The U.S. Senate this week could vote to kill Federal Communications Commission rules that were crafted to protect the openness of the Internet, but the White House has vowed to intervene if the resolution of disapproval succeeds.
In a statement released by the Executive Office of the President, Office of Management and Budget, the Obama administration on Tuesday voiced its strong opposition to the Senate measure backed by Texas Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison and 42 cosponsors in a strong indication that President Obama would veto the resolution.
"Notably, the Federal Communications Commission's rule reflected a constructive effort to build a consensus around what safeguards and protections were reasonable and necessary to ensure that the Internet continues to attract investment and to spur innovation," the administration said. "Disapproval of the rule would threaten those values and cast uncertainty over those innovative new businesses that are a critical part of the Nation's economic recovery."
Hutchison and other Republicans in the Senate are moving to annihilate the FCC's Internet or so-called Net neutrality rules before they take effect Nov. 20. The House voted in April to overturn the rules.
"Studies indicate that net neutrality rules could significantly affect our economy," Hutchison said today on the Senate floor. "If net neutrality reduces capital investment in broadband infrastructure by even just 10 percent, it could cost our country hundreds of thousands of jobs over the next decade."
Sen. John Kerry, the veteran Massachusetts Democrat and former presidential candidate, last week urged his colleagues in a letter to oppose the resolution.
"Some have made the false argument that network neutrality rules regulate the Internet or impose a condition on innovators to have to ask the government permission to innovate," Kerry wrote in a two-page letter dated Nov. 4. "The network neutrality rules govern not the Internet but rather the behavior of firms owning and operating the gateways to the Internet – the wires and airwaves that carry the information that connects you to everyone else on the Internet."
Adopted 11 months ago by the Democrat-led FCC to preserve the openness of the Internet, the rules impose obligations and restrictions on landline and wireless broadband providers like AT&T, Comcast, MetroPCS and Verizon. Wireless providers, however, are subject to fewer rules than their landline counterparts.
Verizon Communications has challenged the rules in two cases filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and several other groups have filed petitions for review as well, including Free Press, People's Production House, Media Mobilizing Project, Mountain Area Information Network and Access Humboldt. The federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., has been randomly selected to hear all challenges of the rules laid out in the FCC's Open Internet Order.
