A resolution to make effective appointment of Senate Legal Counsel.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, today's debate concerns S.J. Res. 6. In a larger context, though, we have been having this debate for 34 months. The theme is, the Obama administration's relentless imposition of new and destructive regulations has not helped us get into a recovery and, in fact, I think is freezing our economy.

We have seen it with the Environmental Protection Agency when it tried to regulate carbon emissions and greenhouse gases using the Clean Air Act, a purpose for which Congress never intended the law to be used. We have seen it with the National Mediation Board when it overturned nearly a century of precedent and issued a new rulemaking to allow unions to be formed more easily but harder to decertify.

We have seen it with the National Labor Relations Board when it took the shocking step of challenging Boeing's decision to create new jobs by building a new factory in South Carolina, simply because South Carolina is a right-to-work State.

Today's issue involves bureaucratic overreach into a symbol of American innovation and creativity, the Internet, because the Federal Communications Commission has now decided to regulate the Internet. Last December, three FCC Commissioners, on a party-line vote, voted to impose rules that restrict how Internet service providers offer broadband services to consumers. Those rules, known as net neutrality, impose 19th century-style monopoly regulations on the most competitive and important job-creating engine of the 21st century, the Internet.

This marks a stunning reversal from the hands-off approach to the Internet that Federal policymakers have taken for more than a decade. During the last 20 years, the Internet has grown and flourished without burdensome regulations imposed by Washington. Powered by the strength of free market forces, the Internet has been an open platform for innovation, spurring business development and much needed job creation.

The former Democratic FCC Chairman, William Kennard, stated in 1999 ``[t}he fertile fields of innovation across the communications sector and around the country are blooming because from the get-go we have taken a deregulatory, competitive approach to our communications structure--especially the Internet.''

The present FCC is reversing that policy that has been successful beyond our expectations. Broadband Internet networks have powered the information and communications industry, which in 2009 accounted for more than 3.5 million high-paying jobs and about $1 trillion in economic activity.

This industry has been an engine for major economic growth even during these difficult times. Yet the FCC's rules could severely jeopardize this industry's vast potential. Net neutrality is intended to limit how Internet service providers develop and operate their broadband networks. The net neutrality order allows the FCC to tell broadband providers what kind of business practices are reasonable and unreasonable. The FCC, however, did not bother to clearly define in its rules what the agency considers to be reasonable.

This point is vital to understand. With such an arbitrary and yet poorly defined standard, companies will be forced to err on the side of caution. Rather than risk possible punishment from the FCC, many companies will simply decide: Maybe we will not invest right now in new technologies. Maybe it is too risky to develop and deploy new services. At the very least, it will delay such investment.

This kind of regulatory uncertainty will be crippling for companies and particularly small providers. We have heard exactly that from a small wireless Internet provider in Wyoming called LARIAT. This is a provider that is serving remote areas and trying to expand to other unserved years.

LARIAT testified before Congress that these FCC regulations are already harming its ability to attract investors, grow its business, hire more workers, and serve new customers. Forcing broadband companies to ask the government for permission before moving forward is exactly what we should try to avoid when reviving our economy.

This FCC regime will lead to stagnation in Internet innovation in the United States, placing us at a disadvantage against overseas competitors who are not burdened with similar rules. Moveover, Internet providers will end up spending resources on lawyers and lobbyists in order to comply with the FCC's rules, rather than investing those dollars in innovation.

Small companies will find it even more expensive to navigate Washington, DC. This certainly will not help consumers, particularly in rural areas, and will only increase the costs they have to bear. Before any new regulations are forced on American businesses, it is the government's responsibility to clearly show, one, there is an actual problem that needs to be addressed. That should be foremost.

With the FCC taking such a large departure from the agency's previous light-touch approach, one might think the FCC could point to a long list of net neutrality violations and problems that need to be fixed. That is not the case here. In a 134-page regulatory order, the FCC spent only three paragraphs attempting to catalog alleged instances of misconduct.

Within those three short paragraphs, every alleged problem was addressed under the FCC's existing rule or, if not, it was fixed by the provider under pressure from the public or the competitive marketplace, where it should be fixed. As former FCC Commissioner Meredith Baker noted in her statement dissenting from the FCC's net neutrality order, the Commission was ``unable to identify a single ongoing practice of a single broadband provider that it finds problematic upon which to base this action.'' To put it simply, the FCC has issued new rules without even demonstrating that intervention is actually necessary.

Despite protests to the contrary, these net neutrality regulations on broadband providers clearly establish the FCC as the Internet's gatekeeper, a role for which the government is not suited. Innovation does not work on a government timetable nor does it thrive through a maze of roadblocks.

Ironically, supporters of net neutrality insist that providers are the ones who may become gatekeepers of the Internet. These people say the openness of the Internet is far too important to be left unprotected by the government. This is a false premise. In fact, the Internet has been an open platform for innovation since its inception, and it has not needed any sort of net neutrality rules from bureaucrats at the FCC.

To make matters worse, Congress has never given the FCC the explicit authority to regulate how Internet providers manage their networks. That is why the new rules represent an unprecedented power grab by the unelected Commissioners at the FCC. In fact, current law states: ``It is the policy of the United States . . . to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet and other interactive computer services, unfettered by Federal or State regulation.''

That is the law today. The FCC has lost this fight already in the courts. Last year, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the FCC's 2008 attempt to impose net neutrality in the Comcast v. FCC case. The court ruled that the FCC was acting beyond the reach of its congressionally provided authority and cautioned that regulations should be imposed only with explicit congressional direction.

