reach others--to make it to the greater 
marketplace--would be entirely dependent on a handful of entrenched 
broadband gatekeepers and toll collectors. True.
  I am not totally opposed to the Congressional Review Act, but I have 
to say it is an extraordinarily blunt instrument. It means all of the 
rules adopted by the FCC must be overturned at once. This would even 
mean tossing out commonsense provisions about transparency. Do our 
opponents know this? It would deny the agency the power to protect 
consumers. Do our opponents know this? What is the sense in all of 
that? I don't get it.
  There is another part: If they just took these rules out--if S. Res. 
6 were to pass--they couldn't come back later and just have the FCC put 
them in. We would have to go through a whole congressional legislative 
process to reinsert them into the Public Law, which means many of them 
would never end up there.
  I also want to address the argument of supporters of the joint 
resolution that the FCC's open rules will somehow stifle innovation in 
the Internet economy. That is just so wrong I don't know what to say.
  Over the past 15 years, the open Internet has been the greatest 
engine for the U.S. economy. It leaves everything in its dust. It has 
created more than 3 million jobs, as the Senator from Texas indicated. 
The open Internet rules will help sustain this growth. People want to 
know what the rules of the road are. They want to know what the world 
is bringing to them. If they decide they do not like what is coming, 
they are going to tell you, and they are not going to invest. Very 
simple.
  According to Hamilton Consultants, the open Internet ecosystem has 
led to the creation of 1.8 million jobs related to applications in e-
commerce, as well as 1.2 million jobs related to infrastructure. 
Moreover, investment and innovation have continued to increase since 
the adoption of the FCC's open Internet rules--not decrease, as the 
supporters of this resolution will tell us.
  The facts show that investment in broadband networks increased in the 
first half of 2011. In fact, investment in networks that support 
broadband was more than 10 percent higher in the first half of 2011 
than in the first half of 2010. More of that investment in Internet 
companies surged in 2011, and this is after they had sort of adjusted 
or taken into account what they saw coming in the way of the rules. 
There was $2.3 billion worth of investment going into 275 companies in 
the second quarter, and all of them were this Internet type. That is 
the most investment in Internet companies in a decade.
  Plus, shortly after the framework was adopted, America's leading 
wireless providers announced they were accelerating their deployment of 
their advanced fourth generation, or 4G networks. It seems the open 
Internet rules are giving broadband providers and entrepreneurs and 
investors the certainty they need to invest and to create jobs.
  Certainty is the key. They are not going to invest in what they do 
not know. We see that in so many other areas. They do not know what is 
going to happen, so they do not invest. People have all this cash, but 
they do not have certainty. Here they have certainty, they understand 
that certainty, they understand what is coming, they like it, and they 
are investing like never before.
  The FCC's open Internet rules also protect small businesses. An 
estimated 20,000 small businesses operate on the Internet. More than 
600,000 Americans have part- or full-time businesses on eBay alone. I 
was not aware of that. The FCC's open Internet rules mean small 
entrepreneurs will not have to seek permission from broadband providers 
to reach new markets and consumers with innovative products and 
services.
  This is a very important point. It means small businesses can be 
located anywhere in this country, including rural America, and through 
open

[[Page 16932]]

broadband have the opportunity for their ideas and products and 
services to have a global reach. That is the point of all of this.
  As we all know, small businesses were responsible for nearly 65 
percent of new jobs over the past 15 years. Far from preventing 
investment, the FCC's open Internet rules will foster small businesses 
because they trust it. They see it, they see what Moody's is saying 
about it, they see what the Wall Street investment bankers are saying 
about it, they see it is encouraging investment, and they like and 
trust that. So they take risks they might not otherwise take because 
they trust.
  It is not the faceless Federal bureaucrat. It is something that is 
down on paper and they understand it. They have probably seen it and 
probably commented on it. Maybe some of them didn't like it as much as 
they should have; maybe some thought it should have been stronger or 
some thought it should have been weaker, but such is life in America. 
So, anyway, I think what they conclude is that what is going on is 
supporting what they are doing.
  Finally, I want to note when it comes to education and privacy and 
intellectual property, global Internet governance, or network security, 
the government has long provided--and necessarily so--reasonable rules 
of the road to make possible consumer protection, fair trade, and open 
markets. The FCC's open Internet rules are no different. They take, as 
has been quoted by many, a light-touch approach--I like that phrase--
and keep the playing field fair. They keep the Internet open and free 
for consumers, for businesses, and for everyone in this country who 
wants access to broadband Internet.
  So that is why I support the FCC open Internet rules, and I encourage 
my colleagues to vote against the joint resolution.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, on our side I have Senator Wicker and 
Senator Shelby, who have been here waiting, and I would like to give 
them 15 minutes from the time on our side. I know there are others 
here, but these Senators have been waiting for quite a while.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is that 15 minutes each or 15 minutes 
together?
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Up to 5 minutes for Senator Wicker and up to 10 
minutes for Senator Shelby.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, what would be the order after that?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is no order after that.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be 
recognized for the time I have--I think it is about 15 minutes--after 
that.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Mississippi.
  Mr. WICKER. Mr. President, I rise as a cosponsor and strong supporter 
of this resolution of disapproval.
  Once again, we are witnessing a government regulation we do not need. 
There is a reason when we talk about today's economy that we talk about 
the cost of government overreach. Unnecessary regulations put a wet 
blanket on job creation, and they work against getting our economy back 
on track. This is a perfect example of the government standing in the 
way of growth and investment.
  The Internet and its associated applications should be allowed to 
develop without excessive FCC redtape. The Internet owes a great deal 
of its rapid success to innovators and entrepreneurs who had the 
freedom to imagine, to explore, and to create. With the FCC acting as a 
traffic cop, this freedom will be compromised.
  The subjective rules of the road, as laid out by the FCC, are a 
prescription for uncertainty within the industry. By handing over more 
power to a government agency, net neutrality rules slam the brakes on 
potential investment and new innovation. The ideas that should make our 
Internet faster, more secure, and better for consumers fall by the 
wayside. At the end of the day, the American consumer would suffer. The 
broadband marketplace would simply offer fewer services, fewer devices, 
and less content to paying customers.
  The FCC order reads that Internet providers ``shall not block lawful 
content, applications, services or non-harmful devices, subject to 
reasonable network management.'' It goes on to say that providers 
``shall not unreasonably discriminate in transmitting lawful network 
traffic over a consumer's broadband Internet access service.''
  But the terms ``lawful'' and ``reasonable'' are not easily defined. 
Under the order, what is lawful and what is reasonable would be 
determined by unelected bureaucrats. The FCC would rule as a de facto 
police of the open and free Internet. The FCC would be the final 
arbiter of what broadband service providers can and cannot do. Its 
judgments--not the market or the consumer--would determine how networks 
would be managed. The FCC is claiming to have an authority that the 
American public did not grant it.
  The hands of the Internet service providers will be tied when the FCC 
has this kind of power. Without being able to run their own networks, 
service providers cannot maximize the online experience for the vast 
majority of their customers. They are, in essence, prevented from doing 
what they were established to do.
  Equally troubling is that the Commission's order is trying to fix a 
problem that does not exist. Today's consumers have greater access to 
more Internet services than ever before. Where is the problem? 
Businesses have invested tens of billions of dollars in new broadband 
infrastructure. Internet entrepreneurs continue to offer new services 
to broadband users. There is no economic justification for this 
unprecedented intrusion into the marketplace. Policy should benefit the 
public, and these FCC rules do not.
  In conclusion, we have seen this movie before, with regulation where 
regulation is not needed. Again, here we have a regulatory recipe that 
would produce far-reaching and damaging effects. The current landscape 
has allowed the Internet to grow exponentially. It is a free market of 
competition, productivity, and growth. The FCC's regulatory intrusion 
is completely unwarranted.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator from Alabama.
  Mr. SHELBY. Mr. President, I wish to associate myself with the 
remarks of the Senators from Texas and Mississippi and to say that I 
think a lot of people probably mean well but are often misguided when 
they say we are going to regulate this sector of the economy or we are 
going to regulate that.
  The market, as you well know, is the driving force in our economy--
not just in the United States but worldwide. It is going to be the 
market that will decide what we do as far as job creation for our 
people everywhere, and I believe the Internet is an example of, gosh, 
let's don't overregulate it. Let it grow, let it do its job, and it 
will.
  I would also like to speak about some commonsense steps that Congress 
can take right now to help our struggling economy. At a time when job 
growth is stagnant, Congress needs to lift the regulatory burden that 
is stifling capital formation. The Senate has before it several bills 
that would help private businesses raise the capital they need to grow 
and to create jobs.
  This is an issue that should enjoy the support of both Republicans 
and Democrats in the Senate. Access to capital, as the Presiding 
Officer well knows, is what allows entrepreneurs to transfer new ideas 
into living companies. Novel products, new services, and, most 
importantly, good jobs can be created.
  Unfortunately, overregulation has made it progressively harder for 
small businesses to access capital in this country. I will give some 
statistics. They are clear.
  In the 1990s, an average of 547 initial public offerings took place 
each year, compared with an average of just 192 per year after 1999. 
Small initial public offerings now make up only 20 percent of the 
total. In contrast, they made up 80 percent of the total in the 1990s, 
when we were creating so many small jobs.

[[Page 16933]]

  In addition, the number of new businesses being launched each year is 
falling. In 2010, it was the lowest it has been since the Bureau of 
Labor Statistics started tracking the number in 1994.
  The SEC has been slow to address these problems, even though it has 
the authority to do so. The Chairman of the SEC has spoken of the need 
for action, but we have not seen tangible results yet.
  One year ago, one SEC Commissioner remarked:

       My hope is that, as an agency, the Commission will move 
     beyond talking about small business capital formation and 
     will take concrete steps that actually foster it.

  I believe we, the Senate and the American people, can no longer wait 
for the SEC to do its job. The time has come for Congress to take 
action. Our economy cannot afford to wait any longer.
  The first thing I believe we should do to improve capital formation 
is to bring up for consideration several bipartisan bills that would 
implement important regulatory reforms. One bill would modernize the 
SEC's regulation A, which was initially designed to make it easy for 
small businesses to access our capital markets. Unfortunately, 
regulation A is outdated and rarely used.
  Another set of bills would raise the thresholds for reporting so 
small banks and small companies are not subject to burdensome SEC 
reporting requirements.
  These bills would still leave investors protected and ensure that 
public companies provide meaningful disclosure. Most important, 
investors would still be protected by the SEC's antifraud rules. These 
bipartisan bills represent a few steps we can take right now, but they 
are not comprehensive by any means.
  Much more needs to be done to make sure registration requirements are 
tailored to the size and type of businesses. The existing one-size-
fits-all approach means that small companies have to bear the same 
costs that large companies do when they go public. These inequities 
need to be addressed; it stifles job creation.
  One would think that we could agree in the Senate on removing 
unnecessary restrictions on capital formation. Yet for the past 3 
years, the majority party has dramatically increased government 
involvement in the economy. They have imposed one costly mandate after 
another on businesses. They have crowded out the private sector with 
massive government programs, resulting in persistently high 
unemployment and stagnant economic growth.
  Basically, I think it is time for a new approach. It is time to 
revitalize the free markets in America. We can begin this effort by 
taking these small steps to help entrepreneurs find the capital they 
need to build their businesses and to create jobs.
  I hope my Democratic colleagues will now do more than talk about 
creating jobs and that we can work on a bipartisan basis on these bills 
that have bipartisan sponsorship to create jobs and join us here.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, this is one of those times when, on the 
floor of the Senate, we hear a proposal that people characterize as one 
thing, but it is, in fact, anything but what they are characterizing it 
as.
  What I just heard the good Senator from Mississippi talking about: We 
don't want to slam the brakes on development, he said. We don't want to 
have the SEC intrusion.
  So they are trying to say to the American people that they want to 
liberate the Internet, when, in fact, what they want to do is imprison 
the Internet within the hands of the most powerful communications 
entities today to act as the gatekeepers who will control the ability 
of the Internet to do the very kind of development that brought us 
here. What they are talking about, their concept, this CRA challenge is 
that wolf in sheep's clothing. It is that simple. So I think colleagues 
need to step back and think about how the Internet got to be what it is 
today when it was developed.
  I know the Senator from West Virginia, the chairman of the committee, 
and I were members of the Commerce Committee back in the 1990s when we 
wrote the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and we thought we were pretty 
clever and we wrote a good act. Within 6 months of writing that act, it 
was obsolete because all our conversation was about telephony at a 
moment where, because of the Internet, the entire discussion was about 
to become about data transmission and the movement of information over 
the Internet. That has never been fully revisited. But the reason we 
have a Google today, the reason we have had this incredible development 
of Internet retail business, of all these Web sites, of Facebook, and 
so many more is because of the open architecture of access to that 
Internet--which, I would remind everybody in America, was created by 
government money in government research. It came out of an effort to 
develop a communications system for our country in the case of nuclear 
war. So we created, through DARPA, ARPA, research that produced this 
communications network. Then the private sector saw the opportunity, 
and a whole bunch of very creative people rushed in and made the 
Internet what it is today.
  Overturning the rules, as the CRA proposes to do, would put the very 
open architecture that has created this extraordinary agent of 
communication, of commerce, and family communication, and all these 
things it has done for business, it would put it at risk and discourage 
investment in companies at the edge of the Internet that could be the 
next Google or the next Amazon. Overturning these rules would actually 
hurt our competitiveness and economic growth and they would diffuse the 
creative energy that has driven the Internet to be what it is today. 
Because if we overturn what they are doing today, we take the reality 
of the Internet and we put it in the hands of the gatekeepers.
  Everything that goes over the Internet today goes either through our 
telephone at home or television or whatever, through cable, out of our 
house or the airwaves. But if we are not having an open architecture on 
the Internet, then the people who control those access points can start 
discriminating about who gets access at what speed; and if they control 
who gets access at what speed and begin to charge more for that, you 
begin to have a profound impact on the ability of any business to 
develop and a profound impact on the access that consumers have come to 
anticipate with respect to the Internet.
  Think about this. We are talking about neutrality. We are standing 
here trying to defend neutrality. The other side is coming in here 
trying to create a new structure where the process will be gamed once 
again in favor of the most powerful. This is part of the whole debate 
that is going on in America today, about the 99 percent who feel like 
everything is gamed against them and the system is geared by the people 
who have the money and the people who have the power who get what they 
want. That is what this debate is about.
  The network neutrality rules the FCC has promulgated are based on the 
principles that everybody should support of promoting transparency of 
broadband service operations, preventing the blocking of legal content 
and Web sites, and prohibiting discrimination of individuals, 
applications, and other Web sites. That is what we are for. This CRA is 
an effort to undo the FCC's ability to protect those principles.
  Establishing those principles has actually brought about certainty 
and predictability to the broadband economy. It ensures that anyone can 
create a Web site, anyone can deliver an Internet-enabled service with 
the certainty that is going to be made available to everybody else on 
the Internet. Innovators now know they are not going to have to go ask 
a big telephone company: Hey, Verizon, hey AT&T, will you guys please 
let us have access so we can go do this thing? Oh, well, maybe we will 
do that, but we are going to charge you in order to do that. They 
completely destroy the openness that is provided, this ability for 
anybody in America to sit in their home or

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school or somewhere and come up with an idea and innovate. That freedom 
to innovate, the freedom to innovate is what has made the Internet the 
platform for economic and social development it is today, and a vote 
for the CRA is a vote to stifle that.
  On the side of those favoring the FCC's action are venture 
capitalists and the companies that have made the Internet what it is 
today, civil rights groups, civil liberties advocates, academics, 
scholars who have studied and testified to the virtues of open 
networks. Let me quote a few of them.
  John Doerr is somebody whom many of us have come to know by virtue of 
his business acumen and the legendary venture capitalist efforts he was 
engaged in. He was an early backer of Amazon, an early backer of 
Google, Electronic Arts, Netscape, and a number of other innovators 
whose creations have driven the growth of the Internet. Here is what he 
says:

       Maintaining an open Internet is critical to our economy's 
     growth . . . and this effort is a pragmatic balance of 
     innovation, economic growth, and crucial investment in the 
     Internet.

