Uphill Effort To Reverse Net Neutrality Repeal Has The Early Votes
from the reverse-the-reversal dept
As we've been tracking, there are several routes net neutrality advocates should support if they want to reverse the FCC's attack on net neutrality. The best path forward remains with the courts, where the FCC will need to explain why it ignored the public, the experts, 1,000 startups, and all objective data as it rushed to give a sloppy kiss to Comcast, AT&T and Verizon. It will also need to explain why it made up a DDOS attack and blocked a law enforcement investigation into rampant comment fraud during the proceeding; both apparently ham-fisted attempts to downplay legitimate public opposition to the plan.
But we've also noted how there's an effort afoot by net neutrality advocates and Senator Ed Markey to use the Congressional Review Act to overturn the FCC's vote. Under the CRA, Congress can overturn a regulatory action with a majority vote if the Act is used within 60 days of said action. It's what the Trump administration and the GOP used early last year to kill broadband privacy protections before they were scheduled to take effect.
Bringing such a vote to the floor requires at least 30 members of the Senate, something net neutrality advocates now have with the new support of Claire McCaskill:
30 is the magic number of cosponsors needed to get a #NetNeutrality vote in the full Senate.
Proud to be that 30th cosponsor of @SenMarkey bill to restore free and open internet.
— Claire McCaskill (@clairecmc) January 8, 2018
A big step toward restoring a free and open Internet: with the support of @clairecmc, we now have the 30 votes we need to force a vote on my CRA to reverse the repeal of #NetNeutrality! pic.twitter.com/gXtWQmeIJS
— Ed Markey (@SenMarkey) January 8, 2018
And while net neutrality supporters are enthusiastic about the CRA route, even with these votes it has a steep, uphill climb to success. The CRA reversal would require the signature of President Trump, which isn't going to happen. And getting House floor time for a comparable vote is likely untenable given the steeper GOP majority in the house. As we've long noted, this binary thinking of net neutrality as a partisan issue is a disservice to the public, since the vast majority of voters support net neutrality and opposed the FCC's handout to industry.
That said, there's still real value in forcing Comcast-loyal lawmakers to put their disdain for the public down on the permanent record. Especially given the looming midterms, when countless politicians will have to explain (espcially to more tech-savvy Millennial voters) why they chose to ignore the will of the public just so Comcast, AT&T and Verizon could explore new, creative ways of screwing over small businesses, startups, consumers, and the health of the internet.
Filed Under: congress, congressional review act, cra, fcc, net neutrality
