The new, Republican-controlled House of Representatives started work yesterday, and it took only a few hours before anti-net neutrality legislation was introduced to stop the "vampires" at the FCC from imposing net neutrality on American Internet access providers.
No surprises here; Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) had last year made plain her opposition to net neutrality, and she pledged back in November to legislate against the FCC.
"Chairman Genachowski has little if any Congressional support for net neutrality," she said at the time. "He can expect this folly to be resolutely overturned in the new year, and to ensure that, I will reintroduce my bill to pull the FCC from the policy making process on the first day of the 112th Congress."
Blackburn was as good as her word. She spent her first day back at work introducing a slew of strongly conservative bills, including ones:
Expressing the sense of Congress that the President should issue, and Congress should hold hearings on, a report and a certification regarding the responsibilities, authorities, and powers of his "czars."
To provide for enhanced Federal, State, and local assistance in the enforcement of the immigration laws.
To amend the Clean Air Act to provide that greenhouse gases are not subject to the Act.
To make 15 percent across-the-board rescissions in non-defense, non-homeland-security, and non-veterans-affairs discretionary spending for each of the fiscal years 2011 and 2012.
Finally, there was H.R. 96, a bill "to prohibit the Federal Communications Commission from further regulating the Internet." Blackburn had sponsored this bill during the last Congress, too, where it went absolutely nowhere. When she introduced it back in 2009, she suggested it should be called the "Real Stimulus Act of 2009." It contained only a few lines, chief of which was this one: "In General—The Federal Communications Commission shall not propose, promulgate, or issue any regulations regarding the Internet or IP-enabled services." National security issues and wiretapping rules would be exempt from this restriction.
Blackburn's bill has 59 cosponsors. Although unlikely to become law in anything like its current form, it's a reminder of how serious Republicans are about overturning or at least limiting the FCC's net neutrality rules passed back in December.
Blackburn, in particular, hates the idea of such rules with a passion usually reserved for things like tax increases or new federal programs. Consider her rhetoric from last December, when the rules passed the FCC on a 3-2 vote:
There's no such thing as hospice for federal bureaucracies. No quiet corner where bureaus who have outlived their usefulness can go to bravely face the end. The undead need no such niceties; not when they can leap vampire-like upon the next great sector of American life and proceed to suck it dry in the name of "public interest," "fair play," or any other euphemistic glamour the Executive and Legislative branches can be lulled into
Just four days before Christmas, the FCC will make its vampric leap from its traditional jurisdiction—the terrestrial radio and land line telephones that have fallen into disuse; onto the gifts piled neatly under our trees. The iPads and iPhones, Androids, Wiis, Webbooks, and WiFi will all feel the federal bite in a way they never have before
The FCC is effectively nationalizing the web Industry and creative content providers who were coerced into this deal by an over zealous FCC Chairman should take heart. Like the breaking of dawn, the new Congress will prove a swift antidote to the federal bloodsucker you found at your throat this Christmas.
Chairman Genachowski has been warned about his vampiric ways—and it now looks like Congress is after him with cloves of rhetorical garlic and stakes of legislative lumber.
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