  Ray Ramsey, the president and CEO of TechNet, a national bipartisan 
network of more than 400 technology sector CEOs, said of the vote at 
the Commission in favor of the network neutrality rules:

       The vote by the FCC is a pragmatic recognition of the need 
     for codifying principles for protecting nondiscrimination and 
     openness for the Internet.

  Charlie Ergen, the president and CEO of Dish Network, said:

       The Commission's order is a solid framework for protecting 
     the open Internet. The new rules give companies, including 
     Dish Network, the framework to invest capital and manpower in 
     Internet-related technologies without fear that our 
     investment will be undermined by carriers' discriminatory 
     practices.

  Others supporting the order include the Communications Workers of 
America, civil rights organizations, consumer advocates. In sum, those 
who support the rules include those who fund the development of 
Internet companies, those who use the Internet, and advocates who favor 
open discourse and debate. I think we in the Senate ought to listen to 
the people who created it, the people who developed it, the people who 
are taking it to the next generation, and the people who use it.
  The Los Angeles Times editorialized on Sunday in favor of the rules 
of the FCC, saying:

       The agency's net neutrality rules are a reasonable attempt 
     to protect the innovative nature of the Internet and should 
     not be overturned.

  Despite all of what I just said, some have made what I have called 
the ``wolf in sheep's clothing'' argument, the false argument that 
network neutrality rules regulate the Internet--that they actually 
regulate it--and this is an opportunity to keep it open and impose a 
condition on innovators.
  I don't know how asking innovators to get permission from somebody 
else to be able to go do what they have already done since the 1990s is 
going to improve things. The truth is, network neutrality rules govern 
not the Internet but they govern the behavior of the firms that own and 
operate the gateways to the Internet. That is what is at stake. When 
the airwaves that carry the information that connects us to everyone 
else in the Internet is in the hands of a few and subject to their 
control, we are in trouble.
  The rules we are debating today state that those gateways should not 
be used to favor some voices over others or some firms over others on 
the Internet. That is what is at stake. That is what this fight is 
about. The truth is, if the rules are overturned, every innovator on 
the Internet will be exposed to the risk that, before they innovate, 
before they create a new product, they are going to have to go to 
somebody and say: Mother, may I do this? Then there will be a price 
attached to it.
  Beyond the false argument that network neutrality constitutes 
regulation of the Internet rather than anticompetitive behavior, 
opponents to the rule predicted the FCC action was going to have 
negative economic repercussions. Yet even in an economy that has 
struggled, that prediction has proven to be wrong.
  In the time since the FCC voted on the rule to preserve the open 
Internet, investment in networks that support wired and wireless 
broadbrand grew by more than 10 percent compared to the same period the 
year before. Venture capital investments in Internet-specific companies 
surged, with $2.3 billion going into 275 companies in the second 
quarter of 2011. It may well be that 2011 is going to be the biggest 
year for tech IPOs in more than 10 years. That seems to indicate strong 
investor confidence in the companies that rely on the open Internet 
already exists, and we should not disrupt that.
  Having lost the argument that network neutrality hurts innovation or 
the economy, they therefore want to create a new argument; that is, the 
FCC acted outside its legal authority in protecting the free flow of 
communication on the Internet.
  A court, the right place for that decision to be made, is going to 
make that decision. But, again, the argument actually challenges common 
sense. It challenges the basic understanding of reasonableness. To 
argue that the FCC, the agency that Congress created in order to 
regulate communications by wire and radio, somehow has no jurisdiction 
in this very space is to argue that communications over the Internet 
are not, in fact, conducted over a wire or over the airwaves. It is 
completely lacking in any foundation in common sense and certainly in 
the law.
  The law we created grants the FCC the authority in the 
Telecommunications Act to ``make such rules and regulations, and issue 
such orders, not inconsistent with this Act, as may be necessary for 
its functions.''
  That is the power we gave to them. Under title II, title III, title 
VI of that act, it encourages the FCC to protect the public interest 
and encourage just and reasonable rates through competition. That is 
precisely what net neutrality achieves. It is precisely what we achieve 
under the rules of the FCC.
  Under title VII, the FCC is mandated to take immediate action to 
remove barriers to infrastructure investment and promote competition in 
the telecommunications market if advanced telecommunications is not 
being deployed in a reasonable and timely fashion. That can be 
determined on a case-by-case basis, and we obviously can continue as we 
have since the early 1990s to do this. So there is no good reason for 
this debate to fall along party lines.
  I hope it will not be just Democrats who vote to preserve this rule. 
I hope we will maintain an open Internet technology and support the 
open Internet order.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Texas.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Madam President, I know the Senator from Minnesota 
has been waiting to speak, and I certainly will yield to him. I would 
like to be recognized after he speaks to answer some of the concerns 
that were raised by the Senator from Massachusetts.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  The Senator from Minnesota.
  Mr. FRANKEN. Madam President, I appreciate the courtesy of the 
Senator from Texas. My understanding is that Senator Murkowski from 
Alaska is on her way down. I am scheduled to sit in the chair at 12, 
and I don't want to step on the opportunity of the Senator from Alaska 
to speak.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator is recognized.
  Mr. FRANKEN. Madam President, I rise today to urge my colleagues to 
vote against the motion to proceed to the joint resolution of 
disapproval of Senator Hutchison, which would repeal the FCC's net 
neutrality rules.
  As many of you know, I have repeatedly said net neutrality is the 
free speech issue of our time. I still believe that is the case, and I 
am here to state why we need to do everything we can to stop this 
partisan resolution in its tracks.
  But before I get into the reasons we should oppose this resolution, I 
think it is important to step back and remember what the American 
people expect of us. I do not need to tell anyone in this body that the 
approval rating of Congress is at an all-time low. Why is

[[Page 16935]]

that? I think it has something to do with the fact that we are using 
our extremely limited, valuable time to debate partisan proposals like 
this one rather than working together to create jobs, stimulate our 
economy, and get Americans back to work.
  When this resolution of disapproval passed the House back in April, I 
hoped that would be the end of it. I hoped my colleagues would 
recognize we should let agencies do their jobs and not employ an arcane 
procedure to erase a rule the FCC started thinking about in 2004 under 
Republican chairman Michael Powell, and again in 2005 when a different 
Republican chairman, this time Kevin Martin, adopted a unanimous policy 
statement on net neutrality.
  When the White House issued a statement indicating the President 
would veto this resolution of disapproval if it came to his desk, I 
thought my colleagues would be sensible and would recognize that this 
was not only unnecessary and foolhardy, but it was also a pointless 
exercise and would be just a giant waste of everyone's time. Alas, that 
is not the case and here we are spending valuable time on two 
resolutions of disapproval when we should be turning to legislation 
that will get our economy back up and running again.
  I hope the votes we take tomorrow will send a strong message that we 
need to stop these political stunts and work together to create jobs, 
jobs, and more jobs.
  But let's get to the substance of why I am standing here before you 
today. I am here today to talk about net neutrality. Net neutrality is 
a simple concept. It is the idea that all content and applications on 
the Internet should be treated the same, regardless of who owns the 
content or the Web site. This is not a radical idea. It certainly is 
not a new one. We may not realize it, but net neutrality is the 
foundation and core of how the Internet operates every day and how it 
has always operated.
  When scientists and engineers were creating the basic architecture of 
the Internet, they decided they needed to establish some basic rules of 
the road for Internet traffic. One of the fundamental design principles 
of the Internet was that all data should be treated equally, regardless 
of what was being sent or who was sending it. That is net neutrality. 
It is the same principle we rely on every day when we use the Internet, 
and it is the same principle our phone companies must adhere to when 
they connect our phone calls.
  They did not discriminate based on what we say or whom we call, and 
the founders of the Internet thought the same should be true about data 
traveling across networks. Everything and everyone should be treated 
the same.
  This principle of nondiscrimination is baked into the DNA of the 
Internet. This is not radical or new. This is about having a platform 
that is free and open to all, regardless of whether one is a big 
corporation or a single individual and regardless of whether one pays a 
lot of money to speed up how fast their content gets to their 
customers. Net neutrality is what we all experience today when we log 
on to our computers, and it is what we have always experienced since 
the very beginning of the Internet.
  I think it is important to focus on that point for a minute because 
our opponents are telling us something quite different--and they are 
wrong. Net neutrality is not about a government takeover of the 
Internet, and it is not about changing anything. Net neutrality and the 
rules the FCC passed are about keeping the Internet the way it is today 
and the way it has always been.
  We take for granted that we can access Google's search engine as 
easily as we can access Yahoo or Bing or that Netflix videos download 
as easily as the videos our friends uploaded onto YouTube last night. 
We expect that e-mails arrive at their destinations at the same speed 
regardless of who is sending them, and we take for granted that the Web 
site for our local pizzeria loads as fast as the Web site for Dominos 
or Pizza Hut. That is one of the reasons I care so very much about this 
issue.
  This is not just about freedom of speech, it is also about protecting 
small businesses and entrepreneurs of all sizes. In my mind, net 
neutrality is and always has been about protecting the next Bill Gates 
and the next Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook and Microsoft do not need our 
help today, but the 20-year-old whiz kid working in his parents' garage 
to develop the app or software or Web site to revolutionize our lives 
does need net neutrality, and so does the small bookstore or local 
hardware store that wants their Web site to load just as fast as Amazon 
or Home Depot.
  I have been on the floor of the Senate talking about the beginnings 
of YouTube because it is such a powerful example of why we need to 
protect net neutrality. When YouTube started, it was headquartered in a 
tiny space over a pizzeria and a Japanese restaurant in San Francisco, 
CA. At the time, Google had a competing product, Google Video, that was 
widely seen as inferior.
  If Google had been able to pay AT&T or Verizon or Time Warner large 
amounts of money to block YouTube or to make Google Video's Web site 
faster than YouTube's site, guess what would have happened. YouTube 
would have failed. But, instead, thanks to net neutrality, YouTube 
became the gold standard for video on the Internet. YouTube was able to 
sell its business to Google for $1.6 billion just 2 years after its 
start. I love that story because it is a testament to the power of the 
Internet to turn people with great ideas into overnight successes, and 
it happened because we had net neutrality.
  The story of the Internet is a story about the triumph of the little 
guy over the big, slow-moving corporation. The past 20 years are 
littered with tales of entrepreneurs starting with next to nothing and 
revolutionizing the world as we know it. From YouTube's humble 
beginnings over a pizzeria to Facebook's infamous start in a dorm room 
in Cambridge, the Web-based products we use every day are a great 
result of a great idea and the drive to make that great idea a reality.
  Here is what we will not hear from our opponents: Facebook and 
YouTube and countless other Web-based products might not have existed 
today if it were not for net neutrality. Without net neutrality, 
Myspace or Friendster--remember them--could have partnered with Comcast 
to gain priority access or to block Facebook altogether. Blockbuster 
could have paid AT&T to slow down or completely block streaming of 
Netflix videos. Barnes & Noble could have paid Verizon to block access 
to amazon.com. Imagine a world where the corporation with the biggest 
checkbook can control what we see and how fast we access content on the 
Internet.
  Fortunately, that is not the world we live in today and thanks to the 
FCC that is not the world we are headed for. The FCC's rules will 
ensure that no matter how much money or power they have, a young kid 
working in her parents' basement in Duluth can outinnovate the biggest 
corporation simply because she has the best idea. This is exactly why 
top Silicon Valley venture capital and angel investment companies 
support these rules. These companies are the ones funding the next Mark 
Zuckerberg, Larry Page or Sergey Brin so he can get his product off the 
ground. They are the ones funneling millions and millions of dollars to 
entrepreneurs, which is why I think we should listen to them. The CEOs 
of eBay, Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, and YouTube have joined in a letter 
supporting the FCC's rules. They say: ``Common sense baseline rules are 
critical to ensuring that the Internet remains a key engine of economic 
growth, innovation and global competitiveness.''
  I think we should listen to them and companies such as Microsoft, 
Yahoo, Google, IBM, and Qualcomm. These companies also support the 
FCC's rules because they recognize they could not have grown to be the 
tremendously successful companies they are today without a free and 
open Internet, and that is what we are asking for. That is all we are 
asking for.
  When our opponents get up and tell us these rules will stifle 
innovation and halt growth, I want everyone to think about what they 
are saying. I want us

