House OK of Save the Internet Act Renews Questions on Path Forward
Supporters of the Save the Internet Act net neutrality bill (HR-1644/S-682) were looking beyond House passage Wednesday, despite dim prospects (see 1904100014). The House passed HR-1644 on an almost uniformly party-line 232-190 vote, as expected (see 1904090045). One House Republican voted for the bill -- Bill Posey of Florida. No Democrats defected to vote against it. Ten lawmakers didn't vote. HR-1644/S-682 would add a new title to the Communications Act that reverses the FCC order rescinding its 2015 net neutrality rules and restores reclassification of broadband as a Communications Act Title II service (see 1903060077).
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House passage may be as far as the Save the Internet Act makes it this Congress given dynamics in the Senate and White House. The bill would need to clear a 60-vote threshold to clear procedural hurdles in the Senate. President Donald Trump's administration said Tuesday he likely will veto the legislation if passed by both chambers. Some Democratic supporters argue there are other avenues for keeping the bill alive in the public consciousness through the rest of the Congress, including during the 2020 election.
Democrats and Republicans preceded final passage with a continuation of what House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Mike Doyle, D-Pa., called a “vigorous debate.” Democrats continued to enthusiastically support the measure; Republicans opposed it. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., called the bill one of the reasons “more and more Americans are beginning to ask 'what have the Democrats done with their majority'” in the chamber since regaining control in the 2018 election.
Reactions of FCC members and others divided based on whether they supported the 2015 rules. Chairman Ajit Pai called the bill “a big-government solution in search of a problem” and said it “should not and will not become law.” Fellow GOP Commissioners Brendan Carr and Mike O'Rielly also criticized the measure. The measure “is not even remotely an intellectually honest or serious effort to create regulatory certainty or legislate net neutrality,” O'Rielly said. “It is a political statement built on a broken abomination of an FCC rulemaking.”
The two Democratic FCC commissioners praised HR-1644. Passage of the measure “gets right what the FCC got so wrong,” said Jessica Rosenworcel. Rescission of the 2015 rules “put the FCC on the wrong side of history, the wrong side of the law, and the wrong side of the American public.” The bill “protects net neutrality by restoring enforceable rules and reinstating the FCC as the cop on the beat responsible for protecting consumers,” said Geoffrey Starks.
What's Next?
“We've done our job” by passing HR-1644 “and now it's time for the Senate to do theirs” by taking up the measure, Doyle told us after the House vote. “The American people overwhelmingly want to see [the 2015 rules] restored. There's no question about that, [support] cuts across all lines” in the political spectrum. “If senators are listening to what their constituents are saying,” they will support the bill, because “this is an issue that's not going to go away,” he said.
Lead S-682 sponsor Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., believes polls showing bipartisan support for the 2015 rules will provide momentum for the bill, especially with the 2020 election coming. Lawmakers who “vote against” restoring the rules “do so at their own peril” the next time they face the electorate, Markey said. Republicans said there's no reason to believe net neutrality is a political issue that voters care about.
Some Democrats and aides are privately posing the possibility of attaching language from HR-1644/S-682 or a similar measure to restore the 2015 rules to coming appropriations bills. Democratic appropriators who have jurisdiction over the FCC's budget had mixed reactions. House Appropriations Financial Services Subcommittee Chairman Mike Quigley, D-Ill., said he'll leave decisions to attach net neutrality as a rider to FCC funding up to top Democratic leaders.
“I don't know the answer” to whether Democrats should use funding bills as a vehicle to enact HR-1644/S-682, said Senate Communications Subcommittee ranking member Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, a member of the Appropriations Financial Services Subcommittee. “There are two things in tension. One, we strongly believe in net neutrality and this may be our only vehicle” for enacting the legislation given the chamber's procedural hurdles. And to make the appropriations process function, "we're trying to do … as little authorizing legislation as possible” via funding bills, he added.
Amendment Votes
The House ultimately cleared all 12 amendments the House Rules Committee allowed for consideration on the floor. Nine passed on voice votes.
The House voted 216-204 against a motion from House Commerce Committee ranking member Greg Walden, R-Ore., that sought to return HR-1644 to the committee and amend the measure to ensure it wouldn't “modify, impair, supersede, or authorize the modification, impairment, or supersession” of the Internet Tax Freedom Act. He unsuccessfully proposed similar language to House Rules earlier this week (see 1904080062). Doyle said the motion was merely a bid to “delay and confuse” the debate.
Lawmakers approved the three amendments that required roll call votes by unanimous or overwhelmingly lopsided margins. They voted 423-0 for an amendment by Rep. Ben McAdams, D-Utah, that would ensure restoration of 2015 rules won't prohibit ISPs “from blocking content that is not lawful,” including child porn and “copyright-infringing materials.” McAdams' language also ensures the bill doesn't impose “any independent legal obligation” on ISPs “to be the arbiter of what is lawful content.”
The House voted 376-46 for a proposal from Rep. Jennifer Wexton, D-Va., requiring the FCC report within 30 days on its plan for evaluating and addressing “problems with the collection” of Form 477 data on broadband coverage. Two of the amendments approved by voice votes also sought to improve FCC broadband coverage data collection and its process for building the annual Telecom Act Section 706 broadband deployment report. The Wednesday votes occurred while the Senate Commerce Committee was again probing problems with broadband coverage data collection practices, a topic of frequent Capitol Hill ire (see 1904100064).
The House voted 363-60 for an amendment from Rep. Antonio Delgado, D-N.Y., that calls for GAO to assess the “benefits to consumers of broadband internet access service being offered on a standalone basis” by ISPs and make “recommendations for legislation to increase the availability of standalone” broadband, especially in rural areas.