This was validation that regulatory agencies cannot make policy without congressional direction. Rather than back down, however, the FCC doubled down. The current FCC order tries an even more expansive interpretation of the law than was used in the Comcast case. FCC Commissioners inexplicably claimed the agency can impose heavy-handed Internet regulation under section 706 of the Telecommunications Act. This was a section of the law that was intended to remove regulatory barriers to broadband investment, not to raise them.

If the FCC's legal theory is left unchallenged, the FCC will have nearly unbounded authority to regulate almost anything on the Internet. It is Congress's role, not the FCC's to determine the proper policy framework for the Internet. Over time, and aided by the current administration, regulators throughout the government have gradually tried to seize increasing control over so many facets of American life. It is time for the Senate to stop this overreach. We write the laws of this country, not unelected bureaucrats. That is why we are here today.

Thanks to Senate majority leader Harry Reid, former Senator Don Nickles, and the late Senator Ted Stevens, one of the tools Congress has to stop rogue agencies is the Congressional Review Act. The Congressional Review Act allows Congress to review a rule before it takes effect and even to nullify that rule if Congress finds it is inappropriate, or if it overreaches, or if Congress itself hasn't delegated this power to an agency.

As Senators Reid, Nickles, and Stevens said at the time of this bill's passage, ``Congressional review gives the public the opportunity to call the attention of politically accountable, elected officials to concerns about new agency rules. If these concerns are sufficiently serious, Congress can stop the rule.''

We believe the concern about the FCC's net neutrality rules is sufficiently serious to warrant the consideration of Senate Joint Resolution 6, the disapproval resolution Senator McConnell and I introduced to nullify the FCC's net neutrality order under the Congressional Review Act. The House has already passed its version of the resolution, and we need only a majority of Senators to send this bill to the President's desk. Even a net neutrality supporter, Senator Olympia Snowe, who has authored net neutrality legislation, is a cosponsor and supporter of our resolution today.

While Senator Snowe and I don't agree on the need for a net neutrality law, we are in complete agreement--and she stated it beautifully--that Congress, not the FCC, should determine what the proper regulatory framework is for the Internet.

If the Senate does not strike down these regulations soon, they will go into effect on November 20, further jeopardizing jobs in this fragile economy. I guess you could say that it will allow more lawyers to be hired, but

more innovators? Probably not. That is not the mix we need to assure that our economy will get back on track in this country.

Studies indicate that net neutrality rules could significantly affect our economy. If net neutrality reduces capital investment in broadband infrastructure by even 10 percent, it could cost our country hundreds of thousands of jobs over the next decade.

We must preserve the openness of the Internet as a platform for innovation and economic growth. We must keep the competitive advantage that we have in this country for innovation. The last thing we ought to be doing is putting restrictions on our providers, when many countries that are also advanced in this area are not doing the same thing. So when we go to global competitiveness, we are putting our companies at a disadvantage. Why would we do that?

We must stop the job-killing regulatory interference by our government today in so many areas, and we can start right here, right now, by keeping the Internet free, voting for this resolution of disapproval, and saying to the regulatory bodies in this town: Congress must authorize a delegation of authority for your agency to pass rules, and especially when Congress is in disagreement with those rules.

This is a key policy decision for our body. We need to step up to the responsibility that Congress has. Our Constitution divided the powers between three branches of government. If Congress doesn't stand up for its one-third of the powers of this government and lets unelected bureaucrats run over our prerogatives, we will become a weaker branch, and our government will become weaker for it. We need to have three equal branches of government, and that means each branch must fulfill its responsibilities under the Constitution. Congress must delegate its authority explicitly for a rule to be made. That is the way the Constitution intended for Congress to fulfill its job as the elected representatives of the people of our country.

The House has passed this resolution. I hope the Senate will tomorrow. I hope the people will speak and say that even if you disagree on the basic issue of net neutrality, it is not the right of the FCC to pass sweeping regulations that will affect the economy of this country without explicit authority from Congress, which it does not have.

Mr. President, I ask my colleagues to come to the floor if they want to speak on this resolution. There is 4 hours, equally divided, and that time is now running. I say to my Republican colleagues that we have quite a list of those who want to speak. They must know that the time will run out in about 3\1/2\ hours now. I ask them to contact me if they wish to speak.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, on our side I have Senator Wicker and Senator Shelby, who have been here waiting, and I would like to give them 15 minutes from the time on our side. I know there are others here, but these Senators have been waiting for quite a while.

Up to 5 minutes for Senator Wicker and up to 10 minutes for Senator Shelby.

Madam President, I know the Senator from Minnesota has been waiting to speak, and I certainly will yield to him. I would like to be recognized after he speaks to answer some of the concerns that were raised by the Senator from Massachusetts.

Madam President, I yield up to 15 minutes to the Senator from Alaska.

Mr. President, how much time remains on our side?

I yield up to 10 minutes to the Senator from Wyoming.

Mr. President, how much time remains on this side?

Sixty?

I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, I have been looking for a time when the floor was open to refute some of the comments and concerns raised earlier on the Senate floor. I want to start by taking on a comment that was made by the Senator from Minnesota, Mr. Franken, who said YouTube started above a pizzeria in 2005 and sold for $1.6 billion 2 years later to Google, and that wouldn't have been possible without net neutrality.

