Save the Internet Act of 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Oregon for yielding.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this bill that would create a government takeover of the internet.

If you look at the bill, first of all, it is always interesting to pay attention to the titles of bills--the Save the Internet Act. Whom do you want to save the internet from? Many would say they want to save it from the heavy hand of government.

I have asked my friends on the other side of the aisle to please show me what is so broken about the internet that the Federal Government needs to come in to save it.

First of all, if you look at the growth of this great industry, this is one of America's greatest exports. It is one of America's greatest economic drivers. Some of the best jobs in America are created from the technology industry that has boomed and thrived because of the growth of the internet.

How has this internet grown? It has grown because there is no heavy hand of the Federal Government slowing it down. If you go back to look, as the internet continued to grow, as applications continued to get developed on all kinds of devices, small handheld devices, the things that people are able to do, the improvements in their daily lives, because of the growth of the internet, the private money that has come in, billions of dollars of private money has come in to help develop this great superhighway. It has come in, in large part, because the Federal Government hasn't figured out how to regulate and slow it down.

Then along comes this bill. Let's be keenly aware of what this bill is trying to do. The bill actually imposes what is called title II regulations of the internet. What are title II regulations? These are laws that were created in the 1930s when there was a monopoly telephone company.

You would have to google it these days because most people might not remember, but they used to have these little plugs that they would push in and pull out. You would literally pick up a telephone that was plugged into a wall back then--it wasn't a remote device--and you would call an operator and the operator would patch you through.

That was the series of laws that they are now trying to apply to the internet. Can you imagine these archaic 1930s laws being forced upon the internet that is growing so robustly that we are the envy of the world? Our technology, American technology, is dominant in this industry because the government doesn't have these heavy-handed regulations.

Then along comes this bill, the Save the Internet Act, to save us from this growth, to save us from this job creation. I think people can clearly see what is going on here. This is a battle we are having on a lot of fronts. It is a battle of individual freedom versus government control.

Should you have the choice to decide which provider you want to get your internet service from? The great thing about the internet today is there are so many different people competing for your business, and they are spending billions of dollars to do it.

Take a look at 5G. Maybe you are on a 3G network or a 4G network, and now all of these private companies are spending their own money, billions of dollars, to build out a 5G network.

Mr. Chairman, what we would like to see is more of this competition. Yet if you go back to look when the Federal Government did try this-- because this isn't some newly created idea. Back in 2015, when there was a different administration in the White House, a different FCC, the FCC started to impose these kinds of regulations and limit the growth of the internet. What happened during that period in 2015? You saw a dramatic drop. Over $3 billion of investment went away. Private money that used to come in to grow and expand these networks, 3G, 4G, hopefully 5G, when the government started to impose these kinds of regulations, people stopped investing because they said the Federal Government telling them how to spend their private money so that we can have a better, faster internet, they weren't going to do it.

If you look at what this bill doesn't do, that is the really interesting part. When they talk about the people who are limiting content and closing off lanes to the superhighway, it is not those service providers. It is the edge providers.

These big companies that are the application developers that actually do control your data, they are not part of this bill. They were exempt from this bill.

So the thing that we want to do and see is a freer, more open internet, which we have already. The government is not regulating the internet today, and it is growing and expanding to the point where we are the envy of the world. We have some of the best job creation in this industry. We don't need the Federal Government to come in and save us from this great growth and expansion.

Let's let the internet stay free and open like it is today without the heavy hand of the Federal Government.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''

Mr. MICHAEL F. DOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I find this pretty humorous that the Republicans want to talk about government takeover of the internet. The only person I know who has proposed publicly to take over the internet is the President of the United States when he said he wants to nationalize 5G.

Maybe you guys need to take a little trip over to the White House and prevent that little government takeover of the internet.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Eshoo), a valuable member of this committee.

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