[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 5104-5113]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.J. RES. 37, DISAPPROVING FCC INTERNET 
                       AND BROADBAND REGULATIONS

  Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I 
call up House Resolution 200 and ask for its immediate consideration.
  The Clerk read the resolution, as follows:

                              H. Res. 200

       Resolved, That upon the adoption of this resolution it 
     shall be in order to consider in the House the joint 
     resolution (H.J. Res. 37) disapproving the rule submitted by 
     the Federal Communications Commission with respect to 
     regulating the Internet and broadband industry practices. All 
     points of order against consideration of the joint resolution 
     are waived. The joint resolution shall be considered as read. 
     All points of order against provisions in the joint 
     resolution are waived. The previous question shall be 
     considered as ordered on the joint resolution to final 
     passage without intervening motion except: (1) one hour of 
     debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and 
     ranking minority member of the Committee on Energy and 
     Commerce; and (2) one motion to recommit.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Georgia is recognized for 
1 hour.
  Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the 
customary 30 minutes to my good friend, the gentleman from Colorado 
(Mr. Polis), pending which I yield myself

[[Page 5105]]

such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, 
all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.


                             General Leave

  Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members 
may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Georgia?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, what we have today is a resolution that 
comes under the Congressional Review Act, an act passed by a Republican 
Congress and President Clinton that gives the Congress the opportunity 
to look at the regulatory burdens imposed by the executive branch and, 
in a simple up-or-down vote, say do we want this regulation on the 
books or do we not.
  Today that regulation is the net neutrality regulation the FCC has 
promulgated. H.J. Res. 37, the underlying bill that this rule allows us 
to consider, disapproves of the December 21 FCC rule concerning net 
neutrality on the basis that Congress did not authorize the FCC to 
regulate in this area. According to a D.C. Circuit Court decision in 
April of last year, the FCC failed to demonstrate that it had the 
authority to regulate Internet network management. Until such time as 
the FCC is given that authority by this Congress, we must reject any 
rules that it promulgates in this area.
  Now, we will hear a lot today in the underlying resolution about the 
effective compromise that was crafted by the FCC. We will hear a lot 
about the light touch that was used by the FCC to wade into this area.

                              {time}  1230

  But, Mr. Speaker, if you don't have the authority to do it, you don't 
have the authority to do it. It is Congress' responsibility to delegate 
that authority. If folks like the underlying rule proposed by the FCC, 
they are welcome to bring that back as a congressional resolution.
  This bill today is about congressional prerogative: Will we or will 
we not stand up to an executive branch that does not have the authority 
to regulate? We have done a sad job in this Congress in years past, Mr. 
Speaker, of providing that oversight responsibility. Republicans had 
the responsibility of providing oversight to the Bush administration, 
and we didn't always live up to that measure. Democrats had the 
responsibility to provide oversight to the Obama administration, and 
they haven't always lived up to that example.
  We have the opportunity today to begin that step forward. Until 
Congress acts to delegate that responsibility, the Internet should 
continue as the Internet has grown and always continued as an area free 
of government interference, as an opportunity for entrepreneurs and 
investors and students and the elderly to be out there using the 
Internet as they see fit, free from the hand of government regulation.
  I would also like to comment briefly on the nature of this rule. It 
is a closed rule. I came to this Congress to advocate in favor of an 
open process, Mr. Speaker, but it needs to be understood that the 
Congressional Review Act is a closed process by nature. What my 
constituents said to me is, Rob, if you are doing something 
complicated, I want you to open up the House floor and have as many 
amendments and as much discussion as you can because that is the right 
way to do things. But, what I would really prefer is you bring one bill 
with one idea and have an up-or-down vote for all the world to see.
  Well, Mr. Speaker, that is exactly the call that we have responded to 
today: a simple bill, one page long that says the FCC does not have the 
delegated congressional authority to act in this area; and as such, 
their regulations shall be null and void.
  With that, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. POLIS. I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, this is indeed a simple bill, one page long. 
Nevertheless, it is a terrible bill, one page long, and I would like to 
tell you why.
  Today with our economy only beginning to recover, I believe that this 
rule and the underlying bill will imperil one of the greatest sources 
of job creation and innovation in America: the Internet. Now over the 
past 15 years, the Internet has created more than 3 million jobs, 
according to a study by Hamilton Consultants. More than 600,000 
Americans have part- or full-time businesses on eBay alone. And on 
average, new Internet firms have 3 million jobs.
  Yet, the majority brings to the floor legislation that will harm the 
open Internet. I can speak to this with some degree of authority. 
Before I came to Congress, I created over 300 jobs myself through 
founding several Internet-related companies, including ProFlowers.com 
and BlueMountain.com. My first Internet company was an Internet service 
provider on the other end of this equation, so I have good experience 
from both the e-commerce side, as well as the access side which I bring 
to this debate. I have long supported open access to the Internet and 
continue to support net neutrality.
  Let me bring this close to home. When I was starting a flower 
company, ProFlowers.com, back in the late 1990s, we offered a supply-
chain solution. We brought fresher flowers to people at a better price 
by disintermediating the supply chain and allowing consumers to buy 
flowers directly from growers. Now, we were up against several legacy 
companies, companies like FTD and 1-800-FLOWERS, that had a different 
distribution model that we believed and argued in the marketplace was a 
less efficient distribution model.
  Now, had there not been a de facto net neutrality at that point, it 
would be very difficult for a new company to break in, because you 
would have had the incumbent leaders in the marketplace buying the 
access through the broadband connections, much as companies will pay 
slotting fees to get into grocery stores, some book publishers pay fees 
to be out on the open table. The big difference is that we have robust 
competition between grocery stores, robust competition between 
booksellers.
  With regard to broadband access, over 70 percent of the residents of 
this country live in areas with only one or two broadband providers. 
All of the dynamism--and I have not heard this disputed even by the 
chairman of the subcommittee who testified before us yesterday--really, 
the dynamism and the job growth from the Internet comes from the 
content and applications side. Now, if there aren't legitimate economic 
considerations on the bandwidth side, clearly those who are providing 
both wireless and wire bandwidth need to have a return on investment 
calculus, but it is that very same dynamism around the content-driven 
Internet that drives the usage that then leads people to pay more for 
higher speed access to the Internet.
  Now, the FCC has done an exemplary job with these rules, and they 
have actually received buy-in from all of the major players with regard 
to this matter: content providers, content aggregators, search engines. 
And, yes, even on the broadband access side, most of the major 
broadband providers have supported these regulations as well. So they 
have done an excellent job.
  I realize that what they first put out there, many people were 
concerned with. And they then did their job, as they were told to by 
congressional statute, specifically, which authorized them to do this. 
They listened to all parties, and they revised their net neutrality 
regulations so they are something that I think we can all be proud of 
as Americans, and we can all be proud of as users of the Internet.
  Now, just to be clear how they hit their mark, because I know 
yesterday the chairman of the subcommittee mentioned that he thought 
that some of the broadband providers were coerced into supporting the 
protocol standards before the FCC. I don't know enough to dispute that 
or not. But what I will tell you is that I have impartial third-party 
testimony that I think is very compelling from investment bankers who 
follow this sector. And the way the investment banking