Well, Mr. President, I must point out that we didn't have net neutrality in 2005. We haven't had Federal regulation of the Internet in this country such as we have seen during this last year put forward by this administration. In fact, YouTube and Google were both created in a marketplace without net neutrality regulations. Other online successes--Facebook, Hulu, Twitter, and new devices such as the Apple iPhone and Amazon Kindle--all happened without net neutrality regulations. These are innovations that have changed communication patterns not only in our country but around the world as well. So we have had these innovations without the heavy hand of government.

It is very interesting to hear the debate on the Senate floor because we seem to hear that net neutrality is something that will keep the Internet open. The opposite is true. It is beginning to put the clamps on the successes that we have had by having an open Internet. All these companies they are talking about needing net neutrality to come forward and blossom and grow are the companies that have done exactly that without net neutrality regulations.

What we should do is assure that we don't put a blanket over the Internet and start saying to everybody who has a new idea or a new product or a new service provider: You better go to the FCC before you go forward with that or you could be in jeopardy. You could be penalized. You could be thought to have an ``unreasonable'' product on the Internet because we don't know yet what is reasonable. We just know you have to be reasonable because we have a new regulation now that says you must be reasonable, without any definition of what this FCC-- which had no authority to go into this area--is going to determine is a ``reasonable'' product that would not interfere with anything else.

Mr. President, we haven't had net neutrality before. All the successes I hear talked about in this debate have happened without the heavy or the light hand of government stopping the originality and innovation that has marked the success of our country.

Earlier, Mr. Kerry, the Senator from Massachusetts, said the Internet made the 1996 Telecommunications Act obsolete 6 months after it was enacted. But if the 1996 act did not sufficiently address the Internet, thus making it obsolete, how can that same law be the genesis and basis of the FCC's assertion it has the power to regulate the Internet? We have to have one or the other, and it is our assertion the FCC did not get specific authority to regulate the Internet that is required for Congress to give it in order to make rules in this area. So Senator Kerry can't have it both ways. He can't say the Telecommunications Act was obsolete but it is also the basis of these new restrictive regulations.

Senator Kerry sent a ``Dear Colleague'' letter to everyone in the Senate asking them to vote against this resolution. What I think Senator Kerry was saying in that letter is that net neutrality is not a regulation of the Internet because it is just a regulation of the onramp. In other words, we are not trying to support the FCC regulating the whole Internet; they are just doing the gateway, they are just doing the onramp.

Well, that was the position the FCC took when they made this regulation. But we can't argue that net neutrality is not regulation of the Internet because the Internet service providers are the only onramps to the Internet. It is a misleading statement to say that just regulating the onramp isn't regulating the Internet. The Internet is the entire global network of millions of computer networks. It uses the Internet protocol standard to interconnect with each other. Internet backbone providers and last-mile Internet service providers serve as the foundation of the Internet. So they are the foundation.

Web sites and services such as e-mail and voice-over IP, or VOIP, allow users to communicate on top of the foundation. The Internet is the whole online ecosystem put together. We can't have the edge without the core and vice versa. The onramp is as much a part of the information superhighway as are the cars traveling on it.

FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell put it well in his dissent from the open Internet order that we are discussing today. He said:

To say that today's rules don't regulate the Internet is

like saying regulating highway on ramps, off ramps, and

pavement don't equate to regulating the highways themselves.

Mr. President, if we are going to say the FCC can regulate the onramp--and that is the first heavy hand of government that is going to start controlling and making decisions about what is reasonable and what is not--that means businesses are going to have to go to the FCC and say: Mother may I. If they have an innovative product, that is going to cost the consumer more because they will have had to go and hire lawyers to go to the FCC to get prior approval or it will delay the product getting out to consumers, possibly letting a European service provider that doesn't have these kinds of barriers get ahead of us.

Internet technology is the basis of hundreds of thousands of jobs and products in our country. We are in a crisis right now. We all know we have 9 percent unemployment and that our economy is even dead in the water. So we have to do something to jump-start the economy. The last thing we want to do is put a blanket on it to make it harder for it to come back. I don't think anybody in this country with any common sense is going to say we have a thriving economy right now. So it does defy common sense to say we are going to allow regulations Congress has not approved and that Congress has not authorized the regulator to make, knowing it will have the effect of either freezing or delaying the innovation that has been the hallmark of the success of the Internet and technology in our country.

There are several organizations that have banded together to ask that people vote for the resolution today. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter from, among others, Americans for Tax Reform, Taxpayers Protection Alliance, Hispanic Leadership Fund, and Americans for Prosperity.

Mr. President, in part, the letter says:

The FCC enacted these Net Neutrality rules despite a

complete lack of Congressional authorization and after being

told by a court that they lack jurisdiction.

Remember, this court, in the Comcast case, basically said to the FCC: You and all the other regulatory agencies that are independent must have specific authority from Congress to regulate in this area.

They found in the Comcast case they did not have such jurisdiction. Once again, citing from the letter in support of passing S.J. Res. 6-- which is signed by Grover Norquist, Phil Kerpen, David Williams, Thomas Schatz, and Mario Lopez--it says:

The FCC's order also runs contrary to the broad and

bipartisan conversation in Washington about how best to grow

the economy and spur job creation. President Obama and

Members in Congress on both sides of the aisle have called to

rein in overbearing regulations that harm economic growth.

Here we have yet another regulation on top of the EPA and the NLRB and the NMB coming forward to put a damper on our economy.

Mr. President, I would like to read from an opinion piece written by Phil Kerpen, who is with the Americans for Prosperity, and I thought this was relevant to the debate.