[[Page 16936]]

to ask ourselves: Why would so many of the leading technology companies 
over the last two decades support what the FCC is doing if they think 
it will hurt innovation? It doesn't make any sense because it isn't 
true. Net neutrality and the FCC rules will protect the innovators and 
entrepreneurs who have made the Internet what is it today and what it 
will be tomorrow.
  Don't take my word for it. Listen to the experts from Bank of 
America, Goldman Sachs, Citibank, Wells Fargo, Merrill Lynch, and 
Raymond James. These companies have all stated they do not believe the 
FCC's current rules will hurt investment. Citibank said the FCC's rules 
were ``balanced,'' and Goldman Sachs said they were ``a light touch'' 
and created ``a framework with a lot of wiggle room.''
  What is even more telling is that investment in networks that support 
wired and wireless Internet has jumped since the announcement of the 
FCC's rules. In fact, investment is more than 10 percent higher in the 
first half of 2011 than in the same period last year. Venture capital 
firms poured $2.3 billion into Internet-specific companies in the 
second quarter of 2011. I think these numbers speak for themselves. 
They tell a story of surging investor confidence following the FCC's 
vote on these rules and not the doomsday portrayal we will hear from 
our opponents.
  Protecting innovation in this country is particularly important given 
the state of the telecom industry today. I don't need to tell you that 
telecom corporations have grown larger and fewer. We know, in part, 
because we have seen our cable, Internet, and telephone bills rising 
and rising. What else have we seen? Customer service that has gone 
straight out the window. When we are angry we wasted another day 
waiting for a Comcast repairman to come and install a cable Internet 
line in our house or we have been put on hold by Verizon for the fifth 
time in a single call and we finally decide to switch companies, we may 
realize we don't have another choice.
  Seventy percent of households in this country have one or two choices 
for basic broadband Internet service. The majority, 60 percent, of the 
households only have one choice for high-speed broadband.
  This is appalling for many reasons. It affects prices, quality of 
service, and choices for customers, but it is ultimately why we need 
net neutrality. We need to make sure companies play by the rules. As 
control of the Internet has shifted into the hands of a smaller and 
smaller number of corporations, we need to make sure those companies 
are able to dictate the speed of traffic based on how much a content 
provider can pay or prioritize their own content over other companies' 
content.
  Of course, as I said before, there is nothing wrong with maximizing 
shareholder profit since that is what corporations are obligated to do. 
Minnesota is home to many great corporations, including 3M, General 
Mills, and Medtronic. These companies create thousands of jobs and 
produce fantastic products. Other corporations should not be able to 
prevent others from competing. Competition is what net neutrality is 
all about. It is about ensuring that the next breakthrough product has 
the opportunity to reach consumers through a free and open and equal 
Internet.
  In addition to protecting innovation and small businesses in this 
country, net neutrality is also about speech. The Internet is not just 
where we go to shop for local products and services; the Internet is 
where we go to find political campaign information and read local news 
stories. The Internet is what helped fuel the Arab Spring, in large 
part because it has become the soapbox of the 21st century. Organizers 
and advocates are no longer stapling posters to bulletin boards to get 
their message out there. They are now posting their message on Twitter 
and Facebook. The Internet is not just responsible for an upheaval in 
how campaigns and advocacy occur; it is also responsible for an 
upheaval in the print media world because the Internet is also the 
printing press and library of the 21st century.
  This is why it is so important we make sure the corporations 
providing Internet service play by the rules and are not able to profit 
by speeding up or slowing down our access to certain news Web sites or 
other places we go to access information. We would not want the Libyan 
Government to shut down access to Facebook in the middle of protests in 
that country for the same reasons we do not want a corporation 
controlling what information and Web sites we are able to access in 
order to benefit their bottom line.
  You know I have been a proponent of net neutrality for a long time. 
You have heard me over and over on how net neutrality is about keeping 
the Internet the way it is. But the truth is, the FCC rules, while a 
step in the right direction, are very conservative. I wish the FCC had 
done more, but the FCC wanted to reach a consensus, and they made a 
concerted effort to address many concerns of telecommunication 
companies, large and small, when they drafted these rules. For my 
opponents to now claim the FCC ignored public opinion or failed to 
consider the impact these rules would have on businesses is not true.
  First, I think we could all stand a bit of history on the bipartisan 
nature of this rule. Net neutrality is something that two Republican 
chairmen of the FCC, Michael Powell and Kevin Martin, championed in 
2004 and 2005. Chairman Powell first articulated a set of net 
neutrality principles and Chairman Martin, 1 year later, achieved 
unanimous Commission endorsement of the FCC's open Internet policy 
statement.
  In 2006, 11 House Republicans voted in favor of net neutrality on the 
floor. The Gun Owners of America, the Christian Coalition, and the 
Catholic Bishops joined with the ACLU, moveon.org and leading civil 
rights groups to advocate for the same principles for openness and 
freedom on the Internet.
  This debate started 7 years ago, and only after reviewing more than 
100,000 public comments and holding 6 public workshops did the 
Commission finally issue a rule. To claim this was premature, rushed or 
not carefully considered is just plain wrong. I also think it is 
completely inaccurate for my opponents to claim the Commission never 
analyzed the costs and benefits to this rule.
  In fact, there is an entire section of the rule entitled ``The 
Benefits of Protecting the Internet's Openness Exceed the Costs.'' I 
urge my colleagues to read this section of the Commission's order. It 
covers four pages. It contains over 25 lengthy, detailed, analytical 
footnotes. It is clear the Commission considered the costs and benefits 
of acting, and they concluded that ``there is no evidence that prior 
open Internet obligations have discouraged investment,'' and that 
``open Internet rules will increase incentives to invest in broadband 
infrastructure.''
  I recognize that a couple companies are challenging the FCC's rules 
in court, and they have every right to do so. But this resolution of 
disapproval amounts to little more than political gamesmanship from 
fringe organizations. I think it is important to know that not a single 
large telecommunication company supports this resolution of 
disapproval. They are not wasting their time with an arcane process, 
and we should not either. That is not to say Congress cannot and should 
not have a discussion about the merits of net neutrality. We can and we 
should.
  Frankly, I have been disappointed by the quantity of misinformation 
that has been such a large portion of this debate in the past.
  The rhetoric I heard during the House debate last April was 
disappointing. It is not the type of debate Americans deserve. I 
encourage a frank and in-depth discussion on net neutrality. I hope one 
day soon we will consider making a statutory change to the FCC's 
authority that will clarify that we want the FCC to make sure the 
Internet stays open and free. That will put the issue to rest for good. 
It is, frankly, the process we should be relying on. By forcing an up-
or-down vote through the Congressional Review Act, we are short-
circuiting the normal legislative process and ignoring the FCC's 
tremendous work on this issue.
  This resolution of disapproval is a procedural stunt that wastes 
limited

[[Page 16937]]

time which should be used to address the real problems Americans face 
every day. At the end of the day, the problems of Americans are why we 
are here. I love hearing from Minnesotans, and I got a great e-mail the 
other day. The letter was from a group of five self-proclaimed 
``highly-credentialed computer geeks,'' including a professor, a 
startup founder, an ex ``Google-er'' and a ``non-ex-IBMer.'' In their 
e-mail they wrote:

       The free market will drive innovation in the Internet, but 
     careful regulation is needed to preserve the freedom of the 
     markets from coalitions of companies that will seek to reduce 
     competition.

  They noted:

       History promises that the leading companies will work 
     together to create a monopoly that they can control so they 
     can make more money and . . . disrupt innovation.

  I am glad they and thousands of Minnesotans have taken the time to 
write and call to tell me how much preserving net neutrality means to 
them. These highly credentialed computer geeks are right: The free 
market will drive Internet innovation as long as that market is truly 
free and open--free from corporate control and open to all content 
providers equally.
  These constituents and millions of Americans don't want Congress 
engaged in political sparring matches designed to appease a few vocal 
critics. Americans, entrepreneurs, and small businesses want a world 
where the future Twitters, eBays, and Amazons of the world can grow and 
thrive, without interference from big mega conglomerates.
  If passed, this resolution will hurt consumers, stifle innovation, 
and create uncertainty in one of America's most innovative and 
productive sectors. We are at a pivotal moment, and I hope my 
colleagues will recognize this and join me in voting down this 
resolution of disapproval.
  I thank the Senator from Texas for allowing me to speak during this 
time, and I thank the Presiding Officer for holding the chair while I 
have been speaking.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Texas.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Madam President, I yield up to 15 minutes to the 
Senator from Alaska.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Alaska.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, there is a lot of discussion, of 
course, about jobs in this country--where they are, and what we can do 
to help incent them. I had the opportunity while I was in my State last 
week to host three different townhalls that focused on the state of our 
Nation's economy and what is happening with jobs and job creation. As I 
asked Alaskans for their input, what I heard consistently from 
community to community was: We can allow for job creation that is 
meaningful. We can allow for opportunities here in our State and across 
the country. But the first thing you can do is to get the government 
out of the way. That was probably my biggest takeaway out of the 
townhalls with Alaskans: Get the government out of our way so we can 
move forward as small business owners and operators, as those who are 
looking to advance jobs in resource development. Move the government 
back, and we can make some things happen.
  I think one of the key ways we can create real jobs is by moving the 
Federal Government out of the way of the private sector. Yet this 
administration is doing exactly the opposite. Our economy struggles to 
grow and many Americans, of course, are out of work, but what we are 
seeing out of the White House is this effort that essentially buries 
job creators under a mountain of paperwork and regulations. Businesses 
waste hours and productivity on checking the right boxes and making 
sure they have filled out the right form in the right way, rather than 
creating new opportunities for employees. Far too often, our small 
businesses are being judged by how well they keep their safety records 
rather than the actual safety records themselves: Did you check the 
right box? Did you fill out the right form? If you didn't, we are going 
to fine and penalize you. But is the focus on making sure they have a 
strong and sound safety record?
  Many of the regulations--and, unfortunately far too many coming from 
the EPA--unnecessarily raise the cost of energy and other vital goods 
and services. I, as the ranking member on the Energy Committee, have 
spent a lot of time and a lot of focus on what we are doing in this 
country to help reduce our energy costs. Unfortunately, far too often 
we are seeing increased costs to our families and to our businesses 
because of the regulations that come at them. While we all support 
responsible environmental regulation--I want EPA to do its job--we also 
want to protect other vital national interests such as affordable and 
reliable energy and a strong economy.
  Remember too that unreliable or unduly expensive energy has broad 
negative impacts on all aspects--public health--all aspects of our day. 
When I hear from Alaska's business owners, they say two things. I told 
my colleagues what the first one was, which is get government out of 
the way, and let us get to work. Business owners across the country 
agree--there was a Gallup poll last month--small business owners 
indicated that complying with government regulations is the most 
important problem they face today. The No. 1 issue on the minds of 
small business owners is the fact that complying with government 
regulations is burying them. What we hear from businesses is that they 
need the regulatory agencies to follow the rule of law and strike a 
proper balance between the many important national interests our laws 
protect.
  When it comes to regulation, in my opinion, this administration has 
gone further--they have pushed past that rule of law in striking that 
proper balance. What we are seeing is a level of overreach, which I 
think is unprecedented, by the agencies reaching out and expanding 
their jurisdiction, if you will, and setting policy as opposed to 
implementing the laws that have been passed.
  The resolutions of disapproval we will have before us for a vote 
tomorrow--Senator Paul's resolution on the cross-State air pollution 
and Senator Hutchison's resolution of disapproval as it relates to the 
Internet--are both incredibly important for the issues they raise but 
even more so speaking to what we are seeing right now with agency 
overreach. As the Chair may recall, last year I led an effort on this 
floor to push back against the EPA in an area where the EPA was, for 
all intents and purposes, setting policy when it came to greenhouse gas 
emissions in this country. I strongly and firmly believe the role of 
the agencies is to implement the laws we have passed, not to set 
policy. So I share the concerns Senator Hutchison and Senator Paul have 
raised with the two rules that are at issue today. They are utilizing a 
tool under the Congressional Review Act which allows us as a Congress 
to step in when Federal agencies go overboard with trying to make 
businesses comply with costly regulations, in effect, that overreach.
  Let's first discuss very briefly Senator Paul's resolution of 
disapproval regarding the Environmental Protection Agency's cross-State 
air pollution rule. I have seen it referred to as the acronym CSAPR or 
``zapper,'' but because neither one of those sounds like anything we 
can relate to, I will refer to it as the cross-State pollution rule. 
This rule should not go forward at this time for a number of reasons, 
not the least of which is its potential impact on electric reliability. 
Independent grid operators and the independent professionals whom we 
count on to assess electric reliability have expressed concerns about 
subjecting generators of electricity to the rule, especially on the 
current timetable they are dealing with. The EPA simply needs to take 
another look at those impacts and what this rule will do to electricity 
costs.
  There have been a number of independent studies that have pointed to 
the impact of EPA's rules generally, including the cross-State 
pollution rule and what that impact would be on existing electric 
generation capacity. The predictions differ on magnitude but project 
the retirement of as much as 8 percent of the Nation's installed

[[Page 16938]]

electric generating capacity. Again, I will grant you, there is a range 
of difference here, but potentially as much as 8 percent of our 
country's installed generating capacity could be brought offline. That 
is significant. I have asked for a reliability analysis. We have gone 
back and forth in terms of getting that assessment. There will be a 
technical conference at the end of the month that hopefully will lead 
to a better understanding, but the long and the short of it is right 
now, we know that we don't know exactly how much could be impacted by 
this rule and others.
  More specifically, the rules generally and the cross-State pollution 
rule alone could lead to more intense regional impact. Texas, for 
example, wasn't even included in the proposed rule but, as a 
consequence of the final rule, could see some very significant 
powerplant retirements and hence potentially significant adverse impact 
on reliability. The Midwest, according to the grid operator there, 
could also see retirements of electric capacity with attendant 
challenges for keeping the lights on.
  In addition to the reliability impact, there is also going to be a 
cost impact. The cross-State pollution rule is the first of a number of 
pending rules to go final and the EPA has made some major changes 
between that proposed rule and the final rule. The agency has even 
proposed significant technical adjustments as recently as last month, 
even though the rule is slated to go final by the beginning of this 
next year.
  Putting aside the merits of the corrections--and I understand they 
don't go far enough--the EPA should be sent back to the drawing board 
to learn more, understand more about the potential reliability impact, 
and then should amend the substantive requirements of the cross-State 
pollution rule so that those required to comply can comply. If EPA had 
looked carefully at that time-reliability issue in the first place, 
there probably wouldn't be reason for the delay, but they acted in 
haste, and haste makes waste.
  I wish to speak quickly to Senator Hutchison's resolution of 
disapproval regarding the FCC net neutrality rule. The rule put into 
place by the FCC in 2010 circumvents Congress. It assumes an authority 
that this body never consented to. We cannot allow the executive branch 
to go down this road. We just should not allow it. No provision of any 
statute explicitly gives the FCC the authority to impose these sweeping 
rules on the Internet. In fact, section 230 of the Communications Act 
makes it the policy of the United States ``to preserve the vibrant and 
competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet and 
other interactive computer services, unfettered by Federal or State 
regulation.'' The Internet, we would all agree--I heard the comments of 
the Senator from Minnesota--has been a huge boon for small businesses 
and jobs throughout our country. We recognize that. We want to ensure 
it continues in that way.
  To quote FCC Commissioner McDowell from a Wall Street Journal op-ed:

       Net-neutrality sounds nice, but the web is working fine 
     now. The new rules will inhibit investment, deter innovation 
     and create a billable-hours bonanza for lawyers.

