Congressional Democrats Argue in Favor of Keeping 2015 Net Neutrality Rules
House and Senate Democrats spoke out Monday and this weekend against the FCC May NPRM on the 2015 net neutrality order and reclassification of broadband as a Communications Act Title II service (see 1705180029). “There’s nothing broken” that "needs to…
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be fixed,” said Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., Monday during a Mozilla-sponsored roundtable discussion with Gigi Sohn, ex-aide to former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, and other neutrality supporters. Eshoo draws “great comfort and confidence in the legality of the 2015 rules" given the FCC victory in USTelecom v. FCC, which upheld the order. Industry supporters of the 2015 order should lean on Congress to enact net neutrality legislation since the FCC is likely to divide along partisan lines in favor of rolling back the existing rules despite the proliferation of comments to the commission in favor of keeping them, Eshoo said. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai “thinks like a 110-year-old guy” and millions of pro-neutrality comments are unlikely to sway him to keep the 2015 rules in place, she said. The FCC has received almost 5 million comments. House Commerce Committee ranking member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., began circulating an e-newsletter to supporters Monday decrying the potential rollback. “At its most basic level, net neutrality means that we, the people, can decide for ourselves what we do online,” Pallone said. “Nobody gets to influence that choice: Not the government, and not the companies that run the networks.” Sens. Al Franken, D-Minn., Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., called in a Saturday joint NowThis opinion video for citizens to speak out against rescinding the 2015 rules. “This is insane,” Franken said in the video. “We need your voices heard.”