Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act--Motion to Proceed--

Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, next week, the Biden Federal Communications Commission will take a pointless and destructive vote to reimpose onerous net neutrality regulations. Like the Obama FCC before it, the Biden FCC wants to assert broad new government powers over the internet, using rules that were designed--if you can believe this--for telephone monopolies, back during the Great Depression. If there were ever a solution in search of a problem, this is it.

We have tried the Democrats' heavyhanded net neutrality experiment before, and it didn't go very well. Back in 2015, the Obama FCC implemented the regulatory regime the Biden FCC is planning to impose starting tomorrow. This opened the door to a whole host of new internet regulations, including price regulations, and broadband investment declined as a result. That was a problem for Americans generally who benefit when the United States is at the forefront of internet growth and expansion, and it was particularly bad news for Americans in rural States like South Dakota.

Deploying broadband to rural communities already has a number of challenges, and adding utility-style regulations, not meant for today's broadband market, acted as a further disincentive to expanding access. Recognizing the chilling effect the Obama FCC's regulation were having on internet innovation and expansion, in 2017, the FCC, under Chairman Pai, voted to repeal the heavyhanded net neutrality regulations passed by the Obama FCC.

The prospect was greeted with absolute hysteria from Democrats. You would have thought that the sky was about to fall. So dire were their predictions.

We were told that the internet, as we know it, would disappear, that providers would slow speeds to a crawl, that we would get the internet word by word, that our freedom of speech was threatened.

But the repeal went into effect. And guess what happened. Lo and behold, none of the Democrats' dire predictions came to pass. As anyone who has been on the internet lately knows, the internet has not just survived but thrived. Innovation has flourished. Competition has increased. The internet remains a vehicle for free and open discourse. And internet speeds have not only not slowed down; they have gotten faster and faster. So where, I might ask, is the problem that requires this new onerous regulatory regime? Well, there isn't one.

But, unfortunately, that is rarely enough to stop Democrats, who seem to lose sleep at the thought of some aspect of society not being subjected to heavyhanded Federal regulation.

In fact, of course, the Federal Government already regulates the internet, but it does so using a light-touch regulatory approach that has allowed the internet to flourish. But if the Biden FCC's new regulatory regime goes into effect, those days of flourishing may be numbered. As I said, the last time that these heavyhanded regulations were imposed, broadband investment declined, and there is good reason to believe that the same thing would happen this time.

These new rules could also imperil the United States' position at the forefront of internet innovation. Perhaps most disturbing of all, the Biden FCC's onerous new regulatory regime could spell the end of the free and open internet that is supposed to protect.

Under the regulatory regime the Biden FCC is set to impose, the Federal Government would be allowed to block or prioritize internet traffic or otherwise interfere with the free flow of information. It is not hard to imagine the Biden administration using this new regulatory power to shape Americans' internet experience for its own ends.

This is an administration that attempted to manufacture a nonexistent voting rights crisis in order to pass legislation to give Democrats a permanent advantage in Federal elections. So it is not hard to see the Biden FCC using its new powers to advance Democrat interests or the Biden administration's far-left agenda.

The Biden FCC's new regulatory regime is a solution, as I said, in search of a problem, and it is likely to create problems where none exist.

On top of that, as former members of the Obama administration have pointed out, it is unlikely to stand up in court because existing law does not give the FCC the powers that it wants to assume. That makes the FCC's upcoming vote even more pointless.

The Biden FCC should be focused on addressing real challenges, such as continuing our efforts to close the digital divide and to ensure that every American has access to high-speed broadband. But as the 3- year crisis at our southern border demonstrates, the Biden administration tends to ignore the real problems facing Americans in favor of expanding government and advancing its far-left agenda.

So I expect that the FCC will vote next week to impose this heavyhanded new regulatory regime. But while the vote may be a foregone conclusion, I am hopeful that the Biden FCC's regulations will be struck down in court.

I will do everything I can here in Congress to overturn them because, if the new Biden regulatory regime is left in place, it may not be long before we will be looking at the very opposite of net neutrality.

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