Senate Democrats to FCC: Hands Off Net Neutrality

Democratic senators today urged the FCC not to dismantle net neutrality.

"We have strong net neutrality rules in place today, the court upheld those rules, the issue is settled," Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey said during a press event on Capitol Hill.

Joined by Sens. Al Franken, Patrick Leahy, Ron Wyden, and Richard Blumenthal, Markey pledged to "oppose any efforts" to undo, roll back, or weaken existing net neutrality rules. Attempts to do so are just another example of the GOP and President Trump "waging an all-out assault on our core Democratic values," Markey said.

The senator's presser comes after Trump selected FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai to serve as chairman after Obama appointee Tom Wheeler stepped down last month. Pai has long been a critic of the agency's rules, which he called "a radical departure from the bipartisan, market-oriented policies that have served us so well for the last two decades."

Pai has already targeted some aspects of the net neutrality ruling, extending a disclosure exemption for small ISPs and announcing the FCC will not pursue legal action against ISPs and cell phone service providers for certain violations of net neutrality rules.

Pai and the GOP argue that the rules are unnecessary; companies will regulate themselves, they say. Democrats, however, say they give consumers a way to report bad actors and ensure that ISPs can't provide Internet fast lanes for the highest bidder.

"I have called net neutrality the free speech issue of our time because the basic principles of our democracy are at stake," Sen. Franken said, pointing to startups like YouTube that would not have been able to take on larger players without the even playing field of the Web.

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"We're here to fight back. Dismantling the net neutrality rules won't be easy so long as we can pull together again," he argued, reminding attendees of the massive public response to the FCC's rules a few years ago. "We want to alert the American people that the FCC may be up to something that they don't want to happen.

"Taking them away would be completely irresponsible," Franken concluded.

At this point, the Democrats will likely have to rely on public outrage should they want to thwart action on the rules. Republicans control both houses of Congress, and the GOP is in the majority at the FCC, too.