Save the Internet Act of 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. LATTA. Madam Chair, I rise in support of my amendment that would require the Federal Communications Commission to provide a list of the 700 rules and regulations it claims it forbore from in the 2015 Open Internet Order.

This list will be provided to the Energy and Commerce Committee and the Senate Commerce Committee within 3 days of enactment of H.R. 1644.

The need for this amendment arises out of the majority's claim that H.R. 1644 would lock in all provisions of law and regulations that the FCC forbore from applying to internet service providers in 2015.

At that time, the FCC claimed it forbore from applying over 700 regulations, but never made clear what 700 rules it was exempting ISPs from under title II.

For broadband providers to know what regulations actually apply to them, they need to know what provisions of law the FCC forbore from.

For the FCC to arrive at the number of over 700, it seems they must have analyzed the Code of Federal Regulations to determine which rules were applicable to broadband and which were not, but the FCC never made that list public.

We have asked the majority on multiple occasions for help tracking down that list. Instead of helping locate it, the majority has doubled down on the public statements made by the Obama FCC quantifying that number.

Now that H.R. 1644 might be passed by the House of Representatives, it is time to make it clear which rules of the road will not apply to broadband providers.

H.R. 1644 already imposes enough uncertainty on broadband providers, because it would give the FCC broad authority under title II to regulate the internet beyond even the bright-line rules.

If we cannot clear up that uncertainty before this bill gets passed, we should do all we can to let the public know what the bill does after it would become law.

Unless we require the FCC to produce that list, we will never know what is in the bill.

We must do better for the American public and provide more transparency to support broadband employment, investment, and growth.

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Mr. LATTA. Madam Chair, I appreciate my colleague, the gentlewoman's concern for disadvantaged and vulnerable groups and the possible impact of the 2015 Open Internet Order on their ability to get connected online and have access to all the economic and social opportunities the internet has made possible. These are all very important questions to consider, and so I will not oppose this amendment.

However, I hope my colleagues will consider just as much the possibility that throwing the internet into title II and all of the heavy-handed government regulation that it represents may not be the best way to address the concerns of these populations.

We completely agree with the transformative impact of the internet on minorities, rural populations, individuals with disabilities, the elderly, and the socioeconomically disadvantaged. In many ways, the internet is even more important to these populations than to anyone else.

So what would really help to bridge the digital divide and get more of these folks connected? I would argue what is most critical in this problem we are all trying to solve is, number one, to encourage investment.

But you have heard me say it before, and I will say it again: Title II is a devastating investment killer. We saw those numbers take a dip after the FCC diverged from the longstanding bipartisan path of light- touch regulation into the 1930s era monopoly regulation of title II.

So what impact would the title II reclassification have on the disadvantaged and vulnerable populations we are talking about with this amendment? How will it impact future deployment that could connect them? Maybe we should also have the GAO looking into that.

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Mr. LATTA. Madam Chair, I appreciate my colleague's interest, the gentleman's interest in stand-alone broadband. As he knows, this is a really important issue, especially in rural America, and one that the FCC has spent considerable time on, in fact, one that I have spent considerable time on as one of the co-chairs of the Rural Broadband Caucus.

So I do not oppose this amendment, but I want to observe here that this amendment will not do anything to relieve the smallest ISPs found in the most rural areas from some of the worst excesses of this bill.

So I must say, I am disappointed that our friends in the majority refuse to give us a vote on my amendment, which would have included the language on small businesses that was passed unanimously by the House in the last two Congresses.

This amendment was exactly the same as the one that the Democrats have agreed--twice--to tie to the original 2015 order. It would have extended the exemption for small ISPs from the Obama FCC's enhanced transparency rule for 5 years and expanded the exemption to include businesses with 250,000 subscribers or fewer.

I am supportive of protecting the consumers of small ISPs, but these enhanced disclosures placed an unnecessary regulatory burden on small businesses and distracted them from working to bring broadband internet access to customers across the country, especially those in rural America.

My colleagues in the majority seem supportive of the plight of the small, rural ISPs but could not support this amendment at subcommittee--even though they had voted to support it twice before. Instead, they asked us to find yet another bipartisan agreement on an issue that we have already spent hours negotiating and have already found common ground.

We held up our end of the bargain, even as we walked away from the deal that they agreed to twice before and proceeded to dig in on terms of the FCC's 2015 order instead.

Although time has passed since the Small Business Broadband Deployment Act, H.R. 4596, passed the House unanimously in the 114th Congress with a vote of 411-0 and was reintroduced in the 115th Congress and passed on voice vote as H.R. 288, the need still exists to promote the continued deployment of broadband and prevent small ISPs from becoming burdened with additional requirements that make it more difficult to do what they are in business to do. In fact, based on our hearings in the past Congress and some of the statements on the floor today, I think it is safe to say there is bipartisan consensus on the need to support rural broadband for consumers.

As a reminder, my amendment would not have let small ISPs skirt transparency. Instead, they would follow the less onerous transparency rules adopted by the FCC in 2010. So consumers would still have access to the information needed to make informed decisions about their internet service, and ISPs could focus on providing service rather than cumbersome regulatory requirements.

I believe my friends across the aisle when they say they care about expanding broadband in rural America and closing the digital divide. Although, if they truly cared as much as they claim to, I would have expected my amendment to be made in order and to be adopted unanimously as it has been by the House in the past.

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Mr. LATTA. Madam Chair, I agree with the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Porter), my colleague, that FCC enforcement is important in any area that the agency regulates, and that is why we will not oppose this amendment.

That is also why we in the majority have asked, at several hearings, when we were going to have our first FCC oversight hearing this Congress. We are 4 months into this Congress, and the majority has yet to bring the FCC before the committee to answer questions relating to its past enforcement efforts on ISPs, the impact of this legislation, and other topics pending at the FCC.

This is an issue that could have gained by having the FCC before the committee rather than the topic being delegated to a report that does not pertain to the base bill.

This is also an issue that could have gained from bipartisan negotiations. All three Republican net neutrality bills would have the FCC oversee ISP practices and enforce net neutrality to keep a free and open internet.

There is more agreement here than the majority would have you believe. There is also a role for the FCC to have in overseeing net neutrality and maintaining a free and open internet, and there should be clear net neutrality rules on the book.

Where we disagree is on giving the FCC unchecked powers to regulate the internet and determine on its own what is just and reasonable. That is not net neutrality.

Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. LATTA. Madam Chair, I am pleased to see the Democrats bring so many ideas today as it comes to rural broadband, and because of that, we will not oppose this amendment.

The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Johnson) on our committee has been a strong advocate of improving the 477 data at the FCC and how to have the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the NTIA, more engaged in mapping by aggregating resources across the Federal Government. He was part of an effort last fall that shared a draft reauthorization of NTIA with the Democrats that would have helped get more granular information. Unfortunately, our friends on the other side of the aisle put down their pens on this effort.

In our markup last week, Mr. Johnson offered an amendment that was voted down by the majority that would have eased the title II albatross from small rural carriers. Sadly, this was rejected. Coincidentally, we saw a number of the Democratic amendments made in order to study the problems of rural broadband deployment.

Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

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