[[Page 5106]]

sector works is they have analysts who really cover different stocks, 
cover different sectors, and they inform people about the impact of 
market regulations on that sector.
  What I have from the Bank of America and Merrill Lynch analysts, it 
says: ``The agreement''--the FCC's net neutrality provisions--``is 
consistent with our view that the net neutrality regulatory overhang 
has been eliminated from telecom and cable stocks.''
  Now, let me elaborate. What that means, ``net neutrality regulatory 
overhang,'' is there was fear among the analysts covering the telecom 
and cable sectors that the Obama administration would do something 
overarching with regard to net neutrality. There was fear based on some 
of the initial rules proposed. However, the FCC did their job and that 
fear has been eliminated. There is now no market overhang on companies 
in this sector, and they are no longer concerned that the regulations 
are overarching.
  Let me go to the Goldman Sachs analyst from December of last year: 
The rules stuck largely to what was expected and will be viewed as a 
light touch.
  Let me go to Raymond James: We are glad that the staff is making this 
innocuous by simply placing official rules around what is already being 
done by the industry under a no-regulation scenario.
  So again, all these rules do is essentially preserve the status quo. 
Why is that important? Absent this, there would be a major shift in 
power on the Internet to the broadband providers from the content 
providers. The Internet historically--again, a wonderful innovation for 
mankind--allows anybody with a great idea to link up a server in their 
garage, and their product, their service, their content is available to 
everybody across the world, the very same as a major corporation that 
spends $100 million launching a Web site, and they compete in the 
marketplace of ideas.
  Now, some people ask: Has there ever been an instance where a 
provider has used tiered access or censored anything? And there are a 
number of instances. An example, in 2005, Madison River Communications 
blocked voiceover IP on its DSL network. That was eventually settled 
with the FCC.
  In 2006, Cingular blocked PayPal after contracting with another 
online payment service. This is a perfect example of why we need 
competition on the provider side. The consumers would have access to 
presumably a less-efficient payment service that they would not select 
given their own prerogative because it is locked in through some sort 
of slotting fee or other arrangement, sometimes vertical integration 
itself under the same capital structure, as an access provider.
  So this rule is actually critical to continue to operate a free and 
open Internet. That is why the FCC moved forward, with explicit 
permission from Congress in the form of their statutory authority, with 
rules to address this issue. Their open process included input and got 
vast buy-in from all major parties, including Internet service 
providers.
  Now, there are many on the left that wish that the rule went further. 
And, yes, there might be some in business that prefer that there were 
no rules at all. The vast majority of the business community strongly 
supports the consensus rules that the FCC came out with.
  Of those commenting on the proposed rule before the FCC, well over 90 
percent supported the Commission's effort, and over 130 organizations 
support the proposed rule and oppose this legislation, including groups 
like the American Library Association, the Free Press, League of Latin 
American Citizens, Communications Workers of America, and the vast 
majority of Internet-related companies.
  I also want to emphasize that there has been a number of faith-based 
groups that have weighed in. One of the largest is the Conference of 
Catholic Bishops, representing millions of American Catholics, who 
weighed in in a letter opposing this legislation before us today: ``The 
Internet is open to any speaker, commercial or noncommercial, whether 
or not the speech is connected financially to the company providing 
Internet access or whether it is popular or prophetic.'' The letter 
goes on to state how the Catholics have used the Internet as an 
outreach tool.
  Now, there is legitimate fear here from two perspectives:
  One, among the nonprofit and religious community in general, is that 
their content would receive a lower tier because they are not 
necessarily able to pay the same type of slotting fees or access that a 
for-profit commercial provider would do. So your Web page from Nike 
might load faster than your Web page from the Catholic Church because, 
if there was tiered access, who would be more likely to pay for the 
speed of the access.
  The other fear, also legitimate, is of political or religious 
censorship of the Internet.

                              {time}  1240

  You could have a provider who would say, You know what? I like Obama, 
so I'm going to block access to tea party sites or slow them down 
through our broadband access.
  Now, again, in a market with complete dynamism and where there was a 
lot of competition and where every American could choose broadband 
providers, that would be less problematic. But what we have is a 
situation where over 70 percent of Americans only have one or two 
choices for broadband access. There has historically been broad support 
from both sides of the aisle for the ``no blocking'' rule, which simply 
states that broadband providers cannot block lawful content. It is the 
equivalent of telling the Postal Service they can deliver or not 
deliver your mail based on whether they agree or disagree with the 
content. The carriers--the Internet, itself--is one cohesive entity, 
and what a wonderful entity for mankind, the fact that you can plug in 
and have access to a wide breadth of information on the Internet.
  I also want to refute the argument that there is no nor should there 
be any government regulation of the Internet. I, actually, have several 
pages listed here of government regulation of the Internet, including 
things like regulating child pornography, including, of course, the 
complex set of protocols around intellectual property and intellectual 
property enforcement to ensure that the Internet is not used as a 
medium to steal or to illegally profit from the creative works of 
others. We go on and on with regard to e-commerce, advertising, privacy 
laws--a number of laws designed to protect our privacy, to protect us 
from abuse, and to protect us from security breaches with regard to 
viruses.
  This is another dimension. This is to protect us from the Internet 
being broken apart by a series of tiered pipelines rather than one 
cohesive Internet. The absence of any net neutrality regime would 
empower selective parts of corporate America to censor the Internet in 
the same way that Communist China censors the Internet. If you search 
for Tiananmen and you're in Mainland China, you will get pictures of 
happy people. You will not get pictures of their crackdown on the pro-
democracy demonstrators.
  We risk the same potential here. The broadband actors play a critical 
role, and I want to make sure their concerns are balanced and that they 
will get their return on investment. We actually have a quote from the 
AT&T executive, who did appear before the committee, who said that they 
can use the 10- to 15-year time frame to justify a return on 
investments with regard to broadband infrastructure. Even Comcast has 
called the new rules a workable balance between the needs of the 
marketplace and the certainty that carefully crafted and limited rules 
can provide to ensure that Internet freedom and openness are preserved.
  I would further argue that a free and open Internet is in the 
interest of the broadband providers, themselves. So not only is it not 
necessarily the case that they only agreed to these under duress, I 
think many of the forward-looking broadband providers realize that what 
drives Internet access and what drives consumers to want a faster, 
better connection is that very vibrancy in the information marketplace 
that net neutrality helps preserve.

[[Page 5107]]

  So the real question is: Why are we here? Why are we here debating 
something that was thoughtful, that has buy-in from all sides of the 
debate?
  I really had a tough time figuring it out even through our committee 
examination of this yesterday. But I think that we're here because of a 
knee-jerk reaction of the opposition that might have been initially 
opposed to some of the more overarching rules that were initially 
proposed before the FCC, but we've come a long way since then. This 
feared takeover of the Internet didn't occur. Overarching rules didn't 
occur. Most of the broadband providers now support the direction of the 
FCC. Yet, under the legislation that we will consider today, the open 
Internet rule and the repeal of it will provide more uncertainty to 
investors. They will again not know what's going to occur. The 
investment bankers will, once again, say there was uncertainty and 
overhang, hurting the valuation of the very broadband stocks that the 
majority is claiming to do this for the benefit of. Market analyses 
have found that the new open Internet rule removed the regulatory 
overhang--it's a light touch--which throws a monkey wrench into the 
market mechanisms at a critical time for our recovery and job creation.