  So unless the administration is trying to create jobs for lawyers, I 
don't find any justification to expand the government's reach to 
regulate the Internet as the FCC proposes. Once again, what we are 
seeing is an agency stepping in to regulate in an area where the laws 
simply did not contemplate.
  For all of these reasons, and because the Federal Government needs to 
stop overburdening our country with costly regulations at a time when 
we can least afford it, I support the resolution of disapproval from 
Senator Hutchison as well as the resolution of disapproval from Senator 
Paul.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Franken.) The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, soon the Senate will vote on the Hutchison 
resolution that, as the Presiding Officer said very eloquently, would 
overturn the decision of the Federal Communications Commission on what 
has come to be known as net neutrality. The bottom line for me is 
straightforward. A vote for the Hutchison resolution will enable a 
handful of special interests to occupy the Internet. These elites will 
then have the power to crowd out the voices for change and the ideas of 
the future. The Internet would become a glidepath for a relatively 
small number of people to gain enormously rather than an opportunity 
for all Americans to prosper.
  I think some of the ideas that have been offered up with respect to 
the Hutchison resolution just defy the facts. For example, we had some 
discussion about section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. I wrote 
that section. It was a key development, in my view, in the growth of 
the Internet because it gave us a chance to deal with smut and some of 
the junk families have been so upset with without squelching the 
potential for the net. It enabled content sharers to grow, ever since 
we struck that thoughtful approach, rather than just go to a censorship 
regime. I have heard that somehow net neutrality would undo that 
particular provision. Nothing could be further from the truth. Net 
neutrality is exactly about what I sought to do in section 230 of the 
Communications Decency Act, which was to make sure that all voices 
could flourish--not just the voices of a few but all voices could 
flourish.
  If anybody wants to talk a bit more about section 230 in the 
Communications Decency Act, I am happy to have that discussion, but as 
the author of that provision, it is something I and a lot of other 
people who have worked in this field have felt was essential to the 
growth of the Internet, and we share that view just as we believe that, 
as the Presiding Officer does, net neutrality is critical to the growth 
of the Internet in the years ahead because the fundamental principles 
that underlie both section 230 and net neutrality are the same.
  The debate about the Federal Communication Commission's decision goes 
right to the heart of what the Internet is all about. It has always 
been a platform where all the actors are equal, where everybody has 
that opportunity, as the Presiding Officer suggested, at the American 
dream. It is a place where, whether it is one dissenting voice 
screaming out for democratic change or one brilliant idea that forever 
changes the way that people and society organize, everyone has that 
opportunity.
  I chair the Senate Finance Subcommittee on International Trade. I 
think just one example of what we have seen is the Internet is going to 
be the shipping lane of the 21st century. This is the way societies are 
going to organize. This is the way people are going to come together. 
This is the way business is going to be conducted. Basically, net 
neutrality protects everybody's access to that shipping lane. It is not 
just going to be a place for the old-world business model. You bet the 
old-world business models are threatened by net neutrality. I 
understand that. I understand they are threatened by it. They have 
always been able to count on big, powerful, and well-connected 
interests and organizations to help them to dominate industry, and the 
Internet overturned that kind of thinking because it is the equalizer, 
it is the democratizer.
  It just seems to me that when we open our morning newspaper day after 
day and see that the hope of the country is in innovation, in startups, 
in new ideas--it is not just in Silicon Valley, it is all over the 
country and all over the world--the last thing we want to do here in 
our country is adopt rules that would retard that development. And my 
view is that the power of the Internet--the network--is best utilized 
when content can move freely through it, and that is whether it is free 
from taxes, from liability, and certainly free from the kind of 
discrimination that would be allowed if the net neutrality rules were 
overturned.
  Again, I touched on section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and 
why that was so important to the growth of the net and why I think net 
neutrality is consistent with that. It is the same with respect to some 
other legislation in which I have been heavily involved.

[[Page 16939]]

  I had the privilege of being one of the coauthors of the Internet Tax 
Freedom bill. What that was all about was trying to protect the 
Internet from discrimination--not all taxes altogether but 
discrimination. That, too, is a fundamental principle of the net 
neutrality rules, is trying to make sure the net is not going to be 
singled out by a handful of special interests who could, in effect, 
devise what amounts to their own lanes on the Internet and force 
everybody else to pay for it.
  So despite what may even be the interests of some of these powerful 
interest groups--and I know they are all saying now that they have no 
intent to discriminate against content over their networks. History 
shows that they cave every time when shareholders come and say: Look, 
you have to take this step to generate a profit. I think the Internet 
is too important to leave those kinds of decisions vulnerable to what 
is inevitably going to be the cry from shareholders and others to 
maximize profits.
  One last point, if I might. I see other colleagues waiting to speak. 
I think the Internet and the economy in this country that is driven by 
the Internet represent perhaps our greatest comparative advantage. I 
touched on the Internet being the shipping lane of the 21st century. 
You know, what I want us to do is enhance the American way, enhance 
American values, and use the Internet to promote those values, 
facilitate speech, and expand the marketplace.
  The reality is that the American brand is something very special, 
very special all over the world. The fact is, we have small businesses, 
and we heard from them in hearings. I know the distinguished chairman 
of the Commerce Committee is here, Senator Rockefeller, and others. 
Hardly a day goes by that I don't wish I was back being a member of the 
Senate Commerce Committee because it is such an important committee, it 
does such important work. We saw in some of those first hearings on the 
Internet--we started looking at taxes and regulation and liability and 
the Communications Decency Act--we saw how small businesses that really 
could operate only in a relatively small area for years and years 
suddenly, after they paid their Internet access charges, could go 
wherever they want, when they want, how they want, and they were equal 
to the most powerful groups and voices in the country. That is their 
opportunity. That is their chance to get their brand all over the 
world.
  We ought to make sure we take no action that is going to make it 
harder for small entrepreneurs to exchange their goods and services far 
beyond their communities. We ought to be making judgments that allow 
them to get into every nook and cranny of the world with the American 
brand.
  I hope my colleagues will reject this resolution. I believe the 
Internet has thrived precisely because of the principles of net 
neutrality. It has contributed to the American economy and to job 
creation because consumers ultimately get to see and get what they want 
as quickly as they want it.
  It is going to be an important vote. I heard the Presiding Officer 
say that this was something of an issue for geeks, and from time to 
time, people have said I am one of those. But I will tell the Presiding 
Officer, I think ultimately the net is not about geeks, it is about 
democracy. This is the great democratizer. This is the trampoline that 
provides opportunities to people without power and clout.
  I want to say to colleagues, particularly those who have mentioned 
section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, as the author of that 
particular provision--and Senator Rockefeller remembers this huge 
outcry about smut. We were all concerned about smut at that time. And 
we said: There is a choice. We can either do, with respect to this 
debate, what makes sense for the future, and that is empower families 
and parents to get these filters so the Internet can grow and we can 
fight smut in a practical way, or we can do a lot of damage and come up 
with some sort of censorship regime.
  As colleagues remember, essentially both approaches were included in 
the bill, and the approach that mandated censorship was struck down. 
Freedom won. The principles of net neutrality won in that first big 
battle fighting smut 15 years ago. If we were to undo the decisions of 
the Federal Communications Commission and move back to the days when 
you could talk about discriminating, you know, against the Internet, I 
think it would be a step against all the progress we have made in the 
last 15 years with respect to oversight and regulation and taxes.
  This is an important vote, colleagues. When you read the morning 
newspaper and you see that it is the entrepreneurs and the startups and 
the innovators who are providing the path forward in a very difficult 
economy, I think you will see that the policies we have laid out for 
the last 15 years, whether it is the Communications Decency Act, 
whether it is other legislation--Chairman Rockefeller remembers when we 
wrote the digital signatures law in the Commerce Committee--these 
votes, these laws have all become law because they essentially were 
built on the very same principles of net neutrality, and that is 
freedom for all and a democratic Internet to provide opportunity to all 
Americans and not just the elites, not just a handful of special 
interests.
  I commend Chairman Rockefeller and Senator Franken for their good 
work.
  I often agree with Senator Hutchison. This is not one of those 
opportunities.
  I hope my colleagues, when we have this vote on the extraordinarily 
important resolution involving net neutrality, will vote against the 
Hutchison resolution.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, how much time remains on our side?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is 79 minutes 14 seconds.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. I yield up to 10 minutes to the Senator from Wyoming.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to support 
Senator Hutchison and to talk about this role that is being played now 
by the Federal Communications Commission in terms of regulating the 
Internet for the very first time.
  I oppose having these bureaucrats regulating the Internet. I support 
the resolution of disapproval that is now on the Senate floor.
  In the 2008 Presidential campaign, then-Candidate Obama made it very 
clear that he was for empowering Washington's bureaucracy through more 
redtape. The President was not looking to make Washington more 
efficient, in my mind, or more effective, but to make Washington 
bigger, to centralize power in Washington. One of his campaign promises 
was a new regulation called net neutrality. It appears to me that the 
President then appointed one of his school friends and basketball 
buddies to be Chairman of the FCC, possibly with this in mind.
  So here we are in 2011, and it seems to me that Congress is now being 
asked to make a decision. I want Congress--I am asking Congress and my 
colleagues to reverse the course of the bureaucracy.
  The administration did not even deem this rule to be what they call 
significant.
  A significant rule is one that has an impact on the economy of at 
least $100 million. I believe this is a significant rule. I support 
Senator Hutchison in her resolution because it will keep the Internet 
free and open.
  Republicans and Democrats agree. Earlier this year, the House of 
Representatives passed a similar resolution and it had bipartisan 
support.
  Net neutrality is very real. The time to act is now. We will be 
voting in the next day or so, and the reason we need to act now is that 
the rules of having more bureaucratic government control go into effect 
in just a few weeks--November 20, 2011.
  It does seem Congress is being disregarded. Congress has never 
delegated authority to the FCC to regulate in the past.

[[Page 16940]]

  The Communications Act of 1996 had a goal, which was to ``promote 
competition and reduce regulations.'' In 1996, Bill Clinton was 
President. This is what it said--the Communications Act of 1996: The 
goal, to ``promote competition and reduce regulation.''
  Instead, we have unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats, who are 
ignoring Congress and voting for regulation of the Internet.
  Let's look at the overall economy. Right now, we have 14 million 
Americans who are out of work. The number again this month is 9 percent 
unemployment in this country. The administration is now making it a 
priority--a priority--to regulate another sector of our economy over 
jobs.
  The FCC has opened the door for Washington bureaucrats to take over 
one-sixth of our economy. They ought to be focusing on creating jobs, 
making it easier and cheaper for the private sector to create jobs. But 
between health care, banking, and now technology, this administration 
is taking over our economy sector by sector and making it more 
expensive and harder for the private sector to create jobs.
  The FCC's actions threaten innovation and investment in America. 
Regulations are the biggest burden being faced by small businesses in 
this country today. If you don't believe me, just ask them. The polling 
of small business owners has said it is regulations coming out of 
Washington that are their biggest burden today.
  Technology pioneer and Apple cofounder Steve Jobs warned President 
Obama about Washington redtape. There is a new biography out about him 
by Walter Isaacson. He said this:

       [Jobs] described [to Obama] how easy it was to build a 
     factory in China, and said that it was almost impossible to 
     do these days in America, largely because of regulations and 
     unnecessary costs.

  This rule we are looking at transfers the future of the Internet out 
of the hands of the American people, and it makes government the 
gatekeeper of Internet services.
  Former FCC Commissioner Meredith Baker said this:

       The rules will give government, for the first time, a 
     substantive role in how the Internet will be operated and 
     managed.

  This means the future of Internet technology--whether on a 
smartphone, iPad or computer--will be in the hands of Washington 
bureaucrats.
  Engineers and entrepreneurs will not be able to give us the Internet 
we want, at a price we want.
  Former FCC Commissioner Baker also said:

       By replacing market forces and technological solutions with 
     bureaucratic oversight, we may see an Internet future not 
     quite as bright as we need, with less investment, less 
     innovation and more congestion.

  No American wants that, but that is what this government is giving to 
the American people. To me, this means recent Internet service 
innovations such as 3G and 4G wireless speeds and new fiber networks 
now become riskier investments.
  Less investment means every American's ability to access the Internet 
he or she wants may be affected. Less investment means fewer jobs.
  Four months ago, President Obama realized he had a regulation problem 
with independent agencies such as the FCC. He issued an executive order 
asking independent agencies to review burdensome redtape. Instead of 
reviewing redtape, they have rolled out even more of it. The 
Presidential review has fallen woefully short.
  The President asked independent agencies to produce a plan to reduce 
regulations within 120 days. Well, 120 days was yesterday. So the 120 
days have come and gone, and what we have received once again from this 
President is more rhetoric and little by way of results.
  If there was ever an example of an independent agency rule that needs 
to be put against the President's rhetoric, it is this net neutrality 
rule.
  Net neutrality picks winners and losers. It threatens smaller and 
rural providers.
  Brett Glass of LARIAT, a wireless Internet service provider in 
Wyoming, warned the FCC about the effects on smaller providers. He said 
the redtape will hurt his ``ability to deploy new service to currently 
underserved and unserved areas.''
  He warns that many broadband providers are small businesses that are 
serving rural communities. Mr. Glass wrote:

       The imposition of regulations that would drive up costs or 
     hamper innovation would further deter future outside 
     investment in our company and others like it.

  So here we are. Americans have made it very clear that they oppose 
Washington worsening the Web. Over 60 percent of voters oppose 
Washington putting its hands on the Internet.
  This regulation we are debating is a classic example of Washington 
trying to fix something that is not broken.
  Ninety-three percent of Americans are satisfied with their broadband 
service. Ninety-one percent of Americans are satisfied with their 
broadband speed. The Internet is working remarkably well.
  There is a fundamental disconnect with those in Washington who seek a 
more powerful bureaucracy and those at home in the 50 States of our 
Union who are seeking a stronger economy.
  The warnings are real in Wyoming, my State, and all across this 
country. Congress must step in where the bureaucrats in Washington have 
overstepped. Senator Hutchison's resolution of disapproval should be 
supported on both sides of the aisle.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida is recognized.
  Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I rise in support of this resolution to 
disapprove the FCC's open Internet order.
  The FCC wants to regulate the Internet. Why? There must be some sort 
of market failure that needs correcting or some Internet issue that 
needs fixing or out-of-control provider that needs regulating, right?
  That is not the case at all. We are talking about one of the most 
successful sectors of our economy--one that has flourished with limited 
government regulation and continued to create jobs in the midst of a 
very deep recession and economic downturn.
  Since the Internet was privatized in the midnineties, it has 
prospered. The industry's growth and impact on our economy, as well as 
its development of new, life-changing technologies and applications, is 
staggering.
  Twenty years ago, the Internet as we know it did not exist. Today 
over 2 billion people use it.
  Ten years ago, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Skype did not even 
exist, and hundreds of millions of people are now users.
  Five years ago, mobile applications didn't exist. At the end of last 
year, there were over half a million apps, applications, and well over 
10 billion will be downloaded this year. Hopefully, they will soon be 
downloading mine. We came up with one yesterday for our office.
  Two years ago, the iPad didn't exist. Now, over 25 million have been 
sold.
  All these advancements expanded broadband access and encouraged 
private investment.
  In 2003, only 15 percent of Americans had access to broadband and now 
over 95 percent do. This growth will only continue.
  In its annual report on the Internet, Cisco projected that the 
Internet will quadruple over the next 4 years, and the 1-year growth, 
from 2014 to 2015, will be equal to all the Internet traffic in the 
world last year.
  Clearly, the Internet industry is growing and innovating at 
lightening speed. Why has the industry been able to do this? It is 
because the environment for innovation and job creation has been ripe, 
with government regulation not getting in their way.
  Imagine that, the government has stayed out, has taken the ``light 
touch'' approach, and the industry has prospered as a result.
  The broadband expansion we have seen, the innovation that has 
occurred with computers and tablets and explosion of smartphones and 
mobile devices and the increased job creation have all occurred without 
the FCC's open Internet order.
  So why does the government want to start regulating now? Is it 
because the Internet endangers public health or environment? Clearly 
not. Yet the proponents of Internet regulation claim

