Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman and my colleagues, today the House is taking up H.R. 3309, which the Republicans say is a modest proposal to make the Agency operate more efficiently. I could not disagree more strongly. This bill would not reform the FCC. It would disable it. The bill erects procedural hurdles that make it more difficult for the FCC to protect consumers. It strips the FCC of its power to ensure that mergers between telecommunications companies are in the public interest. If this bill is enacted, it would stymie the ability of the Agency to do much of anything except to produce reports for Congress. Although I have many problems with the bill, I have three major concerns I want to highlight. First, it creates a new set of procedures for the FCC. For more than 65 years, the Administrative Procedure Act has governed administrative agencies across the Federal Government. This bill creates a special procedural set of rules for the FCC alone. Let me give you an example. The bill requires the FCC to include in every notice of proposed rulemaking the specific language of the proposed rule. Although this should be a best practice--and the Genachowski FCC does it 86 percent of the time--it makes no sense to strip the Agency of flexibility and require it to do it in every instance. Just last week, the FCC adopted unanimously a notice of proposed rulemaking on interoperability requirements in the 700 megahertz spectrum. It did this without including the specific language of proposed rules.…”