Network neutrality sounds nice. Originally, it was the idea

that all of the traffic . . . that travel over the networks

that comprise the Internet should be treated exactly the same

way. But engineers cried foul, because the routers that make

the Internet work are highly sophisticated with millions of

lines of code that necessarily prioritize different types of

traffic. Streaming video can't tolerate delays of a few

seconds whereas an e-mail could.

So network neutrality morphed into something even more

dangerous, empowering the FCC bureaucrats to play traffic

cops, micromanaging networks, and deciding which traffic can

or can't be prioritized. The result would be a precipitous

decline in private investment because the companies that

spent billions of dollars building networks could no longer

be certain how the FCC bureaucrats would allow those networks

to be used.

I am reading from this letter, and I will continue. The letter says:

A recent study from New York University found that hundreds

of thousands of jobs would be lost. The tech sector--the

brightest spot in our economy--would be burdened by Federal

regulations the way the rest of the economy has been.

So these are excerpts from Mr. Kerpen's opinion piece that say it is now crunch time to stop the FCC's Internet takeover.

I think these outside groups that are weighing in are showing that just regular consumers--I heard the list of groups that are supporting this rule that has come out. But the citizens who are for free markets and tax reform and for letting our businesses grow and thrive through the American innovation--I like some of the things they have said that I think are very important in this debate.

I urge my colleagues to look at whether we are exercising our responsibility as Members of Congress when we would vote against stopping a Federal agency that has not had a delegation of authority from Congress to regulate in this area. The House of Representatives has already voted in favor of this resolution. We need to send it to the President and say to the President: Congress did not delegate our authority.

It is overstepping its bounds, and furthermore it is going to put a damper on the most thriving part of our economy today, and that is the tech sector. It is where we are, hands down, ahead in the world because we have kept the free markets. Why would we give that up to unelected Federal agencies that have not been asked by Congress to regulate in this area? And if we did, we should be required--because it is our constitutional responsibility to do so--to say exactly what we would ask a policy to be in a new regulation. We have not done that, and we should not allow the Federal agencies, which are appointed but not elected, to take over this area that is so important for our economy.

If we have any guts at all in this Senate, we should stand up for our one-third of the balance of power in the Federal Government and assert ourselves to keep control over runaway Federal agencies that do not answer to anyone.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I Thank the Chair. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I yield up to 5 minutes of our time to the Senator from Oklahoma.

I Ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

I yield up to 7 minutes to the Senator from South Carolina.

Mr. President, I would like to just wrap up, and then I will yield back the rest of our time and we can close this debate because our vote is going to come tomorrow.

I just want to summarize what we have heard today. I just heard the distinguished Senator from Washington State say that without net neutrality we would have more expense to consumers. I really do view this in a different way because I view the potential delay, the regulatory processes, the hurdles that are going to have to be overcome for any kind of preclearance to put a new product on the Internet, gatekeeping for innovation--that is what, in my opinion, is going to increase the cost and cause delays if not freeze many of the innovations that have occurred in our open Internet system.

We now have, because of the FCC's ruling, the requirement for reasonable standards for access to the Internet. There is no definition of ``reasonable.'' I heard the Senator from Minnesota say we need net neutrality in order for Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter to be able to grow and prosper. Those entities have grown and prospered-- without net neutrality regulations. They have grown and prospered because we have had free and open access to the Internet. We and our competitors and our businesses that compete overseas have had open and free access. That has been the beauty of the success of the Internet.

Now we see government coming in and saying: You have to be reasonable in what you offer. So if there is a major dump of millions of pages onto the Internet and it is going to slow down, for instance, a hospital network offering rural health care on an emergency basis or some kind of video-streaming that is going out, we have to be able to let the providers have the judgment and let the marketplace work. If there is a problem it was not pointed out by the FCC when they decided to intervene in the Internet among 134 pages of regulations with just 3 paragraphs about possible problems, all of which concluded with the rules that are in place today.

This is clearly a problem that isn't there, which is being manufactured in order to put another government regulation on the books. When the Senator from Massachusetts said this order doesn't regulate the Internet, just the gateways or the on-ramps, that doesn't hold water because if we regulate the on-ramp, we are regulating the Internet. We are causing companies that are providing broadband to not have control of their networks but instead will now have to go before the FCC to justify a new product or service that will give emergency access or quicker access for users who need to have that kind of access.

I hope the Senate will say the FCC has extended beyond any authority Congress has given them, and I hope we will stand for our prerogative in Congress to make the laws and only have regulations come out when we delegate specifically to an agency to put out rules in a particular area, which has not happened in this case.

I urge my colleagues to support this resolution.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I appreciate the courtesy of the Senator from Texas. My understanding is that Senator Murkowski from Alaska is on her way down. I am scheduled to sit in the chair at 12, and I don't want to step on the opportunity of the Senator from Alaska to speak.

Madam President, I rise today to urge my colleagues to vote against the motion to proceed to the joint resolution of disapproval of Senator Hutchison, which would repeal the FCC's net neutrality rules.

As many of you know, I have repeatedly said net neutrality is the free speech issue of our time. I still believe that is the case, and I am here to state why we need to do everything we can to stop this partisan resolution in its tracks.

But before I get into the reasons we should oppose this resolution, I think it is important to step back and remember what the American people expect of us. I do not need to tell anyone in this body that the approval rating of Congress is at an all-time low. Why is that? I think it has something to do with the fact that we are using our extremely limited, valuable time to debate partisan proposals like this one rather than working together to create jobs, stimulate our economy, and get Americans back to work.