[[Page 16941]]

the freedom and growth of the Internet are in jeopardy. Quite frankly, 
in my opinion, that is ridiculous.
  To suggest that some type of regulation is needed flies in the face 
of the growth of the Internet economy. This is one of the problems 
facing our economy and plaguing our country. We are regulating where 
regulation is not needed. We are regulating based on speculation and in 
search of a problem.
  This is not how we encourage innovation. This is not how we create 
certainty in the marketplace, and this is definitely not how to 
encourage job creation.
  Over the past few weeks, all we have talked about is jobs and 
rightfully so because, throughout America, the No. 1 issue facing 
Americans is jobs--or the lack thereof.
  Yet here we are debating whether to overturn a regulation on one of 
the few growth areas of our economy, one of the few sectors that has 
created and is creating good, high-paying jobs.
  This should be common sense. It is no wonder people watching think 
that in this place, Washington, DC, the Federal political process is 
out of touch and dysfunctional.
  As the FCC drafted the open Internet order, the Commission heard from 
broadband providers, including small businesses, about the problems the 
order would create and the negative impact it would have on consumers.
  One small Internet service provider stated that the imposition of 
network management rules will hinder its ability to obtain investment 
capital and deploy new services in unserved areas.
  The regulations would also increase costs and hamper innovation, 
which would only further discourage outside investment in the company.
  In other words, the Internet regulation we are talking about today 
would lead to lower quality of service and would raise operating costs, 
which would result in higher prices on consumers.
  So we can clearly see the impacts of Internet regulation--less 
investment, less innovation, higher prices for consumers, lower quality 
services, increased business costs and, ultimately, fewer jobs.
  Companies will spend more money on compliance, basically complying 
with regulations, instead of investing in innovation and driving down 
prices. More money will be spent on lawyers, not on engineers.
  Let me be clear. The Internet will still exist if Washington 
bureaucrats get their way. But the order's impact will be profound, and 
it is going to disrupt what has become one of America's proudest 
entrepreneurial and industrial achievements in our history.
  I have heard proponents say this regulation will preserve the open 
Internet as it exists today. But it is my humble opinion this is 
shortsighted.
  Personally, I don't want to continue using the Internet of today. I 
want the Internet of tomorrow. I want the devices and applications I 
use today to soon be obsolete and out of date because the industry has 
continued to churn out something newer, something better and faster.
  I want technologies to continue to develop and industries to continue 
to emerge. We are now using fewer devices for more telecommunications 
services, and it is not hard to imagine a day when we will use one 
device for all of them.
  The industries are headed in that direction. When we throw the 
government in the middle of it, the pace will slow, uncertainty will 
enter the marketplace, and future innovations may just go unrealized.
  One of the beautiful aspects of the Internet industry is that we 
don't know what is around the corner in terms of new technologies and 
innovations. If a few years ago we had told someone we would Google 
them, they probably would have been offended. But today that actually 
means something.
  Going forward, we have no idea what the future holds, what the new 
innovations or ideas or technologies will be. We know technologies we 
cannot even imagine today will very soon be part of our everyday lives. 
The question is whether we are going to encourage that and particularly 
whether we are going to encourage that to happen here or whether we are 
going to discourage that from happening.
  Regulating the Internet--and this specific measure we are trying to 
knock down today, if it passes--will discourage that development.
  The FCC and Federal Government cannot keep pace with the Internet and 
technology industries, and the government should not attempt to catch 
up through regulation or legislation. That is important. We are asking 
this government--this bureaucratic structure, which struggles to keep 
pace with issues we have been facing for the last 20 years--to somehow 
keep pace with the issues and technology and innovations that arrive in 
the Internet world. Not only do I think it is asking too much, I think 
it is impossible. Therefore, the government should not be looking at 
ways to preserve the status quo. Our government should be involved in 
looking at ways to promote the future of these industries, and this 
Internet regulation does not promote the future.
  I have frequently spoken on this floor about the new American 
century, about whether our country will continue to be a leader in this 
new century. I believe with all my heart--I do, even with all the bad 
news and the noise we hear every time we turn on the television--there 
is no reason this 21st century should not be every bit as much the 
American century as the last century. One of the reasons I believe that 
is because of the advances our entrepreneurs and innovators are making 
in this field of the Internet.
  If there is any sector of our economy that will ensure that the next 
century is the American century, it is the Internet and the technology 
sector. That is an industry where we are the leader, and it is the one 
where we must continue to lead. To do that, we must encourage 
innovation, incentivize investment, provide certainty in the 
marketplace, and promote the competitive environment this dynamic 
industry needs.
  That will require passage of this resolution of disapproval. So I 
urge my colleagues to vote yes on the resolution.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Udall of New Mexico). The Senator from 
Texas.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, how much time remains on this side?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is 60 minutes remaining.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Sixty?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Sixty minutes, yes.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. President, I have been looking for a time when the floor was open 
to refute some of the comments and concerns raised earlier on the 
Senate floor. I want to start by taking on a comment that was made by 
the Senator from Minnesota, Mr. Franken, who said YouTube started above 
a pizzeria in 2005 and sold for $1.6 billion 2 years later to Google, 
and that wouldn't have been possible without net neutrality.
  Well, Mr. President, I must point out that we didn't have net 
neutrality in 2005. We haven't had Federal regulation of the Internet 
in this country such as we have seen during this last year put forward 
by this administration. In fact, YouTube and Google were both created 
in a marketplace without net neutrality regulations. Other online 
successes--Facebook, Hulu, Twitter, and new devices such as the Apple 
iPhone and Amazon Kindle--all happened without net neutrality 
regulations. These are innovations that have changed communication 
patterns not only in our country but around the world as well. So we 
have had these innovations without the heavy hand of government.
  It is very interesting to hear the debate on the Senate floor because 
we seem to hear that net neutrality is something that will keep the 
Internet open. The opposite is true. It is beginning to put the clamps 
on the successes that we have had by having an open Internet. All these 
companies they are talking about needing net neutrality to come forward 
and blossom and grow are the companies that have done exactly that 
without net neutrality regulations.

[[Page 16942]]

  What we should do is assure that we don't put a blanket over the 
Internet and start saying to everybody who has a new idea or a new 
product or a new service provider: You better go to the FCC before you 
go forward with that or you could be in jeopardy. You could be 
penalized. You could be thought to have an ``unreasonable'' product on 
the Internet because we don't know yet what is reasonable. We just know 
you have to be reasonable because we have a new regulation now that 
says you must be reasonable, without any definition of what this FCC--
which had no authority to go into this area--is going to determine is a 
``reasonable'' product that would not interfere with anything else.
  Mr. President, we haven't had net neutrality before. All the 
successes I hear talked about in this debate have happened without the 
heavy or the light hand of government stopping the originality and 
innovation that has marked the success of our country.
  Earlier, Mr. Kerry, the Senator from Massachusetts, said the Internet 
made the 1996 Telecommunications Act obsolete 6 months after it was 
enacted. But if the 1996 act did not sufficiently address the Internet, 
thus making it obsolete, how can that same law be the genesis and basis 
of the FCC's assertion it has the power to regulate the Internet? We 
have to have one or the other, and it is our assertion the FCC did not 
get specific authority to regulate the Internet that is required for 
Congress to give it in order to make rules in this area. So Senator 
Kerry can't have it both ways. He can't say the Telecommunications Act 
was obsolete but it is also the basis of these new restrictive 
regulations.
  Senator Kerry sent a ``Dear Colleague'' letter to everyone in the 
Senate asking them to vote against this resolution. What I think 
Senator Kerry was saying in that letter is that net neutrality is not a 
regulation of the Internet because it is just a regulation of the 
onramp. In other words, we are not trying to support the FCC regulating 
the whole Internet; they are just doing the gateway, they are just 
doing the onramp.
  Well, that was the position the FCC took when they made this 
regulation. But we can't argue that net neutrality is not regulation of 
the Internet because the Internet service providers are the only 
onramps to the Internet. It is a misleading statement to say that just 
regulating the onramp isn't regulating the Internet. The Internet is 
the entire global network of millions of computer networks. It uses the 
Internet protocol standard to interconnect with each other. Internet 
backbone providers and last-mile Internet service providers serve as 
the foundation of the Internet. So they are the foundation.
  Web sites and services such as e-mail and voice-over IP, or VOIP, 
allow users to communicate on top of the foundation. The Internet is 
the whole online ecosystem put together. We can't have the edge without 
the core and vice versa. The onramp is as much a part of the 
information superhighway as are the cars traveling on it.
  FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell put it well in his dissent from the 
open Internet order that we are discussing today. He said:

       To say that today's rules don't regulate the Internet is 
     like saying regulating highway on ramps, off ramps, and 
     pavement don't equate to regulating the highways themselves.

  Mr. President, if we are going to say the FCC can regulate the 
onramp--and that is the first heavy hand of government that is going to 
start controlling and making decisions about what is reasonable and 
what is not--that means businesses are going to have to go to the FCC 
and say: Mother may I. If they have an innovative product, that is 
going to cost the consumer more because they will have had to go and 
hire lawyers to go to the FCC to get prior approval or it will delay 
the product getting out to consumers, possibly letting a European 
service provider that doesn't have these kinds of barriers get ahead of 
us.
  Internet technology is the basis of hundreds of thousands of jobs and 
products in our country. We are in a crisis right now. We all know we 
have 9 percent unemployment and that our economy is even dead in the 
water. So we have to do something to jump-start the economy. The last 
thing we want to do is put a blanket on it to make it harder for it to 
come back. I don't think anybody in this country with any common sense 
is going to say we have a thriving economy right now. So it does defy 
common sense to say we are going to allow regulations Congress has not 
approved and that Congress has not authorized the regulator to make, 
knowing it will have the effect of either freezing or delaying the 
innovation that has been the hallmark of the success of the Internet 
and technology in our country.
  There are several organizations that have banded together to ask that 
people vote for the resolution today. I ask unanimous consent to have 
printed in the Record a letter from, among others, Americans for Tax 
Reform, Taxpayers Protection Alliance, Hispanic Leadership Fund, and 
Americans for Prosperity.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                                 November 8, 2011.

     Re Rating Senate Joint Resolution 6, Net Neutrality.

     U.S. Senate.
       Dear Senator: We write to inform you that each of our 
     organizations, together representing millions of Americans, 
     will consider rating a vote in favor of Senate Joint 
     Resolution 6 to overturn the Federal Communications 
     Commission's (FCC) Net Neutrality Internet regulations in our 
     respective congressional ratings.
       The FCC enacted these Net Neutrality rules despite a 
     complete lack of Congressional authorization and after being 
     told by a court that they lack jurisdiction. The FCC 
     nevertheless insists on government regulation of how data 
     travels across the Internet without any showing of consumer 
     harm or other justification.
       The FCC's order also runs contrary to the broad and 
     bipartisan conversation in Washington about how best to grow 
     the economy and spur job creation. President Obama and 
     Members in Congress on both sides of the aisle have called to 
     rein in overbearing regulations that harm economic growth.
       The FCC's Net Neutrality rule is a prime case of 
     unnecessary rules emanating from unelected bureaucrats that 
     will cause economic harm and cost hundreds of thousands of 
     American jobs, as numerous studies have pointed out. But 
     regardless of whether you support Net Neutrality rules, the 
     process by which they were created cannot be allowed to 
     stand.
       Under the U.S. Constitution, it is your role in the U.S. 
     Senate to craft laws--not the role of federal agencies that 
     are bypassing Congress. Senate Joint Resolution 6, sponsored 
     by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, is a simple, commonsense 
     measure that uses the Congressional Review Act to reject 
     these rules, placing legislating authority back in the hands 
     of Congress where it belongs.
       We urge you to vote for Senate Joint Resolution 6 and may 
     be rating your vote in our annual Congressional scorecards. A 
     vote against this measure is a vote to abdicate your 
     responsibility and to instead rubber-stamp the job-killing 
     and unwarranted regulatory actions of an unelected and 
     unaccountable federal agency.

           Sincerely,
     Grover Norquist,
       President, Americans for Tax Reform (WILL RATE).
     Phil Kerpen,
       Vice President for Policy, Americans for Prosperity (WILL 
     RATE).
     David Williams,
       President, Taxpayers Protection Alliance (WILL RATE).
     Thomas Schatz
       President, Council for Citizens Against Government Waste.
     Mario H. Lopez,
       President, Hispanic Leadership Fund.

  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, in part, the letter says:

       The FCC enacted these Net Neutrality rules despite a 
     complete lack of Congressional authorization and after being 
     told by a court that they lack jurisdiction.

  Remember, this court, in the Comcast case, basically said to the FCC: 
You and all the other regulatory agencies that are independent must 
have specific authority from Congress to regulate in this area.
  They found in the Comcast case they did not have such jurisdiction. 
Once again, citing from the letter in support of passing S.J. Res. 6--
which is signed

[[Page 16943]]

by Grover Norquist, Phil Kerpen, David Williams, Thomas Schatz, and 
Mario Lopez--it says:

       The FCC's order also runs contrary to the broad and 
     bipartisan conversation in Washington about how best to grow 
     the economy and spur job creation. President Obama and 
     Members in Congress on both sides of the aisle have called to 
     rein in overbearing regulations that harm economic growth.

  Here we have yet another regulation on top of the EPA and the NLRB 
and the NMB coming forward to put a damper on our economy.
  Mr. President, I would like to read from an opinion piece written by 
Phil Kerpen, who is with the Americans for Prosperity, and I thought 
this was relevant to the debate.

       Network neutrality sounds nice. Originally, it was the idea 
     that all of the traffic . . . that travel over the networks 
     that comprise the Internet should be treated exactly the same 
     way. But engineers cried foul, because the routers that make 
     the Internet work are highly sophisticated with millions of 
     lines of code that necessarily prioritize different types of 
     traffic. Streaming video can't tolerate delays of a few 
     seconds whereas an e-mail could.
       So network neutrality morphed into something even more 
     dangerous, empowering the FCC bureaucrats to play traffic 
     cops, micromanaging networks, and deciding which traffic can 
     or can't be prioritized. The result would be a precipitous 
     decline in private investment because the companies that 
     spent billions of dollars building networks could no longer 
     be certain how the FCC bureaucrats would allow those networks 
     to be used.

  I am reading from this letter, and I will continue. The letter says:

       A recent study from New York University found that hundreds 
     of thousands of jobs would be lost. The tech sector--the 
     brightest spot in our economy--would be burdened by Federal 
     regulations the way the rest of the economy has been.

