Executive Session
Floor Speech
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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I rise today in defense of net neutrality. In April the House of Representatives took an important step in passing the Save the Internet Act, legislation that would overturn the Trump administration's Federal Communication Commission's wrongheaded decision and restore net neutrality protections. Another way of saying it is that net neutrality is nondiscrimination online. That is what it is. It is the principle of nondiscrimination online so that large companies just can't discriminate against smaller voices, smaller companies, and startups.
In the Senate, we have already successfully passed the same proposal last year. In April of 2018, my Congressional Review Act resolution passed in the Senate on a bipartisan vote of 52 to 47. In April 2018, on a bipartisan basis, we debated net neutrality and the Senate decided to join the majority of Americans and support a free and open internet.
In that vote we sent a message to President Trump about what that means: an internet, free of corporate control and open to all who want to communicate, engage, and innovate. We made it clear that Congress will not fall for President Trump's special interest agenda and his broadband baron allies who just want to block, slow down, or discriminate against content online just to charge Americans more on their cable bills.
Unfortunately, the rules for the Congressional Review Act that allow just 30 Senators to force the majority to schedule a vote is not an option in this Congress. So, instead, on this, the 1-year anniversary of President Trump's net neutrality repeal going into effect, we will call for an immediate vote on the Save the Internet Act. Unfortunately, our Republican colleagues are failing to listen to the voices of their constituents and plan to block the vote from happening.
Let's be clear. Net neutrality is just another way in which the Republican Party refuses to side with the ordinary people in our country--regular families, small businesses, and startup software companies. How do they get access to the internet in a way in which they cannot feel that corporate pressure restricting their ability to use this incredible invention to further the democratization of access to opportunity or, at the same time, to innovate in a way which continues to change not only our own country but our own world?
We can't let big companies discriminate against individual consumers. We can't let big companies stifle speech. Once you pay your monthly internet service bill, you can go anywhere you want on the internet without your provider slowing down or blocking your path to a website of your choosing.
This is a fight. It is a fight for innovation, for entrepreneurialism, for the American economy, and a fight for free speech--the cornerstone of our democracy--and a fight for the most powerful platform for commerce and communications in the history of the planet. The Save the Internet Act does exactly what the American people want. It restores the rules that ensure that families aren't subject to higher prices, slower internet speeds, and even blocked websites because the big broadband providers want to pump up their profits.
Under Senator McConnell's leadership, the Republicans are trying to bury this bill in a legislative graveyard. Instead of acting on legislation, which, again, passed the Senate a year ago--it just passed in the House in April of this year--Leader McConnell has been doing little but confirming unqualified, extreme-right nominees for the Trump administration.
Just listen to the bills the Senate Republicans refuse to act on: the Violence Against Women Act, no votes out here on the Senate floor; voting on democracy reform, no votes out here on the Senate floor; gun background checks, passed in the House but no vote here in the Senate; paycheck fairness; the Paris climate agreement--no, no, no.
But the Senate majority leader and his Republican colleagues can keep populating the legislative graveyard at their political peril because this is the agenda that the American people want to see the Senate debating, and they want to see these laws put on the books to protect families in our country. That is because the issues they are blocking are enormously popular, most with strong bipartisan support.
Take net neutrality. Now, 86 percent of Americans do not approve of the Federal Communication Commission's action to repeal net neutrality rules, including 82 percent of Republicans, and we are not going to have a vote out here on the Senate floor.
On background checks for gun purchases, 97 percent of Americans support requiring background checks for all gun buyers, but we are not going to have a vote out here on the Senate floor.
On staying in the Paris climate agreement, nearly 70 percent of registered voters believe the United States should keep its promise and stay in that historic agreement to combat climate change, but the Republicans will not allow us to even have a vote on that out here on the Senate floor.
The only place where these issues don't have Republican support is in Senator McConnell's office. Across the country, there are huge bipartisan numbers on each and every one of those issues. It is time that we do right by the American people, and we can start with the Save the Internet Act to protect the internet as we know it.
More than 100 outside advocacy organizations wrote to Senate leadership today urging a vote on the net neutrality legislation. They want action now, and Democrats are committed to fighting on their behalf.
I am joined today by some of our greatest fighters for net neutrality in the Senate and across our country. The ranking member of the Commerce Committee, Maria Cantwell from Washington State, will be out here in a few minutes, but now I am joined by Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon.
Senator Wyden and I introduced net neutrality legislation 15 years ago in the House and in the Senate. Nobody understands this issue better than Senator Wyden does. Partnering with Senator Cantwell, we are going to continue this battle. Whether it is on the floor of the Senate or in the House or whether it is in the courts, we will not stop fighting until net neutrality is restored.
So, from my perspective, right from the very beginning, Senator Wyden and I have been on the right side of history. We have been fighting for an issue that has overwhelming public support, and we are not going to give up until we have won this fight.
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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I think Senator Cantwell and Senator Wyden have done an excellent job in laying out the parameters of the problems that exist if we do not have net neutrality enshrined as the law of the land.
We believe the principles of nondiscrimination--the principles that ensure that the internet is open and accessible to the smallest voices as well as the largest voices. We need laws to protect the smallest voices. We need protections to ensure that they are going to be heard, that they can innovate, that they can take their entrepreneurial zeal, their insights into the additional changes that can be made in this longstanding--now a 20-year history of dynamic changes that have taken place in the online commercial world and that they will be able to innovate.
They should not have to get permission to innovate. They should not have to get permission to be able to change the way in which people communicate in our country. We shouldn't have to hire lawyers to negotiate with the lawyers of the biggest companies in the United States in order to ensure that investors aren't going to lose all their money as the small company gets tipped upside down and has all of their resources absolutely devastated by anticompetitive activity. That is what this is all about--democracy and capitalism, entrepreneurial spirit, the ability to innovate, the ability to be able to go to the marketplace.
In order for capitalism to work, it has to have a conscience. Capitalism without a conscience allows for unfettered large corporations to take advantage of small companies, startups, and individuals in our society. It has to have a conscience. Net neutrality is the conscience for the online world we live in. It ensures that there is fairness, openness, and it ensures that the apertures that are there cannot be narrowed just because of the corporate agenda of an individual huge company.
That is the essence of this whole debate. It is something we believe is at the heart of what this 21st century platform of commerce should include. It will be, in a lot of ways, the defining issue of whether this entire era is one that is characterized by fairness or one that is characterized by monopolistic or duopoly practices. Unanimous Consent Request--H.R. 74, H.R. 1644, a bill to restore the open internet order of the Federal Communications Commission; that the bill be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.
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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, despite the Republican objections today, Senator Cantwell, Senator Wyden, and I, and tens of millions of people across this country will not stop fighting until net neutrality is fully restored. Whether in the Halls of Congress or in the courts of our country, this is going to be a fight that is fought until it is finally won.
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