This bill (Senate Joint Resolution 52) would nullify and disapprove of the new Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rule that seeks to deregulate the Internet. In 2015, as a result of fears that providers would “throttle” customers’ Internet connections and charge higher rates for certain times and/or services, the Obama-era FCC imposed common-carrier mandates on broadband Internet service providers, essentially regulating the Internet as a public utility. The Trump FCC under Chairman Ajit Pai overturned this rule, allowing the Internet to be more or less unregulated as it had been before the rule.
The Senate passed Senate Joint Resolution 52 on May 16, 2018 by a vote of 52 to 47 (Roll Call 97). We have assigned pluses to the nays because regulation of the Internet is not a proper function of the federal government under the Constitution. The new FCC rule under Commissioner Pai was more of a hands-off approach to the Internet, allowing service providers to set their own rules. This is the correct approach, as any provider “throttling” service or overcharging customers will lose business to more competitive providers in a free market setting. Government, in scenarios such as these, will nearly always cause more problems than it claims to attempt to solve. Case in point: Regulations are not always applied equally, as under the Obama FCC rule some sites were forced to “play fair,” while some of the big guys, such as Netflix and Google, could still set their own rules.