When this resolution of disapproval passed the House back in April, I hoped that would be the end of it. I hoped my colleagues would recognize we should let agencies do their jobs and not employ an arcane procedure to erase a rule the FCC started thinking about in 2004 under Republican chairman Michael Powell, and again in 2005 when a different Republican chairman, this time Kevin Martin, adopted a unanimous policy statement on net neutrality.

When the White House issued a statement indicating the President would veto this resolution of disapproval if it came to his desk, I thought my colleagues would be sensible and would recognize that this was not only unnecessary and foolhardy, but it was also a pointless exercise and would be just a giant waste of everyone's time. Alas, that is not the case and here we are spending valuable time on two resolutions of disapproval when we should be turning to legislation that will get our economy back up and running again.

I hope the votes we take tomorrow will send a strong message that we need to stop these political stunts and work together to create jobs, jobs, and more jobs.

But let's get to the substance of why I am standing here before you today. I am here today to talk about net neutrality. Net neutrality is a simple concept. It is the idea that all content and applications on the Internet should be treated the same, regardless of who owns the content or the Web site. This is not a radical idea. It certainly is not a new one. We may not realize it, but net neutrality is the foundation and core of how the Internet operates every day and how it has always operated.

When scientists and engineers were creating the basic architecture of the Internet, they decided they needed to establish some basic rules of the road for Internet traffic. One of the fundamental design principles of the Internet was that all data should be treated equally, regardless of what was being sent or who was sending it. That is net neutrality. It is the same principle we rely on every day when we use the Internet, and it is the same principle our phone companies must adhere to when they connect our phone calls.

They did not discriminate based on what we say or whom we call, and the founders of the Internet thought the same should be true about data traveling across networks. Everything and everyone should be treated the same.

This principle of nondiscrimination is baked into the DNA of the Internet. This is not radical or new. This is about having a platform that is free and open to all, regardless of whether one is a big corporation or a single individual and regardless of whether one pays a lot of money to speed up how fast their content gets to their customers. Net neutrality is what we all experience today when we log on to our computers, and it is what we have always experienced since the very beginning of the Internet.

I think it is important to focus on that point for a minute because our opponents are telling us something quite different--and they are wrong. Net neutrality is not about a government takeover of the Internet, and it is not about changing anything. Net neutrality and the rules the FCC passed are about keeping the Internet the way it is today and the way it has always been.

We take for granted that we can access Google's search engine as easily as we can access Yahoo or Bing or that Netflix videos download as easily as the videos our friends uploaded onto YouTube last night. We expect that e-mails arrive at their destinations at the same speed regardless of who is sending them, and we take for granted that the Web site for our local pizzeria loads as fast as the Web site for Dominos or Pizza Hut. That is one of the reasons I care so very much about this issue.

This is not just about freedom of speech, it is also about protecting small businesses and entrepreneurs of all sizes. In my mind, net neutrality is and always has been about protecting the next Bill Gates and the next Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook and Microsoft do not need our help today, but the 20-year-old whiz kid working in his parents' garage to develop the app or software or Web site to revolutionize our lives does need net neutrality, and so does the small bookstore or local hardware store that wants their Web site to load just as fast as Amazon or Home Depot.

I have been on the floor of the Senate talking about the beginnings of YouTube because it is such a powerful example of why we need to protect net neutrality. When YouTube started, it was headquartered in a tiny space over a pizzeria and a Japanese restaurant in San Francisco, CA. At the time, Google had a competing product, Google Video, that was widely seen as inferior.

If Google had been able to pay AT&T or Verizon or Time Warner large amounts of money to block YouTube or to make Google Video's Web site faster than YouTube's site, guess what would have happened. YouTube would have failed. But, instead, thanks to net neutrality, YouTube became the gold standard for video on the Internet. YouTube was able to sell its business to Google for $1.6 billion just 2 years after its start. I love that story because it is a testament to the power of the Internet to turn people with great ideas into overnight successes, and it happened because we had net neutrality.

The story of the Internet is a story about the triumph of the little guy over the big, slow-moving corporation. The past 20 years are littered with tales of entrepreneurs starting with next to nothing and revolutionizing the world as we know it. From YouTube's humble beginnings over a pizzeria to Facebook's infamous start in a dorm room in Cambridge, the Web-based products we use every day are a great result of a great idea and the drive to make that great idea a reality.

Here is what we will not hear from our opponents: Facebook and YouTube and countless other Web-based products might not have existed today if it were not for net neutrality. Without net neutrality, Myspace or Friendster--remember them--could have partnered with Comcast to gain priority access or to block Facebook altogether. Blockbuster could have paid AT&T to slow down or completely block streaming of Netflix videos. Barnes & Noble could have paid Verizon to block access to amazon.com. Imagine a world where the corporation with the biggest checkbook can control what we see and how fast we access content on the Internet.

Fortunately, that is not the world we live in today and thanks to the FCC that is not the world we are headed for. The FCC's rules will ensure that no matter how much money or power they have, a young kid working in her parents' basement in Duluth can outinnovate the biggest corporation simply because she has the best idea. This is exactly why top Silicon Valley venture capital and angel investment companies support these rules. These companies are the ones funding the next Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page or Sergey Brin so he can get his product off the ground. They are the ones funneling millions and millions of dollars to entrepreneurs, which is why I think we should listen to them. The CEOs of eBay, Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, and YouTube have joined in a letter supporting the FCC's rules. They say: ``Common sense baseline rules are critical to ensuring that the Internet remains a key engine of economic growth, innovation and global competitiveness.''

