Pelosi Calls Facebook Behavior 'Shameful,' Says Infrastructure Bill Coming Soon
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., blasted Facebook during a Thursday news conference, calling the company’s behavior “shameful” and claiming the company acted in an “irresponsible” manner. Pelosi announced House Democrats “will be rolling out” a new infrastructure legislative package the week the chamber returns from its Martin Luther King Jr. week recess.
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Facebook has “been very abusive of the great opportunity that technology has given them,” Pelosi said in response to a question about whether CEO Mark Zuckerberg and “other tech executives have too much power.” The company “didn’t even check on the money from Russia in the last election,” she said. “They never even thought they should. So they have been very irresponsible.” Facebook recently got criticism of its new deepfake policy during a House Consumer Protection Subcommittee hearing (see 2001080072).
Facebook’s “business model is strictly to make money,” Pelosi said. “They don’t care about the impact on children, they don’t care about truth, they don’t care about where this is all coming from. And they have said, even if they know it’s not true they will print it.” All Facebook wants from the federal government is “tax cuts and no antitrust action against them,” she said. “They schmooze [President Donald Trump’s] administration in that regard because so far that is what they’ve received.” The company didn’t comment.
House Democrats’ upcoming infrastructure measure is “the work of more than one committee” but was spearheaded by the House Infrastructure Committee Chairman Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., Pelosi said. It wasn’t immediately clear how the new measure will differ from the Democrats’ previous infrastructure proposal, the Leading Infrastructure for Tomorrow’s America Act (HR-2741). That bill would allocate $40 billion for broadband projects, offer $12 billion in grants for implementing next generation-911 technologies and $5 billion for federal funding of a loan and credit program for broadband projects. Democrats first filed the measure in 2017 (see 1706020056).
Democrats and Trump previously identified infrastructure legislation as a priority. “So far, [the Trump administration has] not come on board,” Pelosi told reporters. “We’ve decided now we’ll just have to go forward” on infrastructure without immediate White House buy-in. Trump abruptly halted talks with Pelosi and others in May on ways to pay for additional broadband and other infrastructure projects because of investigations into his administration (see 1905220076).
“We do believe that now” that Congress has approved the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement on free trade, Trump “might be interested in cooperating in other ways,” including on infrastructure, Pelosi said. The Senate passed the USMCA Thursday 89-10 (see 2001160036). The House approved the agreement in December (see 1912190084).