         United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Department 
           of Communications,
                                Washington, DC, February 14, 2011.
       Dear Senators and Members of the House of Representatives: 
     The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (``USCCB'') 
     is committed to the concept that the Internet continue as it 
     has developed, that is, as an open Internet. The Internet is 
     an indispensable medium for Catholics-- and others with 
     principled values--to convey views on matters of public 
     concern and religious teachings. USCCB is concerned that 
     Congress is contemplating eliminating the Federal 
     Communications Commission's authority to regulate how the 
     companies controlling the infrastructure connecting people to 
     the Internet will offer those connections. Without the FCC, 
     the public has no effective recourse against those companies' 
     interference with accessibility to content, and there will be 
     uncertainty about how and whether those companies can block, 
     speed up or slow down Internet content. Since public 
     interest, noncommercial (including religious) programming is 
     a low priority for broadcasters and cable companies, the 
     Internet is one of the few mediums available to churches and 
     religious groups to communicate their messages and the values 
     fundamental to the fabric of our communities.
       Without protections to prohibit Internet providers from 
     tampering with content delivery on the Internet, the 
     fundamental attributes of the Internet, in which users have 
     unfettered access to content and capacity to provide content 
     to others, are jeopardized. Those protections have particular 
     importance for individuals and organizations committed to 
     religious principles who must rely on the Internet to convey 
     information on matters of faith and on the services they 
     provide to the public. The Internet was constructed as a 
     unique medium without the editorial control functions of 
     broadcast television, radio or cable television. The Internet 
     is open to any speaker, commercial or noncommercial, whether 
     or not the speech is connected financially to the company 
     providing Internet access or whether it is popular or 
     prophetic. These characteristics make the Internet critical 
     to noncommercial religious speakers. Just as importantly, the 
     Internet is increasingly the preferred method for the 
     disenfranchised and vulnerable--the poor that the Church 
     professes a fundamental preference toward--to access 
     services, including educational and vocational opportunities 
     to improve their lives and their children's lives. It is 
     immoral for for-profit organizations to banish these 
     individuals and the institutions who serve them to a second-
     class status on the Internet.
       His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, has warned against the 
     ``distortion that occur[s] when the media industry becomes 
     self-serving or solely profit-driven, losing the sense of 
     accountability to the common good. . . . As a public service, 
     social communication requires a spirit of cooperation and co-
     responsibility with vigorous accountability of the use of 
     public resources and the performance of roles of public trust 
     . . ., including recourse to regulatory standards and other 
     measures or structures designed to affect this goal.''
       (Message of the Holy Father Benedict XVI for the 40th World 
     Communications Day, The Media: A Network for Communication, 
     Communion and Cooperation, Jan. 24, 2006).
       Lastly, Pope Benedict XVI recently stated, ``Believers who 
     bear witness to their most profound convictions greatly help 
     prevent the web from becoming an instrument which . . . 
     allows those who are powerful to monopolize the opinions of 
     others.'' (Message of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI for the 
     45th World Communications Day, January 24, 2011).
       USCCB urges Congress not to use the Congressional Review 
     Act to overturn the FCC's open Internet rules.
           Sincerely,
                                                      Helen Osman,
                                      Secretary of Communications.

  I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I am proud to yield 2 minutes to a 
gentlelady from the committee of jurisdiction, the gentlelady from 
Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn).
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Speaker, if my colleague across the aisle is 
having a tough time figuring this out, I think we can probably help 
with that explanation.
  First of all, if you like the Internet that you have, we are saying 
we want you to keep it. Mr. Speaker, there has been no market failure. 
Over 80 percent of all Americans are pleased with the Internet service 
that they have. What they do not want to see is the Obama 
administration step in in front of these Internet service providers and 
say, We the government are here to change your Internet. We are here to 
take control of your Internet.
  That is exactly what net neutrality would do.
  Net neutrality is the Federal Government stepping in and saying, 
We're going to come first. We're going to assign priority and value to 
content. It basically is the Fairness Doctrine for the Internet.
  As I said, there has been no market failure, and there is no need for 
this government overreach. So many are saying, Why do this? It's one of 
those issues of power and control, of government wanting to dictate 
what speed you will have, how often you will be on, the type of 
Internet service that you will have, being able to control them.
  What the FCC did after Congress left town, mind you, during Christmas 
week, was to step in and bring uncertainty to the marketplace. What 
they did was to say, We are going to put ourselves, the government, in 
control of the Internet. It is the first time ever this has happened.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentlewoman has expired.
  Mr. WOODALL. I yield the gentlewoman an additional minute.
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Also, in their net neutrality order, if you read 
paragraph 84, what it does is to bring an incredible amount of 
uncertainty to the innovative community and to the creative economy 
that our jobs growth is going to be based on, because what it says to 
these innovators is, Look, if you want to innovate a new application, a 
new attachment, a new usage for a Web-based service or for the 
Internet, you'd better come apply to the FCC first because, if you 
don't, we can step in and require you to come make application to us.
  Now, if you want to talk about a chilling effect--a chilling effect--
on all of our high-tech innovation, on health care innovation with our 
telemedicine concepts, with our health IT concepts, I would encourage 
individuals to look at paragraph 84, which is found in the net 
neutrality order that was brought forward on a 3-2 vote by the Obama 
administration. It will do more to squelch jobs growth and to pull back 
innovation than any other action in this administration.
  Mr. POLIS. I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  It's hard to know where to begin in refuting the arguments of my good 
friend from Tennessee.
  There were several comparisons that I view as simply out of hand. One 
of them that was given was that this is somehow some sort of Fairness 
Doctrine for the Internet, that this is somehow some sort of government 
involvement with the Internet. Quite the contrary is true.
  I want to be clear. I was an original cosponsor last session of the 
bill that proactively would have prevented the administration from 
moving forward with the Fairness Doctrine. I oppose the Fairness 
Doctrine. I believe in a dynamic marketplace of ideas. The FCC's 
rulemaking around net neutrality moved forward and fostered that very 
dynamic marketplace of ideas that the Fairness Doctrine is contrary to.

[[Page 5108]]

  If we do not have some sort of net neutrality regime in place, there 
will be a selective censorship of the Internet, and we risk the 
Internet deteriorating into a series of tiered structures, whether they 
are tiered economically or ideologically. The great human 
accomplishment that is the one common Internet will simply cease to 
exist as such. It is, in fact, the proponents of net neutrality and the 
regulatory regime proposed by the FCC after receiving input from all 
stakeholders that will preserve the Internet as it is.
  I would agree with my friend from Tennessee's argument. She said 80 
percent of people are happy with their access. I hope it's even higher.
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. POLIS. I yield to the gentlewoman from Tennessee.
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Any time you allow the Federal Government to step in to a process 
where they have not been involved in a process--and we did this not 
once but twice. We did it not once but twice.
  Mr. POLIS. Reclaiming my time, I would like to engage in a colloquy 
with the gentlelady.
  With regards to the Postal Service, would the gentlelady oppose an 
effort to say that the Postal Service can, perhaps, decide which mail 
to deliver, maybe based on which political candidates their unions 
support? Would the gentlelady say that that would be okay for the 
Postal Service to do that?
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. The gentleman knows that that is not relevant to the 
discussion that we are having here.
  Mr. POLIS. Is the gentlelady going to answer?
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. What we are talking about is that the application of 
this is the Fairness Doctrine of the Internet.