I think we should listen to them and companies such as Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, IBM, and Qualcomm. These companies also support the FCC's rules because they recognize they could not have grown to be the tremendously successful companies they are today without a free and open Internet, and that is what we are asking for. That is all we are asking for.

When our opponents get up and tell us these rules will stifle innovation and halt growth, I want everyone to think about what they are saying. I want us to ask ourselves: Why would so many of the leading technology companies over the last two decades support what the FCC is doing if they think it will hurt innovation? It doesn't make any sense because it isn't true. Net neutrality and the FCC rules will protect the innovators and entrepreneurs who have made the Internet what is it today and what it will be tomorrow.

Don't take my word for it. Listen to the experts from Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Citibank, Wells Fargo, Merrill Lynch, and Raymond James. These companies have all stated they do not believe the FCC's current rules will hurt investment. Citibank said the FCC's rules were ``balanced,'' and Goldman Sachs said they were ``a light touch'' and created ``a framework with a lot of wiggle room.''

What is even more telling is that investment in networks that support wired and wireless Internet has jumped since the announcement of the FCC's rules. In fact, investment is more than 10 percent higher in the first half of 2011 than in the same period last year. Venture capital firms poured $2.3 billion into Internet-specific companies in the second quarter of 2011. I think these numbers speak for themselves. They tell a story of surging investor confidence following the FCC's vote on these rules and not the doomsday portrayal we will hear from our opponents.

Protecting innovation in this country is particularly important given the state of the telecom industry today. I don't need to tell you that telecom corporations have grown larger and fewer. We know, in part, because we have seen our cable, Internet, and telephone bills rising and rising. What else have we seen? Customer service that has gone straight out the window. When we are angry we wasted another day waiting for a Comcast repairman to come and install a cable Internet line in our house or we have been put on hold by Verizon for the fifth time in a single call and we finally decide to switch companies, we may realize we don't have another choice.

Seventy percent of households in this country have one or two choices for basic broadband Internet service. The majority, 60 percent, of the households only have one choice for high-speed broadband.

This is appalling for many reasons. It affects prices, quality of service, and choices for customers, but it is ultimately why we need net neutrality. We need to make sure companies play by the rules. As control of the Internet has shifted into the hands of a smaller and smaller number of corporations, we need to make sure those companies are able to dictate the speed of traffic based on how much a content provider can pay or prioritize their own content over other companies' content.

Of course, as I said before, there is nothing wrong with maximizing shareholder profit since that is what corporations are obligated to do. Minnesota is home to many great corporations, including 3M, General Mills, and Medtronic. These companies create thousands of jobs and produce fantastic products. Other corporations should not be able to prevent others from competing. Competition is what net neutrality is all about. It is about ensuring that the next breakthrough product has the opportunity to reach consumers through a free and open and equal Internet.

In addition to protecting innovation and small businesses in this country, net neutrality is also about speech. The Internet is not just where we go to shop for local products and services; the Internet is where we go to find political campaign information and read local news stories. The Internet is what helped fuel the Arab Spring, in large part because it has become the soapbox of the 21st century. Organizers and advocates are no longer stapling posters to bulletin boards to get their message out there. They are now posting their message on Twitter and Facebook. The

Internet is not just responsible for an upheaval in how campaigns and advocacy occur; it is also responsible for an upheaval in the print media world because the Internet is also the printing press and library of the 21st century.

This is why it is so important we make sure the corporations providing Internet service play by the rules and are not able to profit by speeding up or slowing down our access to certain news Web sites or other places we go to access information. We would not want the Libyan Government to shut down access to Facebook in the middle of protests in that country for the same reasons we do not want a corporation controlling what information and Web sites we are able to access in order to benefit their bottom line.

You know I have been a proponent of net neutrality for a long time. You have heard me over and over on how net neutrality is about keeping the Internet the way it is. But the truth is, the FCC rules, while a step in the right direction, are very conservative. I wish the FCC had done more, but the FCC wanted to reach a consensus, and they made a concerted effort to address many concerns of telecommunication companies, large and small, when they drafted these rules. For my opponents to now claim the FCC ignored public opinion or failed to consider the impact these rules would have on businesses is not true.

First, I think we could all stand a bit of history on the bipartisan nature of this rule. Net neutrality is something that two Republican chairmen of the FCC, Michael Powell and Kevin Martin, championed in 2004 and 2005. Chairman Powell first articulated a set of net neutrality principles and Chairman Martin, 1 year later, achieved unanimous Commission endorsement of the FCC's open Internet policy statement.

In 2006, 11 House Republicans voted in favor of net neutrality on the floor. The Gun Owners of America, the Christian Coalition, and the Catholic Bishops joined with the ACLU, moveon.org and leading civil rights groups to advocate for the same principles for openness and freedom on the Internet.

This debate started 7 years ago, and only after reviewing more than 100,000 public comments and holding 6 public workshops did the Commission finally issue a rule. To claim this was premature, rushed or not carefully considered is just plain wrong. I also think it is completely inaccurate for my opponents to claim the Commission never analyzed the costs and benefits to this rule.

In fact, there is an entire section of the rule entitled ``The Benefits of Protecting the Internet's Openness Exceed the Costs.'' I urge my colleagues to read this section of the Commission's order. It covers four pages. It contains over 25 lengthy, detailed, analytical footnotes. It is clear the Commission considered the costs and benefits of acting, and they concluded that ``there is no evidence that prior open Internet obligations have discouraged investment,'' and that ``open Internet rules will increase incentives to invest in broadband infrastructure.''