  So these are excerpts from Mr. Kerpen's opinion piece that say it is 
now crunch time to stop the FCC's Internet takeover.
  I think these outside groups that are weighing in are showing that 
just regular consumers--I heard the list of groups that are supporting 
this rule that has come out. But the citizens who are for free markets 
and tax reform and for letting our businesses grow and thrive through 
the American innovation--I like some of the things they have said that 
I think are very important in this debate.
  I urge my colleagues to look at whether we are exercising our 
responsibility as Members of Congress when we would vote against 
stopping a Federal agency that has not had a delegation of authority 
from Congress to regulate in this area. The House of Representatives 
has already voted in favor of this resolution. We need to send it to 
the President and say to the President: Congress did not delegate our 
authority.
  It is overstepping its bounds, and furthermore it is going to put a 
damper on the most thriving part of our economy today, and that is the 
tech sector. It is where we are, hands down, ahead in the world because 
we have kept the free markets. Why would we give that up to unelected 
Federal agencies that have not been asked by Congress to regulate in 
this area? And if we did, we should be required--because it is our 
constitutional responsibility to do so--to say exactly what we would 
ask a policy to be in a new regulation. We have not done that, and we 
should not allow the Federal agencies, which are appointed but not 
elected, to take over this area that is so important for our economy.
  If we have any guts at all in this Senate, we should stand up for our 
one-third of the balance of power in the Federal Government and assert 
ourselves to keep control over runaway Federal agencies that do not 
answer to anyone.
  Mr. HELLER. Mr. President, the Senate will soon vote to overturn the 
open internet order, widely known as net neutrality. This measure that 
was passed days before the start of the 112th session of Congress by 
the Federal Communications Commission is a rule that many believe the 
FCC had no legal right to make and will harm job creation in the 
technology sector of our economy.
  Plain and simple, this measure will cost the Nation good-paying jobs. 
That is why I do not support net neutrality and will vote in favor of 
the resolution of disapproval to overturn it.
  Since privatizing the Internet in 1994, the FCC and Congresses led by 
both Democrats and Republicans have handled the Internet with a light 
regulatory touch by classifying it as an information service. This 
classification originated from a Democrat-led FCC, and the U.S. Supreme 
Court supported efforts to classify the Internet as an information 
service when it upheld the FCC's Cable Modem Order on June 27, 2005.
  The FCC's policy has been that subjecting providers of enhanced 
services, even those offered via transmission wires, to title II common 
carrier regulation was unwise given the fast moving, competitive market 
to which they were offered. In other words, the FCC, led by Democrats 
and Republicans, has been consistent in the belief that regulating the 
Internet the same way we regulate land telephone lines even if those 
lines are used to connect to the Internet was counterproductive to good 
public policy given the speed of innovation and the competition 
present. Even the U.S. Supreme Court supported this position.
  So Congress has never passed a law that gives the FCC the power to 
regulate the Internet, the FCC has gone to great lengths to avoid 
regulating the Internet, and the U.S. Supreme Court has supported 
previous FCC administration policy toward zero regulation of the 
Internet. Yet here we are voting to overturn a Federal Communications 
Commission order to regulate the Internet.
  Make no mistake, as FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell said, ``To say 
the net neutrality rules don't regulate the Internet is like saying 
that regulating on-ramps, off-ramps, and its pavement doesn't equate to 
regulating the highways themselves.''
  But why does this matter? Why don't we just say: You know what, these 
unelected bureaucrats at the FCC know so much more than Congress and 
the Supreme Court. Let these rules go through.
  Because they will cost us jobs. U.S. broadband has seen an investment 
of hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure expansion and 
upgrades over the last 10 years and that has led to hundreds of 
thousands of jobs in this industry.
  This year alone, broadband providers are estimated to invest over $60 
billion in their networks. That is more money than the Federal 
Government has spent on highways in previous years.
  I am well aware that the FCC insists the rules will not have a 
significant impact on the industry, but they did little to prove this. 
Minus a market or cost-benefit analysis, there is no way of knowing 
what exactly the impact of this regulation will be.
  That is why I asked the FCC to conduct a market benefit analysis to 
prove the exact impact on jobs and the economy. The FCC stated the 
analysis was in the Internet order, but I still have not been able to 
find what they are referring to. I suspect the analysis was not ever 
actually done. If it was completed, the FCC would have seen that the 
costs of net neutrality would be significant and justifying the rules 
would not have been possible.
  The fact is, net neutrality regulation is costly. As explained by the 
Federal Trade Commission in 2007 when they said in part:

       Policy makers should proceed with caution in evaluating 
     calls for network neutrality regulation. . . . No regulation, 
     however well-intentioned, is cost free, and it may be 
     particularly difficult to avoid unintended consequences here.
       Policy makers should be very wary of network neutrality 
     regulation . . . simply because we do not know what the net 
     effects of potential conduct by broadband providers will be 
     on consumers, including among other things, the prices that 
     consumers may pay for Internet access, the quality of 
     Internet access and other services that will be offered, and 
     the choices of content and applications that may be available 
     to consumers in the marketplace.

  The FTC clearly stated that Congress must proceed with caution 
because we cannot fully quantify what the reaction by broadband 
providers would be if they were not able to manage their networks.
  Again, let me state, some reports have said that over the next 5 
years, there will be hundreds of billions of

[[Page 16944]]

dollars invested in broadband infrastructure which will result in half 
a million jobs.
  If broadband wire line and wireless service providers rolled back 
their investment by just 10 percent because of this regulation, the 
benefits of regulation would never outweigh the costs of job loss.
  I assure you, these companies will roll back their investments if 
this rule is allowed to move forward, which will in turn eliminate 
jobs.
  Because of the unpredictable nature of the Internet and evolving 
consumer demands, broadband providers must have the ability to change 
their business models to ensure maximum utilization of their network. 
These net neutrality rules impose restrictions on how a broadband 
provider can offer Internet service, which means broadband providers 
can't adapt to an evolving Internet. If a broadband provider does not 
have the ability to manage their own network to ensure maximum profits, 
the incentive to invest diminishes. If you minimize investment, you 
lose jobs. Estimates have put the number of jobs lost because of this 
regulation at 500,000 over the next 10 years. In my home State of 
Nevada, the unemployment level is at 13.2 percent, the highest in the 
Nation. Any regulation that increases unemployment both nationally and 
in my State is unacceptable.
  Finally, some people believe we need this regulation to ensure 
competition in the industry. I believe this is as ridiculous as saying 
that this measure will not cost jobs.
  Fixed and mobile broadband Internet access is growing rapidly. In 
2003, only 15 percent of Americans had access to broadband. In 2010, 95 
percent of Americans do. Competition, investment, innovation, and job 
creation are all growing because of the light touch policymakers and 
the FCC have put on the Internet.
  We are in this wonderful era of innovation and investment where 
people can use an I-pad to read their e-mail in the Sierra Nevadas 
because the government did not regulate the Internet. Now our friends 
on the other side of the aisle and the FCC are saying: Yes, but in 
order to continue this amazing innovation, we must regulate.
  Competition is robust in this industry, and when weighed against the 
loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs, the need for this regulation is 
simply not there. Net neutrality should not be enacted. It makes no 
sense for Nevada and will cause unnecessary job loss nationwide.
  I urge my colleagues to vote for this measure and disapprove of the 
FCC's net neutrality order.
  Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I rise today to speak in favor of the 
resolution of disapproval offered by the Senator from Texas. I commend 
her for leading this effort, and I was pleased to be an original 
cosponsor of the resolution.
  Like many of my colleagues, I was dismayed last December when the 
Federal Communications Commission chose to impose heavyhanded and 
burdensome new regulations on the Internet. There was no market failure 
or consumer harm requiring FCC action, and the FCC Chairman's 
determination to deliver on a misguided Presidential campaign promise 
is very disappointing. It is especially troubling in light of the 
unanimous DC Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in Comcast v. FCC, 
authored by a Clinton appointee and former Carter administration aide, 
stating that the Commission lacked the statutory authority under the 
Communications Act to regulate the Internet in this manner. 
Unfortunately, this decision, coupled with concerns expressed by 
Members of Congress, was completely ignored by an outcome-driven 
majority at the FCC. I doubt the Commission's lawyers will receive a 
warm welcome from the DC Circuit when they return to defend a policy 
the court struck down just last year.
  Shortly after the Federal appellate court ruled in the Comcast case, 
recognizing that net neutrality rules adopted under the Commission's 
title I authority would have difficulty surviving a court challenge, 
Chairman Genachowski shockingly announced that he would reclassify 
broadband as a title II telecommunications service and apply a 19th-
century regulatory framework to an innovative 21st-century technology. 
This decision ignored the successful history of treating broadband as a 
lightly regulated title I information service, which has been the 
policy of the FCC and Congress going back to the Clinton 
administration.
  Keeping regulators' hands off of the Internet has historically been 
supported by FCC Commissioners and Members of Congress on both sides of 
the aisle. For example, on March 20, 1998, a bipartisan group of 
Senators sent a letter to the FCC stating: [[W]e wish to make it clear 
that nothing in the 1996 Act or its legislative history suggests that 
Congress intended to alter the current classification of Internet and 
other information services or to expand traditional telephone 
regulation to new and advanced services.] They continued: [[W]ere the 
FCC to reverse its prior conclusions and suddenly subject some or all 
information service providers to telephone regulation, it seriously 
would chill the growth and development of advanced services to 
detriment of our economic and educational well-being.]
  I couldn't agree more.
  Then Democratic FCC Chairman William Kennard shared their view, 
stating: [Classifying Internet access as telecommunication services 
could have significant consequences for the global development of the 
Internet. We recognized the unique qualities of the Internet, and do 
not presume that legacy regulatory frameworks are appropriately applied 
to it.]
  Had traditional telephone common carrier regulations been applied to 
the Internet more than a decade ago, it is unlikely we would have the 
broadband services and speeds of today. The appropriate market 
incentives led to billions of dollars of private sector investment in 
broadband, created millions of jobs, and now high-speed Internet access 
is available to 95 percent of the population, and that number continues 
to grow. It is amazing what can happen when the Federal Government's 
regulatory policy for a particular industry is hands off.
  Fortunately, after a bipartisan majority of Congress wrote to the 
Commission objecting to the FCC Chairman's proposed radical shift in 
policy, the FCC did not officially reclassify broadband as a title II 
telecommunications service. However, as we saw last December, the 
Democratic majority at the Commission did not abandon their results-
oriented effort to regulate the Internet. Instead, in defiance of the 
Federal court decision in Comcast, the Commission chose to effectively 
place title II common carrier obligations on broadband service 
providers using their title I ancillary authority. The policy embraced 
by past Republican and Democratic FCC Chairman and Senators on both 
sides of the aisle has been relegated to the waste bin under the 
current regime at the FCC.
  In order to justify placing these new regulations on the Internet, 
the FCC for the first time found that broadband was not being deployed 
to all Americans in a ``reasonable and timely'' manner. This is an 
absurd claim that quickly falls apart when you look at the facts. 
According to the FCC's own broadband plan, 95 percent of Americans have 
access to broadband. In the early 2000s, that number was less than 20 
percent. In addition, terrestrial wireless and satellite broadband 
services continue to improve in terms of speed and availability. We are 
rapidly approaching the point where wireless Internet service becomes a 
true substitute for wireline service. This rapid rate of deployment and 
technological advances occurred absent the heavyhanded regulation we 
will be voting to repeal today.
  For my colleagues who may be unaware, I would like to point out that 
the FCC determined that the broadband marketplace was competitive and 
should remain unregulated in 2002, 2005, 2006, and 2007. Proponents of 
regulating broadband services have failed to demonstrate what has 
changed to warrant Federal intervention. Most consumers have a choice 
of

[[Page 16945]]