                              {time}  1250

  Mr. POLIS. Reclaiming my time, the Fairness Doctrine is something 
that I oppose, I will always oppose, and it is completely consistent. 
The Fairness Doctrine is consistent with the approach that the 
gentlelady is approaching with regard to the Internet. By having net 
neutrality in place, we prevent any type of fairness doctrine or 
selective allowance of certain content to consumers of the Internet. 
The whole net neutrality regulatory structure is to ensure that 
everybody has access to putting content on the Internet in the same 
way, and that that content will not be discriminated against based on 
its ideology, based on economic considerations.
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. POLIS. I yield to the gentlelady from Tennessee.
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. We all know that anytime you give the government the 
ability to assign priority and value to content, you have inserted them 
into the decision-making process. They would precede the responsibility 
of the Internet service providers. And the gentleman knows there has 
been no market failure.
  Mr. POLIS. Reclaiming my time, the absence of a net neutrality regime 
would be the government deliberately conveying value as gatekeepers to 
the broadband providers and allowing them to decide, based on religious 
or ideological or economic--or whatever criteria that they want--what 
kind of Internet they intend to serve up to their users.
  I would like to add that, under the legislation we consider today, 
that this open Internet rule will add the very certainty to investors 
and companies that we need and predictability in our marketplace that 
allows companies to continue to grow and invest in job growth.
  It strikes a balance, and it solves a real issue. Some on the other 
side will say, oh, this could be an issue in the future, but it hasn't 
arisen. Well, the rules that we are talking about do enshrine in place 
the very Internet, the dynamism, the fruitful discussion between 
different ideologies that the gentlelady from Tennessee said that she 
aspires to preserve. And we have already reached a point where ISPs 
have blocked, as a matter of fact, voice-over-IP services. And they 
have blocked peer-to-peer traffic, they have blocked PayPal in favor of 
other financial transaction companies that might have economic 
relationships with them.
  I believe strongly in Internet, in Internet as an achievement for 
mankind, in Internet that net neutrality will help preserve for our 
generation and the next.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to another 
gentleman from the committee, the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Terry).
  Mr. TERRY. Mr. Speaker, I rise in favor of this rule to block the FCC 
from regulating the Internet.
  I thought the exchange between the gentleman from Colorado and the 
good lady from Tennessee was very telling because right now the 
marketplace controls the Internet. It is free--I call it wild, wild--in 
its applications.
  Now, what the government is trying to do now, in the words of Ed 
Markey during our hearing on this, was, ``We need to regulate the 
Internet to keep it unregulated.'' I don't get that, but it is kind of 
the thought from the left side of the aisle that you have to regulate 
it in order to prevent anything that they may disagree with.
  So what we have here is an instance where now the freedoms of the 
Internet and the marketplace that are driving it now have to be under a 
regulatory scheme decided by a group of appointees of the President; 
not to be free, it has to be built in relation to their image. Listen 
to his words, it's going to be built on their image.
  The analogy of Communist China regulating the content can't happen 
today. They talk about blocking, that these ISPs will stop us from 
going to our Web sites. There have been a handful of those situations; 
and every time, the public marketplace chastises them openly. There 
were a few times the FCC even called up and said, hey, you can't do 
that under the principles that were adopted.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
  Mr. WOODALL. I yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.
  Mr. TERRY. And so those were resolved by, yes, a little bit of 
involvement, but the marketplace.
  Now the comparison to Communist China here from the gentleman is 
appropriate when you look at how this measure was implemented. The 
President campaigned on net neutrality. Congress would not authorize it 
because Congress as a whole bipartisanly disagreed with net neutrality, 
giving a regulatory bureaucratic agency control over the Internet 
versus free market.
  So since Congress wouldn't pass it, sua sponte they just rose up and 
said we don't have the authority--well, they didn't say they don't have 
the authority, but Congress never gave them the authority to regulate 
the Internet, so they're just assuming that they're going to take that 
power away from the people and the marketplace and do it themselves. 
That is where the analogy to Communist China is appropriate.
  Mr. POLIS. I would argue that, in Communist China, the residents 
there do not have access to the Internet. What they have access to is 
an Internet minus, and Internet minus are sites that their government 
deems inappropriate. We risk going down that same route if we don't 
enshrine, in rule or in law, net neutrality provisions that ensure that 
there is an open and free Internet and that American citizens have 
access to the Internet in its entirety, not with being sensitive 
because of economic or religious reasons.
  One of the simple components of this rule is the no-blocking rule. 
This states very specifically, a broadband provider cannot block lawful 
content. A provider cannot say, I don't like Catholics; I'm not going 
to allow Catholic content through our broadband. A provider cannot say 
on my Internet we are blocking access to Tiananmen because I have 
business deals in China. We need to ensure that the Internet, as one 
entity, is available to all Americans who buy access.
  And again, the broadband providers themselves, out of their own 
economic self-interests, endorse this concept because they truly 
understand, with the

[[Page 5109]]

fiduciary responsibility of their own shareholders, that the very 
dynamism that leads to the increase in popularity of the Internet 
relies on it being an open and free Internet. And without these 
protections that are afforded by the FCC's open Internet rules, the 
abuses that have already occurred are just a small sign of far worse 
things that will come.
  In expressing support for killing the open Internet rule with this 
bill, a witness for the majority brought to Capitol Hill said that ISPs 
should be allowed to block lawful content and said, ``It is appropriate 
because you block the source of the problem. If the person that is 
violating your acceptable use policy is Netflix, you block Netflix.'' 
In effect, you would empower broadband providers to bully around 
content providers--be it Netflix, be it Yahoo--and say, you know what? 
I don't like the fact that you are renting this movie; I don't like the 
fact that you are linking to this news. That's the direction that 
Communist China has gone, and that is the direction that America and 
the global Internet will go if we fail to preserve the net neutrality 
regime that is before us.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the 
subcommittee chairman, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Walden).
  Mr. WALDEN. I thank the gentleman from the Rules Committee for his 
good work on this issue.
  Mr. Speaker, there are a number of issues I would like to address as 
chairman of the Communications and Technology Subcommittee.
  First of all, when it comes to the notion that the FCC--or let me 
back up--these carriers that give us the Internet might somehow 
regulate religious speech, it's interesting to note that the FCC, in 
its own order, threatens and pulls out specifically a threat to 
religious content. Paragraph 47, footnote 148, which I'm sure the 
gentleman from Colorado must know about, says that a religious 
organization would be prohibited from creating a specialized Internet-
accessed service.
  Now, there is an Internet provider out there called Koshernet that 
wanted to have a special service for those religious subscribers who 
happen to agree, if they don't want to be exposed to things on the 
Internet that they are bound to regarding their religion. So the issue 
that the FCC points out is that, oh, we're not going to allow that to 
happen under these rules. So you can't have a separate Internet 
provider that is just set up for its own subscribers that just wants to 
have a filter on the Internet, if you will, for those who want to 
subscribe to that because of their religious beliefs. So already you 
see a government getting involved at the head end.
  Now, we've seen in Egypt where the government is involved and had a 
kill switch and just turned it off when opponents of the government got 
engaged. We've heard a lot about China, and we all know the various 
back doors to the Internet there that they tried to put in to regulate 
speech, to control access to content and all of that.