I recognize that a couple companies are challenging the FCC's rules in court, and they have every right to do so. But this resolution of disapproval amounts to little more than political gamesmanship from fringe organizations. I think it is important to know that not a single large telecommunication company supports this resolution of disapproval. They are not wasting their time with an arcane process, and we should not either. That is not to say Congress cannot and should not have a discussion about the merits of net neutrality. We can and we should.

Frankly, I have been disappointed by the quantity of misinformation that has been such a large portion of this debate in the past.

The rhetoric I heard during the House debate last April was disappointing. It is not the type of debate Americans deserve. I encourage a frank and in-depth discussion on net neutrality. I hope one day soon we will consider making a statutory change to the FCC's authority that will clarify that we want the FCC to make sure the Internet stays open and free. That will put the issue to rest for good. It is, frankly, the process we should be relying on. By forcing an up- or-down vote through the Congressional Review Act, we are short- circuiting the normal legislative process and ignoring the FCC's tremendous work on this issue.

This resolution of disapproval is a procedural stunt that wastes limited time which should be used to address the real problems Americans face every day. At the end of the day, the problems of Americans are why we are here. I love hearing from Minnesotans, and I got a great e-mail the other day. The letter was from a group of five self-proclaimed ``highly-credentialed computer geeks,'' including a professor, a startup founder, an ex ``Google-er'' and a ``non-ex- IBMer.'' In their e-mail they wrote:

The free market will drive innovation in the Internet, but

careful regulation is needed to preserve the freedom of the

markets from coalitions of companies that will seek to reduce

competition.

They noted:

History promises that the leading companies will work

together to create a monopoly that they can control so they

can make more money and . . . disrupt innovation.

I am glad they and thousands of Minnesotans have taken the time to write and call to tell me how much preserving net neutrality means to them. These highly credentialed computer geeks are right: The free market will drive Internet innovation as long as that market is truly free and open--free from corporate control and open to all content providers equally.

These constituents and millions of Americans don't want Congress engaged in political sparring matches designed to appease a few vocal critics. Americans, entrepreneurs, and small businesses want a world where the future Twitters, eBays, and Amazons of the world can grow and thrive, without interference from big mega conglomerates.

If passed, this resolution will hurt consumers, stifle innovation, and create uncertainty in one of America's most innovative and productive sectors. We are at a pivotal moment, and I hope my colleagues will recognize this and join me in voting down this resolution of disapproval.

I thank the Senator from Texas for allowing me to speak during this time, and I thank the Presiding Officer for holding the chair while I have been speaking.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise today to oppose the Senate Joint Resolution 6, which was brought under the Congressional Review Act--about which I wish to talk--to disapprove the FCC's open Internet rules, such as they are.

Americans want the Internet to be free and open to them. They want to go where they want to go, see what they want to see, do what they want to do on the Internet. They don't want to have somebody blocking them or to have gatekeepers. They want it to be a nice, open forum for them. They care about the Internet. Everyone uses it. They want to be able to develop new businesses, and they want to read and watch video. They want to reach out to friends and family and community. And they want to do it online. They want to do all of these things on the Internet-- without having to ask permission from their broadband provider. The FCC has promulgated balanced rules that let Americans do all of these things, and keep the Internet open and keep the Internet free.

Let us be clear from the outset. No matter how S.J. Res. 6 is dressed up in language that suggests it will promote openness and freedom, it will not do that. The resolution is misguided. It will add uncertainty, in fact, into the economy, and it will hinder small businesses dependent upon fair broadband access, where otherwise they might be put in a slower lane. They want to be in a fast lane. They want to be able to compete with other parts of the country. This resolution will, in fact, undermine innovation. It will hamper investment in digital commerce. It will imperil the openness and freedom that has been the hallmark of the Internet from the very start.

The FCC's rules were the product of very hard work, consensus, and compromise. The agency had extensive input from stakeholders from all quarters. They opened up and said send in your comments. In fact, they had written input from more than 100,000 commenters. About 90 percent of those filing supported the adoption of open Internet rules. On top of this, the rules are based on longstanding and widely accepted open Internet principles, which were first articulated during the second Bush administration.

These rules do three basic things. First, they impose a transparency obligation on providers of broadband Internet service. This means that all broadband providers are required to publicly disclose to consumers accurate information regarding the network management practices.

Second, the rules prohibit fixed broadband providers from blocking lawful content, application, services, and devices. This means consumers and innovators will continue to have the right to send and receive lawful Internet traffic, with mobile broadband service providers subjected to a more limited set of prohibitions. I will speak about that in a moment.

Third, the rules aim to ensure that the Internet remains a level playing field by prohibiting fixed broadband providers from unreasonably discriminating in transmitting lawful network traffic-- which they have done.

Finally, the rules are meant to apply with the complementary principle of reasonable network management, which provides broadband providers the flexibility to address congestion or traffic that is harmful to the network. These are principles that I believe everyone can support. I see nothing wrong with them. The word ``reasonable'' somehow doesn't scare me. Maybe it should, but it doesn't.

I ask my colleagues, what is wrong with transparency? Why would we want to promote Internet blocking or discrimination? Why would we want to have some people on the fast lane and some on the slow lane, depending on whether you paid your Internet provider enough money? What is unreasonable about reasonable network management?

I believe that the FCC's effort, along with ongoing oversight and enforcement, will protect consumers, and I believe it will provide companies with the certainty they need to make investments in our growing digital economy.

