Disapproving FCC Internet and Broadband Regulations

Floor Speech

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Mr. MARKEY. I thank the gentlelady.

In 2 days, the Republicans have proven that they always side with the biggest behemoth companies. Yesterday, they said it was okay for the biggest oil and coal and chemical companies to pollute the atmosphere. Today, they are saying that it's okay for the biggest communications companies to totally control the entire blogosphere. They want to spoil Mother Earth and Google Earth all in a 24-hour period. They want to allow the domination of the World Wide Web and the pollution of the whole wide world all in 24 hours.

Let me give you a little history here, ladies and gentlemen. We had no competition in the Internet, in the wireless world.

In 1993, there were two companies--analog, 50 cents a minute. No one had cell phones in their companies. ``We'' had to move over the 200 megahertz. ``We'' had to say there was a third, fourth, fifth, and sixth company so that there would be competition and then block the first two companies that were not innovating. Why were they not innovating? Because there was no Darwinian paranoia inducing competition to force them to move. Then in 1996, when the whole country was analog, we had to pass another bill to move them to digital, to move them to broadband, because the behemoths had yet to deploy broadband to one home in the United States.

No competition. No innovation. No benefits to consumers. The biggest companies that the Republicans support were happy with the way things were going because they could charge whatever they wanted to, provide whatever services they wanted to, ignore competition, and ignore consumers simultaneously.

That's what this debate is all about. We had to ensure that those behemoths--the oligopolies, the monopolies--were taken from the clutches of the Republicans and put out into the world where they had to compete.

So what do we have here today? Another Republican congressional resolution, which says let's go back to that era where the biggest companies, the monopolies, defy the one lesson that Adam Smith taught us, which is that monopolies and oligopolies are incapable of enjoying anything but the respect of those who are already in the wealthy class while ignoring those who are in the consumer class. That's their history. That's the number one lesson of Adam Smith, that we must beware of oligopolies.

Here, what we have on our hands is an effort to shut down the one job-creating engine that has driven our economy over the last 15 years, since we opened up the competition, and they want to shut it down. Ladies and gentlemen, 50 percent of the growth of our economy in the 1990s was in this sector. It's because we had competition. They want to shut it down here today.

Vote ``no'' on the Republican resolution, which ends this era of the open Internet and which allows every innovator in their garages and at home to dream big--that they could create new jobs in our economy.

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Mr. MARKEY. I thank the gentlelady.

The microphone in the well on the Democratic side is shut down; so I will use the microphone on the Republican side.

And I will say to the Republicans that we already have rules that govern the Internet that have passed through this Congress. They deal with education; they deal with privacy; they deal with intellectual property; they deal with global Internet governance; they deal with network security; they deal with pornography; they deal with taxation of items on the Internet; they deal with protections to the deaf and blind on the Internet. We do have rules on the Internet, so don't pretend for a second that we don't.

Let me give you, though, another lesson from Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations. Here is what he said:

``The Member of Parliament who supports every proposal for strengthening the monopoly is sure to acquire not only the reputation of understanding trade but great popularity and influence with an order of men whose numbers and wealth render them of great importance.

``If he opposes them, on the contrary, and still more if he has the authority to be able to thwart them, neither the most acknowledged probity nor the greatest rank nor the greatest public services can protect him from the most infamous abuse and detraction, from personal insults, nor sometimes from real danger arising from the insolent outrage of furious and disappointed monopolists.''

Adam Smith warned us of monopolies, of oligopolies as the greatest threat to capitalism. That is what we are debating today, to ensure that the Internet is open, not just to the monopolists but to every entrepreneur, the tens of thousands of them out there who have been creating the wealth, creating the opportunities, creating the jobs, creating the open communication that has revolutionized our world.

In Iran it is legal to shut down the Internet. In China it is legal to shut down the Internet. Let us make sure in the United States it is not legal to shut down the Internet.

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