                              {time}  1300

  That's the government doing that.
  We know this country for many years operated under the Fairness 
Doctrine. That was the government trying to regulate political speech 
on the broadcast airwaves. It wasn't until President Reagan's FCC after 
a couple of court decisions basically said that trips right up against 
the First Amendment that President Reagan's FCC repealed the Fairness 
Doctrine. Congress tried a couple of times to put it back in place. 
What we should be about is a free and open Internet.
  And that's what we've had, and that's what's allowed this incredible 
explosion of technology and innovation to take place. And it has not 
taken place because the government picked winners and losers on the 
Internet, it's because the engineers and scientists and technicians and 
innovators and entrepreneurs did that on the existing Internet.
  Now, along comes the government, the Federal Communications 
Commission, on a 3-to-2 partisan middle-of-the-night sort of decision, 
if you will, right over the holidays to say, We're going to seize 
control and regulate the Internet. Now, that's not been done before, 
although they tried in the Comcast BitTorrent case where they tried to 
regulate the Internet once before. But the court here in Washington, 
D.C. said they lacked the authority. They had not proven--they had 
failed to demonstrate that they had the authority.
  And so the court struck them down pretty clearly in part because they 
relied on a statement of policy, and the court said a statement of 
policy does not constitute statutorily mandated responsibilities.
  Previously, the FCC ruled, by the way, that section 706 did not 
constitute an independent grant of authority and has not overruled that 
prior decision. Now, that's important, because section 706 is part of 
the foundation upon which they think they have this authority, even 
though in a prior case they've said that didn't grant them an 
independent grant of authority.
  Regulating otherwise unregulated information services is not 
reasonably ancillary to the section 257 obligation to issue reports on 
barriers to the provision of information services.
  There are a number of issues here that bring us to the rule that we 
have today on the Congressional Review Act that would repeal the rule 
that the FCC put in place at the end of the year and notified us on.
  Now, why are we using the Congressional Review Act? It is a very 
specific, very narrow, very targeted bipartisan-created process.
  The current leader of the Senate, Harry Reid, was an advocate and 
supporter of the congressional review process because it allows 
Congress to step in when an agency has overstepped its bounds on a 
major rule and say, No, you don't have the authority, or, We disagree 
with the rule, and so we chose this CRA process to overturn this rule 
that a partisan group of unelected officials chose to enact exceeding 
their authority.
  Now Congress, whether you're for net neutrality regulation under 
title I or title II or no title at all, you should not stand idly by 
when an agency exceeds its statutory authority.
  I think, ultimately, this will be thrown out in court, once it's ripe 
for a court to review, as the court has slapped down the FCC in the 
past.
  The long and the short of it, though, is that, in relying on section 
706, they may have inadvertently opened the door for State regulation 
of the Internet, because section 706 says that the FCC and State 
commissions shall have certain authorities and goes on to explain that 
in the first title of that act.
  I don't think any of us here wants that door to be opened, but the 
FCC, in its naked grab for power it does not have, chose to base part 
of their decision on section 706.
  Now, I heard, as I was coming over here, a recitation of my comments 
last night in the Rules Committee by my friend and colleague from 
Colorado that all of the major companies support this, or virtually 
all, and, gee whiz, they did this voluntarily at the FCC. Well, come 
on. None of them will publicly admit to the fact that the FCC had, 
holding over their head, a title II proceeding that would have treated 
the Internet as a common carrier, as simple telephone service with a 
highly regulated environment.
  And it's one of those Hobson's choices: either go with us with title 
I, which is ``light regulation'' but opens the door to government 
regulation for the first time of the Internet, or we may come after you 
on title II. Now, to back up that argument, I would point out that 
there's an open proceeding at the moment on title II. They have never 
closed their title II proceeding.
  So these companies have a lot of other issues before the FCC, like 
mergers--has anybody ever heard of those?--and other things. They are 
their regulator.
  I was regulated by the FCC for 22 years as a license holder in 
broadcast stations. The last thing you're going to do is poke your 
regulator. And when your regulator has you by your license or by your 
next merger, you're probably going to acquiesce to the lesser of two 
evils, which is what happened here.

[[Page 5110]]

  So, Mr. Speaker, and to the ladies and gentlemen of the House, I 
would encourage you to support this rule. It's narrow. It's defined. 
It's closed for a reason, because the parliamentarians and others have 
told us basically there's no real way to amend this and carry out its 
lawful action. And so in a rare instance, this makes sense to have a 
closed rule.
  Mr. POLIS. The gentleman from Oregon mentioned KosherNet and other 
sites that might want to provide proprietary content. I want to be 
clear that this rulemaking and rulemaking process has nothing to do 
with proprietary networks. It refers to the Internet.
  I hold several patents with regard to Internet technologies. In 
those, as is common among Internet patents, we describe the Internet as 
an open-ended gateway network. To the extent that there are thriving 
proprietary networks, be they religiously affiliated or commercial, the 
FCC is not talking about those with regard to this matter.
  Mr. WALDEN. Will the gentleman yield on that point? Because I don't 
believe that was the case.
  Mr. POLIS. I will be happy to enter into a colloquy with you on your 
time.
  An article from yesterday's StarTribune says, ``Court rejects suit 
over Net-neutrality rules.'' This happened yesterday. A Federal appeals 
court rejected a lawsuit by Verizon and MetroPCS to challenge the 
Federal Government's communications rules, the FCC's communications 
rules.
  Now, what I want to point out is, like many newspaper sites, this was 
a decision between me and the newspaper site, an economic decision 
about how I would get access. Now, some newspapers want to charge for 
access, others don't. I was happy the Minneapolis StarTribune allowed 
me access because I wasn't about to pay.
  How do they pay for it? They have a couple ads in here. Apparently, 
Bill Maher is going to be at Mystic Lake Hotel and Casino, coming up. I 
won't be there, but maybe most of the folks who read the Minneapolis 
StarTribune would consider that.
  And then there's something called License to Thrill, also at Mystic 
Lake Casino and Hotel. Now, I assume they did a survey and found that 
many of the viewers of the Minneapolis StarTribune might be interested 
in Mystic Lake. And again, it was their decision, the Minneapolis 
StarTribune's decision, Do we sell for access?
  By the way, The New York Times, I think, is starting to charge for 
access. I'm going to have to decide whether I'm going to have to try to 
just make do with their free portion or somehow loop in an online 
subscription. I do pay for The Wall Street Journal online. It's worth 
every penny. It's a good publication. But it's hard to strike that 
balance.
  What you are doing--what this body is considering by not having a 
net-neutrality regime in place is to add another party to this contract 
between me and the StarTribune. And you know what? It is not good 
enough, Jared Polis and the StarTribune, that they're letting you 
access and you have to pay. There's also the provider. And you know 
what? You could have the provider say, You know what? We're not going 
to serve up these ads. We're going to serve up our own ads. You know 
what? We're not going give you access to the StarTribune unless you buy 
our newspaper plus service for an extra $14.95 a month.
  You're changing the value chain in a way that is unprecedented and 
conveying enormous value because you're putting them in charge of the 
whole Internet of the providers and the bandwidth and the pipelines. 
Yes, they are important to have and, yes, they need to have a return on 
investment and, yes, they support the FCC rules as a fair way to do 
that. Yes, given their druthers, would they rather have a reach and 
control of the Internet? Sure. They'd rather control all the ad space 
on every newspaper and every other Web site. But they know that's a 
reach. There's no serious market valuation that's given by investors or 
investment analysts to that reach scenario that would threaten and kill 
the very Internet itself by interspersing a third party on my private 
agreement with the Minneapolis StarTribune. That's why we need to have 
a free and open Internet for all to ensure that there's not another 
party that comes in and steals the intellectual property and the usage 
of others and conveys it to their own advantage. And that's exactly 
what the very reasonable FCC rules put into rule.

                  [From StarTribune.com, Apr. 4, 2011]

              Court Rejects Suit Over Net-Neutrality Rules

       A federal appeals court on Monday rejected as ``premature'' 
     a lawsuit by Verizon and MetroPCS challenging the Federal 
     Communications Commission's pending rules aimed at keeping 
     Internet service providers from blocking access to certain 
     websites or applications. The decision, by the U.S. Court of 
     Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit, is a first-
     round victory for the FCC and its chairman, Julius 
     Genachowski. But the real battle over the agency's attempt to 
     regulate broadband providers has barely begun. Several 
     broadband companies, and some consumer advocacy and public 
     interest groups, are likely to return to court this year to 
     challenge aspects of the rules. Edward McFadden, a Verizon 
     spokesman, said Monday that the company intended to refile 
     its lawsuit this year. The House will take up a joint 
     resolution condemning the new Internet access rules this 
     week.

  I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 2 minutes to the 
chairman of the subcommittee, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Walden).
  Mr. WALDEN. I just want to point out that back on KosherNet, the 
Federal Communications basically singled that out and said, no, you 
can't, as an Internet service provider, have that kind of separate 
system. You can't filter out even if you want to. And I think that's 
different.
  As for the court decisions the gentleman referenced, I don't 
necessarily know where he's going on that. But understand the court 
said the time is not ripe yet for the appeal by Verizon and MetroPCS on 
the Internet rules, not ripe because the Federal Communications 
Commission has not put these rules into the Federal register because 
they haven't completed some of their due diligence, apparently, on the 
effects on business.

