Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Montana. Let me state the reason for the urgency. I described it today, but it has been said in other venues. Mr. Whitacre from AT&T most famously said it: These are my pipes. I want Google to pay for the use of my pipes. That was a famous statement by Mr. Whitacre. Yes, those pipes belong to the providers, but there is a requirement there be a nondiscrimination approach to the use of those pipes. We do not want providers to set up tollbooths or gates to say: OK, you are a big site out there. We are going to charge you to use this. Maybe that person cannot pay the charge. The billions of people who would access that site now will not have access because there is a gatekeeper who said: We are only going to allow these folks to be on our site. That is the point of it. There is, it seems to me, a potential problem that could not have existed previously when the nondiscrimination rules existed. But now that the nondiscrimination rules were obliterated, we need to restore them. The Senator from Montana asked the question how can the Federal Communications Commission do this. I believe there are general powers in the Federal Communications Commission Act, and I believe the Commission itself has general powers that will allow it to act in a manner that the court would view to be in compliance with the law. The FCC is not interested in doing something that it does not have the legal authority to do. I believe they have the capability.…”