multiple broadband providers, and the suite of services and 
applications available on home computers, mobile smartphones and 
tablets, and Internet-connected televisions continues to grow. Even 
through tough economic times, broadband providers continues to invest 
and create jobs. I also find it perplexing that despite the FCC 
acknowledging that it may require $350 billion in new investment to 
achieve the goals of the National Broadband Plan, the agency 
nevertheless willfully adopts rules that will have a chilling effect on 
future investment.
  The Commission also makes the novel argument that section 706 of the 
1996 Communications Act, which directs the FCC to ``remove barriers to 
infrastructure investment,'' authorizes the adoption of new Internet 
regulations. The open Internet order flies directly in the face of the 
plain language of section 706. When the Commission imposed new rules on 
broadband service providers, they built new barriers to infrastructure 
investment.
  Support for Internet regulation seems to rely on baseless theoretical 
claims that consumers may be harmed by ``Internet gatekeepers'' at some 
point in the future. Despite the fact that the FCC Chairman has said he 
will use fact-based analysis when reviewing proposed rules, the facts 
indicate that consumers are not being harmed and broadband service 
providers are not blocking access to content. A fact-based analysis 
leads one to conclude that the market is healthy and competitive. I 
have significantly more faith in a competitive market rather than 
Federal bureaucrats shielding consumers from harmful business 
practices. In addition, current consumer protection laws, such as 
section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, will effectively address 
real consumer harms were they to actually ever occur in the broadband 
space.
  Lastly, it should be noted that while there have been attempts by 
some in Congress to impose similar regulations on the Internet, these 
attempts have all been unsuccessful. Unelected bureaucrats have now 
usurped Congress's authority and have taken it upon themselves to 
change the law. Opponents and supporters of net neutrality in the 
Senate should take offense to that, and I urge my colleagues to support 
the resolution of disapproval.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I am pleased to support the resolution 
before us that would express congressional disapproval of the Federal 
Communications Commission's move to regulate the Internet. The 
historically open architecture and free flow of the Internet should not 
be subject to onerous federal regulation.
  As a member and former chairman of the Commerce, Science and 
Transportation Committee, I have fought to prevent the FCC from 
unilaterally implementing network neutrality regulations for many 
years. Last Congress, I introduced the Internet Freedom Act of 2009, 
which would have prevented the Commission from regulating the network 
management practices of internet service providers. And this congress, 
I am a proud cosponsor of S.J. Res. 6.
  Skeptical consumers and American entrepreneurs should rightly view 
these new rules exactly for what they are--another government power 
grab over a private service provided by a private company in a 
competitive marketplace. Sadly, and to the detriment of consumers and 
our national economy, the FCC is the latest in a growing list of 
Federal agencies under the Obama administration that have chosen 
government intervention and influence over the free market. In a little 
less than 3 years, this administration has moved to control and exert 
more government influence over the auto industry, the energy sector, 
doctor-patient relationships, and now, through the FCC, it wishes to 
control high-tech industries by regulating its very core: the Internet.
  According to a report recently released by the House Government 
Oversight and Reform Committee, the Obama administration has imposed 75 
new major regulations costing more than $380 billion over 10 years. 
Moreover, the report continues by pointing out that there are 219 more 
``economically significant regulations'' in the works which will cost 
businesses $100 million or more each year for a minimum cost of $21 
billion over 10 years. These new regulations and added costs come in 
spite of Presidential Executive orders to reduce burdensome regulatory 
redtape.
  The government's politically motivated decision to regulate the 
Internet, like so many others, will stifle innovation, in turn further 
slowing our economic turnaround and depressing an already anemic job 
market. The technology industry is one of our Nation's bright spots and 
one of the fastest growing job markets. There is little dispute that 
innovation and job growth in this sector of our economy is a key 
component to America's future prosperity. Unfortunately, this is not 
the FCC's first attempt to regulate the Internet. For years, my 
colleagues and I have introduced legislation and written to the FCC 
asking the Commission to halt attempts to regulate the Internet unless 
given clear authority to do so by Congress. The message in our 
correspondence to the FCC has been crystal clear: Members of Congress 
do not believe the Commission has the current legal authority to 
regulate network management practices; therefore, the Commission should 
not act without express legislative authority. But, like other out-of-
control Federal agencies, the FCC has chosen to not listen and 
continues to act defiantly without legislative authority.
  Might I remind the bureaucrats at the FCC that as a government 
agency, the FCC is not elected by the people only the House, Senate, 
and the President are duly elected. And, as our Constitution makes 
clear, the authority to legislate is solely vested in the elected 
representatives of the American people, not five politically appointed 
FCC Commissioners. As such, the resolution before us today not only 
seeks to undo bad policy, it also seeks to restore the constitutional 
integrity of the Congress. If we fail to pass this resolution of 
disapproval, our institutional credibility will be further eroded.
  Proponents of more Federal regulatory influence over the Internet 
argue that these rules are needed to enhance regulatory certainty. I 
would argue that the only uncertainty in the marketplace has been 
generated by the development of these unauthorized regulations. 
Further, if there were systemic problems in the Internet marketplace, 
then why provide arbitrary exemptions to coffee shops, bookstores, and 
airlines? Why not make these regulations universally applicable? The 
fact is there is no systemic problem that warrants a regulatory 
overreach of this magnitude. After over a decade of practice, the facts 
are devoid of any global misconduct. These regulations will do more to 
entice companies to lobby-up, get a lawyer, and seek a regulatory 
competitive advantage than benefit consumers or our economy.
  As the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission has 
recognized, Americans have benefited enormously from the Internet's 
``fundamental architecture of openness.'' The light touch regulatory 
approach toward the Internet that was advanced by previous 
administrations--both Democratic and Republican alike--has brought 
Americans Twittering, social networking, low-cost long distance 
calling, texting, telemedicine, and over 500,000 apps for the iPhone. 
It also brought us YouTube, HBO GO, Kindle, the Blackberry, and the 
Palm. The Internet has changed our lives and our economy--forever.
  By imposing onerous regulations and discouraging innovation, 
broadband providers will have less incentive to invest. This 
disincentive will result in the movement of less capital into the 
market, which in turn will directly result in fewer jobs created. We 
should reject this regulatory power grab and demand the Federal 
Government get out of the way and out of the business of picking 
winners and losers in our economy. It is for these reasons that I 
strongly support the resolution before us to keep the Internet free 
from government control and regulation.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I reserve the remainder of our 
time.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I would like to respond to some 
things, but I understand we only have 42 minutes remaining.

[[Page 16946]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. And both Senator Cantwell and Senator Mark Udall 
want to speak. I don't want to take their time, so at this point I 
suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, how much time remains on our side?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is 44 minutes.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BOOZMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the 
quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BOOZMAN. Mr. President, I rise in support of S.J. Res. 6, which 
seeks to put an end to the FCC's misguided net neutrality rules. The 
FCC's rules regulating the Internet are yet another in a series of 
unnecessary and economically harmful regulations from President Obama's 
administration. These rules will stifle innovation, investment, and 
ultimately jobs, and they are a continuation of this administration's 
obsession with picking winners and losers in almost every marketplace.
  We live in a world where we no longer have to wait for the morning 
edition of the paper to read the latest news. We don't have to wait for 
a delivery from the postman to get a message from a loved one. We do 
not have to get in our car and head to the store to watch a movie or to 
shop for clothes, books, and groceries. We have the ability to do these 
from the comfort of our homes, thanks to the Internet. It is clear the 
Internet has changed the way we live. This helps promote and encourage 
economic growth, facilitates innovation, and reshapes the way we do 
business, all the while creating millions of jobs. This was able to 
happen because of the government's hands-off policy.
  The Federal Communications Commission admits the ``Internet has 
thrived because of its freedom and openness.'' Then why is this agency 
taking steps to limit the openness and freedom of the Internet?
  Last December, the FCC voted to impose net neutrality rules to 
regulate the Internet. This is nothing more than the government 
interfering and threatening small providers and forcing networks to 
operate services in ways determined by unelected bureaucrats.
  What is worse is the FCC is working to fix a problem it acknowledges 
does not exist. The agency is relying on speculation of future harm. 
This attack on the Internet is irresponsible and is irresponsible 
governing. While our economy struggles, the Internet remains a beacon 
of light that continues to grow, but this rule risks stifling 
innovation and investment in jobs.
  A study by a telecom economist with the Brattle Group found that the 
net neutrality rules could lead to a job loss of 340,000 in the 
broadband industry within the next 10 years. This is not the type of 
policy we need to adopt, especially as our country stares at 9 percent 
unemployment. That is why I am supporting S.J. Res. 6, which will put a 
stop to the FCC's misguided net neutrality rules.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
  Mr. UDALL of Colorado. Mr. President, I rise today in opposition to 
the joint resolution of disapproval that will reject the open Internet 
or the net neutrality rule that was put forward this year by the 
Federal Communications Commission.
  I am a strong supporter of the principle of network neutrality that 
the open Internet rule seeks to protect, and I believe we should oppose 
this effort to reverse the FCC order. The rule this resolution seeks to 
eliminate--the open Internet rule--was adopted by the FCC in December 
of 2010, and it will go into effect on November 20 of this year.
  Simply put, this rule creates commonsense obligations and 
requirements for broadband Internet service providers, such as 
telephone and cable networks, in order to keep the Internet free and 
open. I know the open Internet rule will provide the certainty needed 
to foster job-creating investments and innovations while protecting 
broadband Internet consumers. Why is this important? Well, net 
neutrality is a way of saying the Internet ought to be free and open. 
It is a fundamental concept that is underpinned with some marvelous new 
technology that we call the Internet. This open Internet rule will make 
sure we hew to the concept that the Internet ought to be free and open.
  We watched and are still watching as democratic uprisings topple 
totalitarian regimes all over the Middle East. Social networks such as 
Twitter and technologies such as text messaging are largely thought to 
facilitate the so-called Arab spring. None of that would have been 
possible without an open and free Internet.
  I have to ask, what kind of message will we be sending to the 
remaining dictators--but probably even more important, those people who 
quest and thirst for freedom--if the citizens of the United States, 
through their Senate, vote to limit Americans free access to the 
Internet? We have to set an example for the rest of the world. The 
Internet must remain free and open.
  The open Internet rule will achieve this by ensuring that four key 
Internet policies are maintained. Let me list them for my colleagues.
  No. 1, it will prevent broadband Internet providers from blocking 
lawful Internet content or services.
  No. 2, it will require transparency about broadband network 
management policies.
  No. 3, there will be a level playing field for consumers on the 
Internet.
  No. 4--this is important in these tough economic times we face--it 
will provide predictability for both broadband providers and Internet 
innovators.
  As I have said, what is so important about this debate is that in 
these economic times, net neutrality is also about jobs and economic 
development. As I travel in my State of Colorado--and I know the 
Presiding Officer travels his State of New Mexico--the refrain I hear 
from businesses and business leaders is that they need predictability 
in order to invest in their companies and create good-paying American 
jobs.
  Thousands of entrepreneurs who have built small Internet businesses 
can only be successful if they can reach their customers. However, if 
we don't preserve this net neutrality rule and content blocking is 
prevented, there will not be any guarantees that the next great online 
innovation or pioneering application will even be able to access the 
Internet. For example, the next Google or Amazon or Twitter will only 
be able to grow and be successful if they can reach their customers 
without worrying about interference from broadband providers that might 
want to preference another more established competitor.
  So what we are talking about is the FCC is promulgating a commonsense 
rule that will provide predictability for both the broadband providers 
and the Internet innovators. The certainty of knowing the rules 
broadband providers have to follow will give the confidence needed for 
investors to help the next Groupon breakthrough or many of the other 
numerous applications we are all familiar with online.
  Innovation and job creation is what will finally lift our economy out 
of the slump from which we have been desperately trying to recover. We 
need net neutrality to ensure that innovation thrives and that the next 
great product, service, or way of doing business is not inhibited by 
market manipulations or restrictive online policies.
  I came to the floor to urge my colleagues to vote against this 
resolution. It only serves to distract us from the hard work we have to 
do to foster job growth and get our economy back on track. Let's agree 
to cement fair and

[[Page 16947]]

reasonable rules of the road, as the FCC rule seeks to achieve, in 
order to provide certainty in a climate of innovation for the next 
generation of job creators.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, we don't use the Congressional Review Act 
often. In fact, I think we have only used it once successfully. But the 
regulators are working at a breakneck pace, and I think the overreach 
we see in this rule and some others that are coming out right now 
really requires the Congress to pay attention, requires us to revisit 
the reason the Congress gave itself the ability to look at rules and 
regulations and see if they make sense.
  Simply put, on this regulation, the Federal Communications Commission 
lacked the legal standing to produce the order we are debating today. 
The net neutrality order the FCC enacted is not based on the facts or 
on the law. In fact, I have yet to hear credible defense of why we 
would want to have this massive regulatory burden. In fact, we have 
talked about net neutrality for several years now, and the definition 
continues to change because the free marketplace has driven the 
innovation beyond every debate we have had. The marketplace where 
people invest and grow the Internet and access to that Internet has 
meant that as soon as a debate would be engaged on this issue of so-
called net neutrality, it no longer mattered. I think that is what we 
see here as well. But it will begin to matter if we begin to manage the 
Internet in a way that slows down investment, that slows down 
innovation.
  Three years ago, the FCC attempted to reach far beyond any 
legislative mandate they had to regulate the Internet through a rule. 
Last year, a Federal court struck down that rule, saying the Commission 
had no authority to do so. Now we find ourselves debating a measure 
which in a roundabout way attempts to accomplish the same end with a 
result that might be disguised in some other way. The Commission is 
using a provision of the Communications Act, which was enacted to allow 
the FCC to ``remove barriers to infrastructure investment.'' Why would 
we want to do that? Why would we want to remove barriers to 
infrastructure investment? Why would we have passed that law? Because 
we want to encourage infrastructure investment by removing barriers. 
The basis the FCC is using was actually deregulatory, not regulatory. 
They are basing this on a law that said they could do something 180 
degrees different from what this rule would do.
  Repeated government economic analysis has reached the same 
conclusion: There is no concentration; there are no abuses of market 
power in the broadband space. And even if there were, we have a lot of 
laws to deal with that. We have antitrust laws. We have consumer 
protection laws. There are plenty of ways to approach that if it 
happens, but nobody thinks it is happening.
  The Commission, like many other Federal agencies, has often been put 
in a position where one industry competitor is being asked for a 
regulation that somehow would benefit them in their competition with 
somebody else. This order would greatly increase the frequency of those 
requests.
  This order puts the FCC in a position of constantly having to monitor 
new innovations on the Internet.
  One of the FCC Commissioners who didn't agree with this order clearly 
laid out the dissent when he said this. This is a quote from 
Commissioner McDowell:

       Using these new rules as a weapon, politically favored 
     companies will be able to pressure three political appointees 
     to regulate their rivals to gain competitive advantages. 
     Litigation will subplant innovation. Instead of investing in 
     tomorrow's technologies, precious capital will be diverted to 
     pay lawyers' fees. The era of Internet regulatory arbitrage 
     has dawned, and to say that today's rules don't regulate the 
     Internet is like saying that regulating highway on-ramps, 
     off-ramps, and its pavement doesn't equate to regulating the 
     highways themselves.

  In releasing the net neutrality order, the FCC charted itself on a 
collision course with the legislative branch as well as with the 
Federal judiciary, which has already struck down a similar attempt to 
regulate this sector by the FCC. They stated unequivocally in that 
attempt that the FCC lacked the standing to do so.
  This is a solution that is really searching for a problem. Let me 
guarantee that whatever anybody thinks the problem is right now, that 
will not be the problem 6 months from now unless we figure out how to 
slow down innovation in this area and suddenly we are dealing in a 
static environment instead of a dynamic environment.
  Even if there were a legal basis for this legislation, we still 
cannot get away from the fact that it is a massive and unnecessary 
overreach into the private sector, which has thrived while our overall 
economy has slowed and stalled.
  In 2003, only 15 percent of Americans had access to broadband. 
According to the Commission's own National Broadband Plan, last year 95 
percent of Americans had access to broadband. Between 2003 to 2010, 15 
percent to 95 percent--it sounds to me as if that access is doing what 
you want it to do and occurring how you want it to occur. Fixed and 
mobile broadband Internet access, expanded and improved upon by the 
private sector, is the fastest growing technology in history. In only 7 
years, 95 percent of Americans got to where 15 percent were 7 years 
earlier.
  Competition in this field is robust. Technology advances, network 
buildout, and infrastructure improvements are happening quickly, to the 
tune of billions of dollars of investment and innovation and an ever-
expanding array of applications for consumers. More competition is on 
the way as providers make use of increased amounts of spectrum coming 
online and lay new networks of fiber to connect Americans in rural 
areas in the country.
  The telecommunications sector contributes more than $60 billion 
annually to our economy. Net neutrality would slow that down.
  With the order that was set forth, the Commission will begin to 
speculate on what might happen as opposed to what clearly is happening.
  First, the kind of anticompetitive action the Commission seeks to 
remedy is already illegal.
  Second, the competition in this space is far too fierce. Their rule 
is far too repressive. Most Americans already have two options for 
wired broadband access at work or at home, and the number of wireless 
competitors available is exponentially higher.
  No government has ever succeeded in mandating investment and 
innovation, and until this order nothing has held back Internet 
investment and innovation in this country, and that is why it has done 
so well.
  Broadband buildout is a thriving success story on which virtually all 
Americans now count. We now even take it for granted. It is incumbent 
upon us to look at this rule to understand the negative impact it will 
have on a thriving way to communicate, to do business, and to talk to 
each other, and to reject this rule and let this system continue to 
develop with the same innovation, the same intensity, and the same 
incredible success it has had in the past 7 years.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cardin). The Senator from Texas.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, how much time remains on our side?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is 19\1/2\ minutes remaining.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. I Thank the Chair. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I yield up to 5 minutes of our time to 
the Senator from Oklahoma.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Texas for the 
time. This is a critical subject she is dealing