                              {time}  1310

  So that will still be ripe to litigate later on. The other point I 
want to make is understand that while these rules promulgated, I 
believe, outside the authority of the FCC apply to the Internet service 
provider, the pipes if you will, they do not apply to the content 
providers on the other end. So in other words, once you get on the 
freeway, as we know the Internet, you want to get out into the 
neighborhoods eventually. And so a lot of people go to a particular 
search site let's say, a search engine, and that search engine is 
making enormous decisions about where you end up on the Internet.
  Those search engines and other providers like that, they are not 
under these rules at all. And I would suggest I am not eager to have 
them under these rules. But I find it fascinating that they can block, 
they can tackle, they can hide, they can change their algorithms.
  So you know, by the time you search for something, you may get moved 
from number one in your category to No. 71 because they make some 
decision in their algorithm. So there is a lot going on out there.
  But I would say this: Most Americans have access to broadband, most 
of us are on the Internet, and we are a very powerful community when 
somebody misbehaves. And generally, the Internet has been successful 
because misbehavers have been punished by the consumers in an open and 
free marketplace effectively and quickly and much better than through a 
government regulatory regime.
  Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 60 seconds just to say in 
this theme of folks with the best of intentions ending up with the 
tremendous burdens on small business, I have just been informed and 
would like to inform this body that the Senate has passed H.R. 4, the 
House's repeal of the burdensome 1099 regulation requirements in 
ObamaCare, by a vote of 87-12. The bill is now on its way to the 
President for his signature.
  This represents a huge win for American small businesses, a huge win 
for

[[Page 5111]]

the abolition of burdensome government regulation, and the first 
official partial repeal of ObamaCare that will go to the President's 
desk and become law.
  I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  First with regard to the 1099 closing, I think again we can applaud 
this as a step forward for small business. Many of us wish that there 
could have been a different way of paying for it, and I did support it 
twice in the last session of Congress. While there are major winners, 
and small businesses are, and we needed to close the 1099 loophole, and 
I am glad we did, the losers under this are American families making 
about $80,000, $85,000 a year, who will be stuck with a large 
Republican tax increase.
  Mr. Speaker, with regard to net neutrality, it is indeed a brave new 
world that we face on the Internet. And I have been an Internet user 
since the early 1990s. As I mentioned, my first company was an Internet 
service provider. So I have experience on that front. It is the very 
dynamism of the Internet itself that brings its value to humanity and 
to Americans. That is why it is important to protect under net 
neutrality and open Internet provisions.
  Another critical provision that has generally had support from across 
the aisle in prior sessions has been a transparency requirement that 
would require broadband providers to inform consumers about how or 
whether they are tiering access. Part of the issue has been we only 
find out about these things after the fact, after a very technical 
analysis, and accusations are made and have to be discovered. We would 
like to know. And one of the reasons I oppose this rule is Ms. Matsui 
offered an amendment that would have increased consumer confidence and 
led to greater investment in broadband infrastructure by supporting a 
simple transparency requirement with regard to this matter.
  Net neutrality keeps the Internet free and open. It is that simple. 
Just as the postal service can't discriminate in delivering legal 
content, so too the Internet should not discriminate in delivering 
legal content. Proprietary networks can work their will. And the 
gentleman from Oregon mentioned Koshernet or people, users, that might 
only want certain access on their machines. They are empowered to do 
that under open Internet regulations.
  They can have programs on their local machine that can say, you know 
what--many parents do this--they want to have parental controls or 
block certain sites. They can only have certain sites that are 
accessible and block down all other sites. Many people, they are 
empowered to do this not by their provider, no. They are empowered to 
do this by choosing the software and the service that they use to be 
able to restrict the Internet for themselves or for a minor that lives 
in their home.
  These decisions should not be made by large multinational 
corporations deciding which Internet you have your own access to. 
Seventy percent of American families only choose between one or two 
broadband providers. For them to have access to the Internet, not the 
Internet minus like they have in China, not the Internet minus that too 
many Americans could face if we don't encode open Internet regulations 
into rule or law, if we want to retain that access we need to make sure 
that the value of the Internet and the dynamism that is created by the 
content and application providers have unfettered access to consumers 
in America and across the world.
  I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, at this time I am pleased to yield 4 
minutes to a thoughtful member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, 
the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Stearns).
  Mr. STEARNS. Let me just bring to the attention of this side of the 
aisle that some of the issues you are talking about, transparency, 
moves into privacy. We hope in the near future we do have a privacy 
bill, but I think some of the things you are concerned about impacted 
with the privacy, and not necessarily in this debate dealing with House 
Joint Resolution 37.
  As a former ranking member of the Telecommunications Technology 
Subcommittee, both the ranking member, Joe Barton, and I have sent 
three letters to FCC Chairman Genachowski expressing simply our strong 
opposition to his plan to regulate the Internet. In fact, I have 
introduced legislation the past two Congresses to try to prevent the 
implementation of the net neutrality rules, and other Members have 
supported us. So there is a long record here, I would say to my 
colleague on that side of the aisle, of our side trying to prevent 
Genachowski, the chairman of the FCC, from regulating the Internet.
  In fact, he went so far as to step out and try to do it. There was a 
Comcast case. In an April of 2010 decision, the court found that the 
FCC failed to demonstrate it had ancillary authority under title I. So 
under title I, the courts ruled they did not have the authority to 
regulate Internet network management.
  So I think the courts themselves have corroborated what Mr. Walden 
has indicated. So, you know, what you are arguing is against a court 
case that actually occurred. And as far as the technicality that 
Verizon was involved with, they are going to continue their suit. They 
feel they have a strong argument, and as Mr. Walden pointed out, it was 
just by a technicality. They are going to continue to go forward.
  I will also mention a little bit what the chairman, Mr. Walden, has 
indicated dealing with the 706 rule. The FCC claims it has authority to 
enact this under the 706 rule of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. I was 
one of the conferees on that act. And they are using this as a way to 
advance telecommunications capability, saying they have the authority. 
But they can't rely on 706 because as the agency has previously 
acknowledged, acknowledged themselves, section 706 is not an 
independent source of authority, because 706 talks of removing barriers 
to infrastructure investment, but the rules themselves will erect 
barriers to investment.
  So the FCC's claim simply stretches the authority under these 
provisions. So I think between the Comcast case and the interpretation 
of 706, they don't have any authority do this. In a larger sense, what 
we are talking about is when the FCC moves out and starts to regulate 
the Internet, that creates uncertainty in the economy, uncertainty into 
people who are investing vast sums of money for fiber optics so that 
they can spread broadband. And heaven knows we don't need in this 
economy this uncertainty.
  So I think the FCC was unwise just from a standpoint of the economy 
to strike this uncertainty. The Internet, as has been pointed out, 
exists. It has been open and thriving for all these years because of a 
deregulatory approach. If we step in and let the FCC start to regulate 
the Internet under title I, then it's going to create this uncertainty, 
and that's in fact why Verizon is moving forward.
  As others have pointed out, a lot of people are fearful of the FCC. 
That's why they won't say anything. As many of us know, lots of times 
when you are in a situation where you have an empowering authority up 
there that can regulate you, you don't want to get those people upset 
with you. So you are very delicate in how you move. So the people are 
saying basically that, oh, we are not going to say anything; but 
silently they are telling us, certainly they are telling us on this 
side that they cannot see any reason for the FCC to start to regulate.

                              {time}  1320

  There is no crisis warranting them to do this. The example used with 
his newspaper in Minneapolis is not a crisis. So the FCC hangs its 
adoption of network neutrality rules based upon speculation and future 
harm.
  I urge the passage of this rule.
  Mr. POLIS. The net-neutrality rules are consistent with the D.C. 
circuit ruling in Comcast v. FCC and, in fact, that advances the 
congressional mandates. The rule fulfills the FCC's mandate from 
Congress and their mandate to encourage broadband deployment by 
supporting innovation and investment among their other duties.

