On the recordNovember 9, 2011
we don't use the Congressional Review Act often. In fact, I think we have only used it once successfully. But the regulators are working at a breakneck pace, and I think the overreach we see in this rule and some others that are coming out right now really requires the Congress to pay attention, requires us to revisit the reason the Congress gave itself the ability to look at rules and regulations and see if they make sense. Simply put, on this regulation, the Federal Communications Commission lacked the legal standing to produce the order we are debating today. The net neutrality order the FCC enacted is not based on the facts or on the law. In fact, I have yet to hear credible defense of why we would want to have this massive regulatory burden. In fact, we have talked about net neutrality for several years now, and the definition continues to change because the free marketplace has driven the innovation beyond every debate we have had. The marketplace where people invest and grow the Internet and access to that Internet has meant that as soon as a debate would be engaged on this issue of so- called net neutrality, it no longer mattered. I think that is what we see here as well. But it will begin to matter if we begin to manage the Internet in a way that slows down investment, that slows down innovation. Three years ago, the FCC attempted to reach far beyond any legislative mandate they had to regulate the Internet through a rule.…