[[Page 16948]]

with right now, but the thing in common is the problem we are having 
right now with regulation. I think we are going to be talking about 
that this afternoon.
  I only wanted to get one thing in, and that is about something the 
Chair is fully aware of because he was there all morning. Something 
very significant happened this morning. In our Environment and Public 
Works Committee we passed out a highway reauthorization bill. We have 
not done this since 2005, and this morning we did. This is one where we 
sat down--one of the few times that Democrats, Republicans, liberals, 
conservatives, can get in a room and hammer out their differences and 
get things done. I wish the committee would be successful in doing that 
as we were this morning in getting a highway bill. So we are going to 
have a highway bill at the current spending level which, if my 
colleagues remember back in 2005, it was $286.4 billion, and that was 
for a 5-year bill. That spending level right now would be, to sustain 
that, somewhere between $40 billion and $42 billion a year for 2 years. 
This is a 2-year bill, and the 2-year bill cannot pass until we locate 
an additional $12 billion to make this happen. I think a lot of us 
don't want to take what would constitute a 34-percent cut in funding 
for our roads and highways and bridges throughout America and be able 
to sustain that. This is a life-and-death type of issue.
  I wanted to say how proud I am of the staff and of every Democrat and 
every Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee who made 
this happen this morning. So while we have much more we are concerned 
about, I think it shouldn't go unnoticed at this time that we have now 
started that ball rolling and that is good news.
  One last thing I wish to say about overregulation. When we talk about 
the jobs bill--and we always are talking about revenue and jobs and all 
of this--we seem to forget that the overregulation is costing us a lot. 
I can remember fighting the cap-and-trade bills ever since back during 
the Kyoto convention, and impressing upon people that the bills being 
offered would cost between $300 billion and $400 billion a year. That 
is every year, not just the first year. Right now, since they have not 
been able to pass that here, they are trying to do that with 
regulations through the Environmental Protection Agency. Congressman 
Fred Upton over in the House and I had legislation that would take away 
the jurisdiction of the EPA to get this done. I think this is going to 
be offered as an amendment this afternoon. I think it is very critical 
that we pass that.
  I thank the Senator from Texas for giving me this time.
  I yield the floor.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. I Ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum 
call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. I yield up to 7 minutes to the Senator from South 
Carolina.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina.
  Mr. DeMINT. I thank the Chair. I thank Senator Hutchison for her 
efforts here in stopping another regulatory nightmare. I am beginning 
to think the FCC stands for Fabricating a Crisis Commission because 
they are trying to create a new regulation for a problem that does not 
exist. The overriding problem here is, as the government intervenes 
increasingly into the Internet and the investment in the Internet, that 
investment is going to dry up as uncertainty is increased.
  I have seen in my State where private investors have put together the 
money with companies to put down broadband in rural areas only to find 
that there are some companies operating with a government grant or some 
government money to compete with them.
  Under President Obama, the FCC has become an activist bureaucracy 
that is inventing a crisis here in order to take control of the 
Internet.
  The Internet is one thing in our country that is working vibrantly. 
It is a showcase of free enterprise. It does not need to be regulated. 
For years liberals have warned us that, if the government does not take 
action, the Internet will not be competitive or accessible. The 
opposite has happened. More people are using the Internet and have 
access to cutting-edge technology and devices than ever.
  This is yet another misguided big-government solution in search of a 
problem. Last year, the courts ruled in the Comcast decision that the 
FCC does not have the authority to mandate how private companies can 
enter into business agreements and limit the ways they provide Internet 
services. The FCC did not learn its lesson and instead is at it again 
with its Open Internet Order, which is vague, baseless, and built on an 
even weaker legal foundation than their activities in Comcast. Congress 
did not authorize such actions and the courts have ruled against them. 
The FCC should not try to get around it by redefining clear legislative 
language passed by Congress.
  There has been no demonstrable harm to which the FCC needs to 
respond. They cannot give us a case where competition is not growing, 
where the expansion of broadband is not growing. In fact, new 
technologies are exceeding the pace that the FCC can even keep up with.
  We do not need to come in and slow down the growth. If the FCC wants 
to take action, it should prove there is legitimate harm in the 
marketplace. The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission 
have a number of laws and regulations to enforce in the name of 
protecting consumers who use the Internet and competition among 
companies involved in the market. If those laws are lacking, the FCC 
should show how and ask Congress to provide it with statutory 
authority.
  The FCC has not done so. They have not shown us that harm has taken 
place and that they need to take control, essentially, of the Internet. 
Congress has yet again been cut out of the picture, and many of my 
colleagues in the majority seem comfortable with abandoning their role. 
The FCC's bad logic needs to be recognized. They admit these new rules 
were not imposed due to any previous or existing wrongdoing. That is 
important for us to recognize.
  If a regulatory agency is issuing an order that intervenes into the 
private sector, there needs to be some substantial harm being 
addressed. The FCC claims the government must regulate the Internet in 
order to protect consumers from future harms that could occur. That is 
not the point of the regulatory structure.
  I heard all of these arguments back in 2006 when the Senate was 
debating how to update our telecommunications laws. If the regulation 
advocates had won in 2006, today we would have the Internet of 2006. I 
do not want the Internet of 2006 in 2011, and I do not want the 
Internet of 2011 in 2016. I want it to grow and improve and evolve just 
as it is doing now. The government cannot possibly manage the 
development of the Internet, which the FCC is trying to do.
  The Internet does not need a government stimulus. It is a free market 
industry that is working. Right now, the technology sector has a 3.3-
percent unemployment rate, far below the national average. Over the 
years, communications companies have invested hundreds of billions of 
dollars in broadband technology and development, and no deficit-
expanding stimulus was required!
  If the government really wants to allow the Internet and related 
businesses to prosper and thrive, it should stay out of it. The 
Internet is not broken, but our government is. The private 
telecommunications sector knows how to create jobs; our government does 
not. The things that work best in our society--businesses, charities, 
volunteer organizations--are the things that government does not 
control. Consumers should be in control, not unelected activist 
bureaucrats intent on taking over the most successful parts of our 
economy.
  I encourage my colleagues to support this resolution to undo the 
FCC's

[[Page 16949]]

power grab. Three unelected bureaucrats should not be permitted to 
simply give themselves the power to regulate the Internet's 
infrastructure in the face of clear statutory language directing them 
to do just the opposite.
  The FCC should not be permitted to circumvent Congress and 
essentially enact laws that will impact vital services we all depend 
on. To keep the Internet economy thriving, this decision must be 
reversed. I commend Senator Hutchison for bringing this up and using 
the powers of Congress to take back control of our legislative 
responsibility.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, how much time remains on this side?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 18 minutes under his control.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. I would yield it to the distinguished Senator from 
Washington.
  Ms. CANTWELL. I thank the chairman of the Commerce Committee for his 
leadership on this important issue. I am glad to be on the Senate floor 
to set the record straight because we are here to talk about Internet 
freedom and about making sure the Internet does not have undue costs 
and expenses for consumers.
  If you liked TARP and you liked the bailout of the big banks, well, 
guess what. Then you should vote for this resolution because this 
resolution is about whether you are going to let the communications 
companies that want to make the Internet more expensive by various 
technologies have their way.
  If you believe the FCC should establish some rules to protect the 
freedom of the Internet, then you should oppose the Hutchison 
resolution. I prefer legislation that I have introduced, and some of my 
colleagues support, called the Freedom of the Internet Act, that goes 
further than what the Federal Communications Commission has done to 
implement true net neutrality. I would prefer that, and maybe in the 
future my colleagues will be working on such legislation.
  But as it is today, the Federal Communications Commission has taken a 
half step, if you will, by proposing some rules that will set in place 
some protections for consumers to make sure they are protected on 
important aspects of keeping Internet costs down. The problem with the 
FCC rules is they only apply in some cases to fixed broadband and not 
to mobile broadband.
  So if you think about it this way, the Internet is moving to a mobile 
broadband platform; that is, our hand-held devices, whether they are a 
BlackBerry or phone or what have you. So many more Americans are 
accessing the Internet that way. So the FCC has come up with rules on 
transparency and no blocking; that is, to make sure no content is 
blocked or slowed down for any undue cost or reason, and a 
nondiscrimination rule.
  Unfortunately, those two last points, no blocking and unreasonable 
discrimination, do not apply to the mobile side. So we have work to do 
to make sure the youth of America who are consuming so much content 
online through their mobile devices are not going to be artificially 
charged more or slowed down in their access all because the 
telecommunications industry wants to have its way with the Internet.
  My colleagues have been out here talking about innovation. I can tell 
you, the Internet has had a ton of innovation and a ton of content 
creation, all because there has been an even playing field and net 
neutrality. The fact now is that the telecommunications companies are 
debating an important issue, and the lines get blurred between 
telecommunications and the Internet, and it is clear we do not have all 
of the rules in place to make sure consumer interests are protected.
  But today we have one thing: the FCC rules that are trying to slow 
down telecommunication companies from artificially either blocking or 
making content on the Internet more expensive. Again, when we go to the 
mobile phone model and we are being charged for time and data transfer, 
the fact that the data transfer and time take longer means we are going 
to have more expensive phone bills. That is why I said it was TARP-
like, because the ``cha-ching'' we are going to hear from the phone 
companies on the money they are going to make from this is 
unbelievable.
  So thank God the FCC took a half step and said: Whoa. Slow down. We 
are not going to let you do that. That is why people like Vint Cerf and 
Tim Berners-Lee, the architects and inventors pushing the Internet, 
have said what a bad idea it is to not make sure that net neutrality is 
the law of the land.
  I notice my colleague who just spoke said, well, there have not been 
any problems. There have not been any issues. I read the online 
publications. Larry Lessig, someone I trust, was recounting in one of 
his interviews exactly what happened. Comcast went in and basically 
blocked large data files of peer-to-peer transfer, what is called bit 
torrent traffic.
  First, Comcast said: No, no. We do not do that. We did not block 
that. We do not do it. But when it was basically found out that they 
did, they said: Oh, no, we did not block it. We just slowed it down. 
They sent little messages, as Mr. Lessig says in his article, to the 
Internet traffic to confuse the recipient and basically disrupt their 
traffic. OK? So that is what is happening.
  These providers think if they can control the pipe, now they can also 
control the flow. It is also, as Mr. Lessig said later in this article, 
as if the entire electricity grid, our refrigerators and our toasters 
and our dryers, all of a sudden would start charging different rates on 
different things because the electricity company would decide it had 
the ability to charge different rates. Would we put up with that? No, 
we would not put up with that.
  So why would we put up with allowing telcos to run at will on the 
Internet charging consumers anything they want based on the fact that 
they think they have the control of the switch?
  I am so proud the chairman, Senator Rockefeller, has led this fight 
for the freedom of the Internet to drive down costs, to keep 
innovation, and to protect net neutrality. The FCC rules do not go far 
enough. We cannot continue to have this half step and not clearly, on 
the mobile side, give consumers the protection they need.
  But for today, if you want to vote with Internet consumers and 
Internet users on driving down the costs of the Internet, then vote 
against this resolution and keep the minimal FCC rules in place until 
we can get stronger legislation passed. Make no mistake about it, the 
other side is talking about, well, they do not want to regulate the 
Internet. That is true. They do not want to regulate telcos that want 
to take advantage of the fact that they own the pipe and can charge a 
lot more.
  I am glad the FCC at least took this measure. We should make sure it 
stands until we can even get stronger Internet freedom protection.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator for 
her remarks and actually fully agree with them in that mobile is kind 
of left alone, and it should not be because it is everything that is 
happening in the future. But it is a step, and it was a wonderful 
speech.
  It occurs to me that I do not think we have anybody left to speak on 
this side. I am not sure about Senator Hutchison, but it may be a good 
time to yield back our time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, how much time remains on our side?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 4 minutes.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I would like to just wrap up, and then 
I will yield back the rest of our time and we can close this debate 
because our vote is going to come tomorrow.
  I just want to summarize what we have heard today. I just heard the 
distinguished Senator from Washington State say that without net 
neutrality

[[Page 16950]]

we would have more expense to consumers. I really do view this in a 
different way because I view the potential delay, the regulatory 
processes, the hurdles that are going to have to be overcome for any 
kind of preclearance to put a new product on the Internet, gatekeeping 
for innovation--that is what, in my opinion, is going to increase the 
cost and cause delays if not freeze many of the innovations that have 
occurred in our open Internet system.
  We now have, because of the FCC's ruling, the requirement for 
reasonable standards for access to the Internet. There is no definition 
of ``reasonable.'' I heard the Senator from Minnesota say we need net 
neutrality in order for Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter to be 
able to grow and prosper. Those entities have grown and prospered--
without net neutrality regulations. They have grown and prospered 
because we have had free and open access to the Internet. We and our 
competitors and our businesses that compete overseas have had open and 
free access. That has been the beauty of the success of the Internet.
  Now we see government coming in and saying: You have to be reasonable 
in what you offer. So if there is a major dump of millions of pages 
onto the Internet and it is going to slow down, for instance, a 
hospital network offering rural health care on an emergency basis or 
some kind of video-streaming that is going out, we have to be able to 
let the providers have the judgment and let the marketplace work. If 
there is a problem it was not pointed out by the FCC when they decided 
to intervene in the Internet among 134 pages of regulations with just 3 
paragraphs about possible problems, all of which concluded with the 
rules that are in place today.
  This is clearly a problem that isn't there, which is being 
manufactured in order to put another government regulation on the 
books. When the Senator from Massachusetts said this order doesn't 
regulate the Internet, just the gateways or the on-ramps, that doesn't 
hold water because if we regulate the on-ramp, we are regulating the 
Internet. We are causing companies that are providing broadband to not 
have control of their networks but instead will now have to go before 
the FCC to justify a new product or service that will give emergency 
access or quicker access for users who need to have that kind of 
access.
  I hope the Senate will say the FCC has extended beyond any authority 
Congress has given them, and I hope we will stand for our prerogative 
in Congress to make the laws and only have regulations come out when we 
delegate specifically to an agency to put out rules in a particular 
area, which has not happened in this case.
  I urge my colleagues to support this resolution.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, before I yield all time back on our 
side, I have listened to the entirety of this debate. It seems to me it 
has been fairly clear that on one side the government regulates and 
messes things up, and on the other side things are going swimmingly.
  I can't help but pay attention to all those people out at TechNet, 
the AT&T people, Moody's, Hamilton's, and all these people who take a 
very dour view of government intervention and a very sensitive view as 
to whether that intervention is in any way going to stop investment. 
The answer is usually it does. That is why I feel very happy that this 
was referred to by a number of major players in this field as a very 
``light touch'' of regulation, which gave them a sense of where they 
were going to be, how far down they could look toward their future and 
therefore allow them to invest the money they wanted to invest.
  That is not to say they would not have done it anyway. But there is 
nothing like encouraging capital investment in something as important 
as the Internet. I think the net neutrality legislation does that very 
well. I hope when we vote on it tomorrow, it will not pass.
  Having said that, I yield back all time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time has been yielded back.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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