[[Page 5112]]

  And, in fact, last year Congress had a chance to advance legislation 
in the area around protecting Internet freedom, and that legislation 
was supported by many public interest organizations, high-tech 
companies and, yes, many broadband carriers. That would have put in 
statute a set of net neutrality rules and that would have definitively, 
through statute, removed the threat of title II classification. 
Unfortunately, that legislation was blocked by Republicans in the 
House.
  So, again, I think when Mr. Walden mentioned that there were some 
folks on the broadband side that might have been coerced into 
supporting something, fearing that there would be a threat of title II 
reclassification, it was the activities of Republicans that 
specifically prevented the removal of that title II reclassification 
threat. And, again, I would like to point to remarks by many investment 
bankers that it has not been seen as any serious regulatory overhang 
with regard to the valuation of stocks in that area because there is no 
effort to move forward with title II regulation.
  Obviously, with regard to this matter, if it's creating, somehow, 
this much controversy around what should be noncontroversial rules 
enshrined into place the current free and open Internet policies that 
have seldom been violated, but we fear might be violated more in the 
future, if that's provoking this kind of discussion, even though all 
the major stakeholders discuss it, you can imagine what type of 
discussion would ensue if there was a serious effort to reclassify 
under title II.
  Mr. Stearns also mentioned that maybe the committee will begin work 
on what type of statutes we might have. Certainly, specifically, I am 
curious. I asked Mr. Walden as well yesterday if the committee would 
consider no-blocking rules, would the committee consider transparency 
requirements, do they think that they, in fact, could do a better job 
than the FCC and that this body, with its vast knowledge of the 
Internet and DNS architecture, would do a better job than the FCC.
  I think, you know, one of the clear things that I would like to see 
and I think this body would like to see, and why I oppose this rule, is 
if we are talking about repealing the FCC's rules, what is the work 
product of this body? What is the replace? It's repeal and replace.
  I think there has been some acknowledgment. In fact, the gentleman 
from Florida (Mr. Stearns) mentioned that the committee might work on 
some of these areas. What is that proposed body of work? Why are we not 
looking at repeal and replace and what we are replacing it with. Is it 
going to be similar to former Chairman Waxman's net neutrality bill of 
last year? Are there substantial changes that have--buy-in across the 
aisle?
  Can we do better? Frankly, I'm skeptical. But if the gentleman would 
like to advance the work product of his committee and come forward with 
a clear decision between what we would be replacing it with, I would be 
certainly open to seeing if, in fact, the work product of the committee 
is better than the work product of the FCC with regard to this matter.
  Mr. Speaker, the Internet has been of immense value to mankind, to 
America, to me personally and to all of us personally. It's contributed 
to our culture, our economic advancement, to the flow of free ideas.
  We should not trade the freedom of the Internet, the freedom of the 
Internet has been an open, superhighway for a toll road controlled by 
and for Internet service providers alone. There is a balance to be 
struck, and the process of finding that balance is under way by 
thoughtful people in an open and inclusive process.
  Today's action by the Republicans short circuits that process and 
imposes simplistic, highly ideological solutions on what is actually a 
complex issue that has shared ideals for preserving a free Internet, 
free of government involvement. We can find bipartisan consensus.
  The FCC order came close to striking that correct balance, far closer 
than the status quo. That's why it's supported by Internet service 
providers themselves, consumers groups, the high-tech community, 
content providers, and faith-based organizations.
  We must keep the Internet free by allowing the FCC to move forward 
with the open Internet role, and we should be debating this on an H.R. 
bill under an open rule. I encourage my colleagues to support the open 
Internet by opposing the previous question and this rule.
  I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of 
my time.
  Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  There is a promo out these days for a new television show that's 
coming on. It's about the CIA and chronicles the fellow's first day at 
the job at the CIA. He walks in and he looks around and he can't 
believe the disarray that he sees there. And his senior adviser there 
steps up and he says, son, have you ever walked into a post office and 
said, my gosh, I have stepped into the future?
  And the answer is, no, the government is not the location where 
innovation thrives.
  To hear this conversation today about how we need government 
regulation to protect the Internet, Mr. Speaker, we need to protect the 
Internet from government regulation, and that's why we are here today 
with this underlying resolution.
  This FCC proposal is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. To 
quote my friend from Colorado, as he was quoting the investment banks, 
these official rules are around what is already being done in the 
private sector. It's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
  Mr. Speaker, it's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist using 
authority that the FCC does not have. It's interesting being down here 
today, as my colleague from Colorado talks about all the big businesses 
that have bought in and all the investment banks that bought in.
  I have to say I don't give two hoots that big business and investment 
banks have bought in. If the authority does not exist to do it, then it 
should not be done. Over and over again, Mr. Speaker, we hear from this 
administration about how they can help, how they can help to solve 
problems, problems that exist and apparently now problems that don't 
exist.
  If the authority does not exist, they cannot be allowed to regulate 
in this area, and that's why the subcommittee has brought this forward.
  So we have a solution to a problem that doesn't exist using authority 
that doesn't exist, and where does this lead us?
  I want to read to you, Mr. Speaker, from the FCC order dated December 
21 of last year: Finally, we decline to apply our rules directly to 
coffee shops, bookstores, airlines, and other entities that acquire 
their Internet service from a broadband provider.
  Although broadband providers that offer such services are subject to 
these rules, we note that addressing traffic is a legitimate network 
management purpose for these premise operators.
  Authority that does not exist and the FCC says, in its benevolence, 
in its benevolence, that at this time it chooses, it chooses, Mr. 
Speaker, not to regulate the way that coffee shops, bookstores, and 
airlines provide Internet service to their customers.
  Folks, this is the camel's nose under the tent. That is why we have 
to be vigilant. It doesn't matter if we like the underlying rule. It 
doesn't matter if the authority does not exist, Mr. Speaker.
  We are obligated as one of three branches of government, we are 
obligated to step in where regulatory authority exceeds its bounds. 
Now, as we have said, the courts have already looked at this decision 
and decided, as we have, that the FCC does not have authority to act in 
this area, solution to a problem that doesn't exist, using authority 
that it doesn't have that starts to pave the way to regulate coffee 
shops, airlines and bookstores.
  Mr. Speaker, this is a simple rule for a simple bill. We have talked 
so much about 2,000-page bills with lots of hidden consequences. We 
have talked broadband section 1099 of the health care act now being 
repealed and passed

[[Page 5113]]

now by the Senate and going on to the President's desk. I want to read 
to you this bill in its entirety if you will permit me the time:
  ``Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United 
States of America in Congress assembled, That Congress disapproves the 
rules submitted by the Federal Communications Commission relating to 
the matter of preserving the open Internet and broadband industry 
practices, and such rule shall have no force or effect.''

