Net neutrality back on Republicans' spending bill chopping block
Net neutrality has been on and off of the Republican chopping block during the current appropriations process. It's now definitely back on.
Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), a member of the House Appropriations Committee, said in a statement to The Huffington Post that Republicans are "trying to use a procedural backdoor to supersede the FCC and ignore the nearly four million Americans that submitted public comments concerning the FCC’s Net Neutrality rulemaking.""Republicans need to stop using these riders and procedures that prevent Members from offering amendments to implement their extreme agenda," she added. "As a member of the Appropriations Committee, I will keep fighting to defeat this rider and ensure that it is not included in any spending bills.”
A spokesperson for Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, did not immediately return a request for comment. Mikulski is a supporter of net neutrality."
The language included in the spending bill prevents the FCC from using any funding to "regulate, directly or indirectly, the prices, other fees, or data caps and allowances […] in the matter of protecting and promoting the open Internet, adopted by the Federal Communications Commission on February 26, 2015." That means that it pretty much kills net neutrality.
Sen. Mikulski is under a lot of pressure to make a decision on this, so she needs to hear this week—from her constituents and from all the other Democratic senators—that net neutrality is not a bargaining chip.