                              {time}  1330

  That's it. That's it, eight lines, ``no force or effect.''
  Mr. Speaker, I urge strong support from my colleagues for this rule 
that will then bring to the floor H.J. Res. 37 and allow, in its 
brevity, its complete and total consideration.
  I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question 
on the resolution.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Poe of Texas). The question is on 
ordering the previous question.
  The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that 
the ayes appeared to have it.
  Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 and clause 9 of rule 
XX, this 15-minute vote on ordering the previous question will be 
followed by 5-minute votes on adoption of the resolution, if ordered; 
and approval of the Journal, if ordered.
  The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 241, 
nays 175, not voting 16, as follows:

                             [Roll No. 226]

                               YEAS--241

     Adams
     Aderholt
     Akin
     Alexander
     Amash
     Austria
     Bachmann
     Bachus
     Barletta
     Bartlett
     Barton (TX)
     Bass (NH)
     Benishek
     Berg
     Biggert
     Bilbray
     Bilirakis
     Bishop (UT)
     Black
     Blackburn
     Bonner
     Bono Mack
     Boren
     Boustany
     Brady (TX)
     Brooks
     Broun (GA)
     Buchanan
     Bucshon
     Buerkle
     Burgess
     Burton (IN)
     Calvert
     Camp
     Campbell
     Canseco
     Cantor
     Capito
     Carter
     Cassidy
     Chabot
     Chaffetz
     Coble
     Coffman (CO)
     Cole
     Conaway
     Costa
     Cravaack
     Crawford
     Crenshaw
     Culberson
     Davis (KY)
     Denham
     Dent
     DesJarlais
     Diaz-Balart
     Dold
     Dreier
     Duffy
     Duncan (SC)
     Duncan (TN)
     Ellmers
     Emerson
     Farenthold
     Fincher
     Fitzpatrick
     Flake
     Fleischmann
     Fleming
     Flores
     Forbes
     Fortenberry
     Foxx
     Franks (AZ)
     Gallegly
     Gardner
     Garrett
     Gerlach
     Gibbs
     Gibson
     Gingrey (GA)
     Gohmert
     Goodlatte
     Gosar
     Gowdy
     Granger
     Graves (GA)
     Graves (MO)
     Griffin (AR)
     Griffith (VA)
     Grimm
     Guinta
     Guthrie
     Hall
     Hanna
     Harper
     Harris
     Hartzler
     Hastings (WA)
     Hayworth
     Heck
     Heller
     Hensarling
     Herger
     Herrera Beutler
     Huelskamp
     Huizenga (MI)
     Hultgren
     Hunter
     Hurt
     Issa
     Jenkins
     Johnson (IL)
     Johnson (OH)
     Johnson, Sam
     Jones
     Jordan
     Kelly
     King (IA)
     King (NY)
     Kingston
     Kinzinger (IL)
     Kline
     Labrador
     Lamborn
     Lance
     Landry
     Lankford
     Latham
     LaTourette
     Latta
     Lewis (CA)
     LoBiondo
     Long
     Lucas
     Luetkemeyer
     Lummis
     Lungren, Daniel E.
     Mack
     Manzullo
     Marchant
     Marino
     McCarthy (CA)
     McCaul
     McClintock
     McCotter
     McHenry
     McKeon
     McKinley
     McMorris Rodgers
     Meehan
     Mica
     Miller (FL)
     Miller (MI)
     Miller, Gary
     Mulvaney
     Murphy (PA)
     Myrick
     Neugebauer
     Noem
     Nugent
     Nunes
     Nunnelee
     Olson
     Palazzo
     Paul
     Paulsen
     Pearce
     Pence
     Peterson
     Petri
     Pitts
     Platts
     Poe (TX)
     Pompeo
     Posey
     Price (GA)
     Quayle
     Reed
     Rehberg
     Reichert
     Renacci
     Ribble
     Rigell
     Rivera
     Roby
     Roe (TN)
     Rogers (AL)
     Rogers (KY)
     Rogers (MI)
     Rohrabacher
     Rokita
     Rooney
     Ros-Lehtinen
     Roskam
     Ross (FL)
     Royce
     Runyan
     Ryan (WI)
     Scalise
     Schilling
     Schmidt
     Schock
     Schweikert
     Scott (SC)
     Scott, Austin
     Sensenbrenner
     Sessions
     Shimkus
     Shuster
     Simpson
     Smith (NE)
     Smith (NJ)
     Smith (TX)
     Southerland
     Stearns
     Stivers
     Stutzman
     Sullivan
     Terry
     Thompson (PA)
     Thornberry
     Tiberi
     Tipton
     Turner
     Upton
     Walberg
     Walden
     Walsh (IL)
     Webster
     West
     Westmoreland
     Whitfield
     Wilson (SC)
     Wittman
     Wolf
     Womack
     Woodall
     Yoder
     Young (AK)
     Young (IN)

                               NAYS--175

     Ackerman
     Altmire
     Andrews
     Baca
     Baldwin
     Barrow
     Bass (CA)
     Becerra
     Berkley
     Berman
     Bishop (GA)
     Bishop (NY)
     Blumenauer
     Boswell
     Brady (PA)
     Braley (IA)
     Brown (FL)
     Butterfield
     Capps
     Capuano
     Cardoza
     Carnahan
     Carney
     Carson (IN)
     Castor (FL)
     Chandler
     Chu
     Cicilline
     Clarke (MI)
     Clarke (NY)
     Clay
     Clyburn
     Cohen
     Connolly (VA)
     Conyers
     Costello
     Critz
     Crowley
     Cuellar
     Cummings
     Davis (CA)
     Davis (IL)
     DeFazio
     DeGette
     DeLauro
     Deutch
     Dicks
     Dingell
     Doggett
     Donnelly (IN)
     Doyle
     Edwards
     Ellison
     Eshoo
     Farr
     Fattah
     Filner
     Frank (MA)
     Fudge
     Gonzalez
     Green, Al
     Green, Gene
     Grijalva
     Gutierrez
     Hanabusa
     Hastings (FL)
     Heinrich
     Higgins
     Himes
     Hinojosa
     Hirono
     Holt
     Honda
     Hoyer
     Inslee
     Israel
     Jackson (IL)
     Jackson Lee (TX)
     Johnson (GA)
     Johnson, E. B.
     Kaptur
     Keating
     Kildee
     Kissell
     Kucinich
     Langevin
     Larsen (WA)
     Larson (CT)
     Lee (CA)
     Levin
     Lewis (GA)
     Loebsack
     Lofgren, Zoe
     Lowey
     Lujan
     Lynch
     Maloney
     Markey
     Matheson
     Matsui
     McCarthy (NY)
     McCollum
     McDermott
     McGovern
     McIntyre
     McNerney
     Michaud
     Miller (NC)
     Miller, George
     Moore
     Moran
     Murphy (CT)
     Nadler
     Napolitano
     Neal
     Olver
     Owens
     Pallone
     Pascrell
     Pastor (AZ)
     Payne
     Pelosi
     Perlmutter
     Peters
     Pingree (ME)
     Polis
     Price (NC)
     Quigley
     Rahall
     Rangel
     Reyes
     Richardson
     Richmond
     Ross (AR)
     Rothman (NJ)
     Roybal-Allard
     Ruppersberger
     Rush
     Ryan (OH)
     Sanchez, Linda T.
     Sarbanes
     Schakowsky
     Schiff
     Schrader
     Scott (VA)
     Scott, David
     Serrano
     Sewell
     Sherman
     Shuler
     Sires
     Slaughter
     Smith (WA)
     Speier
     Stark
     Sutton
     Thompson (CA)
     Thompson (MS)
     Tierney
     Tonko
     Towns
     Tsongas
     Velazquez
     Visclosky
     Walz (MN)
     Wasserman Schultz
     Waters
     Watt
     Waxman
     Weiner
     Welch
     Wilson (FL)
     Woolsey
     Wu
     Yarmuth

                             NOT VOTING--16

     Cleaver
     Cooper
     Courtney
     Engel
     Frelinghuysen
     Garamendi
     Giffords
     Hinchey
     Holden
     Kind
     Lipinski
     Meeks
     Sanchez, Loretta
     Schwartz
     Van Hollen
     Young (FL)

                              {time}  1355

  Ms. TSONGAS, Ms. WOOLSEY, Messrs. CONYERS and GUTIERREZ changed their 
vote from ``yea'' to ``nay.''
  Mr. LaTOURETTE changed his vote from ``nay'' to ``yea.''
  So the previous question was ordered.
  The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
  Stated against:
  Ms. SCHWARTZ. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 226, had I been present, I 
would have voted ``nay.''

                          ____________________