While many champions of the open Internet would have preferred a stricter decision--and I am one of them; I myself have real reservations about treating wireless broadband differently from wired broadband--I think the FCC's decision was nevertheless a meaningful step forward. In a moment, I will talk about other people who feel the same.

Supporters of the joint resolution fail to acknowledge that the FCC's open Internet rules have received overwhelming support from broadband Internet service providers, consumers, and public groups, labor unions, as well as high-tech companies.

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson stated earlier this year that while he wanted ``no regulation,'' the FCC's open Internet order ``ended at a place where we have a line of sight and we know and can commit ourselves to investments.''

Time-Warner Cable said at the time of the order's release that the rules adopted ``appear to reflect a workable balance between protecting consumers' interests and preserving incentives for investment and innovation by broadband Internet service providers.''

Numerous analysts from major investment banks have found that the open Internet order removes what they call regulatory overhang and allows telecom and cable companies to focus on investment.

Google, Facebook, Twitter, eBay, Skype, and other leaders in innovation all urged the FCC to adopt ``commonsense baseline rules . . . critical to ensuring that the Internet remains a key engine of economic growth, innovation, and global competitiveness.''

More than 150 organizations wrote Congress to oppose this joint resolution. I hate reading lists, but I am going to do it anyway: the Communications Workers of America, the AFL-CIO, the NAACP, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the American Library Association, the American Association of Independent Music, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the League of United Latin American Citizens, the National Organization for Women, and Technet. There are a lot of folks at Technet who have a lot at stake. I have their letters here.

I ask unanimous consent that these letters be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, to be sure, there are those who disagree with the FCC's open Internet rules, and there is an avenue for these complaints. It is called the judicial system. Some are using it. Two companies have filed lawsuit claiming that the FCC went too far. Several public interest groups have filed lawsuits claiming that the FCC did not go far enough. It is their legal right to go to the courts, and when they choose to do that, they can do so.

So let's think for a minute what a world would look like without a free and open Internet.

In a world without a free and open Internet, consumers and entrepreneurs would have no transparency as to how their broadband providers would manage their network--no ability to make informed decisions about their broadband providers.

In a world without a free and open Internet, there would be nothing to prevent their broadband providers from steering them only their to preferred Web sites and services, therefore limiting their choices as consumers.

For rural Americans, broadband Internet access has the power to erase distances and allows them to have the same access to shopping, educational matters, and employment opportunities as those living in urban areas. That is a time-honored principle around here--but not if the Web site they seek to access is blocked by their broadband providers. Consumers, entrepreneurs, and small businesses need the certainty they can access lawful Web sites of their choice when they want, period.

In a world without a free and open Internet, there would be nothing to stop broadband providers from blocking access to Web sites that offer products that compete with those of its affiliates. That happens, Mr. President.

In a world without a free and open Internet, companies could pay Internet providers to guarantee their Web sites open more quickly than their competitors.

In a world without a free and open Internet, companies could pay Internet providers to make certain their online sales are processed more quickly than their competitors with lower prices.

Well, that is not the American way. This is particularly disturbing in tough times like these.

In a world without a free and open Internet, there would be nothing to prevent Internet service providers from charging users a premium in order to guarantee operation in the ``fast lane.'' If someone is trying to start a small business, struggling to make ends meet and cannot afford to pay the toll, they run the risk of being left in the ``slow lane''--that is not good--with inferior Internet service--that is not right--unable to compete with larger companies. That is very wrong.

What if an innovator or a start-up company has the next big idea? With broadband, the next big idea does not have to come from a suburban garage or from Silicon Valley, it can come from rural America or from anywhere. A free and open Internet is all that is required to give that big idea a global reach.

In a world without a free and open Internet, the ability of the next revolutionary idea to reach others--to make it to the greater marketplace--would be entirely dependent on a handful of entrenched broadband gatekeepers and toll collectors. True.

I am not totally opposed to the Congressional Review Act, but I have to say it is an extraordinarily blunt instrument. It means all of the rules adopted by the FCC must be overturned at once. This would even mean tossing out commonsense provisions about transparency. Do our opponents know this? It would deny the agency the power to protect consumers. Do our opponents know this? What is the sense in all of that? I don't get it.

There is another part: If they just took these rules out--if S. Res. 6 were to pass--they couldn't come back later and just have the FCC put them in. We would have to go through a whole congressional legislative process to reinsert them into the Public Law, which means many of them would never end up there.

I also want to address the argument of supporters of the joint resolution that the FCC's open rules will somehow stifle innovation in the Internet economy. That is just so wrong I don't know what to say.

Over the past 15 years, the open Internet has been the greatest engine for the U.S. economy. It leaves everything in its dust. It has created more than 3 million jobs, as the Senator from Texas indicated. The open Internet rules will help sustain this growth. People want to know what the rules of the road are. They want to know what the world is bringing to them. If they decide they do not like what is coming, they are going to tell you, and they are not going to invest. Very simple.

According to Hamilton Consultants, the open Internet ecosystem has led to the creation of 1.8 million jobs related to applications in e- commerce, as well as 1.2 million jobs related to infrastructure. Moreover, investment and innovation have continued to increase since the adoption of the FCC's open Internet rules--not decrease, as the supporters of this resolution will tell us.

The facts show that investment in broadband networks increased in the first half of 2011. In fact, investment in networks that support broadband was more than 10 percent higher in the first half of 2011 than in the first half of 2010. More of that investment in Internet companies surged in 2011, and this is after they had sort of adjusted or taken into account what they saw coming in the way of the rules. There was $2.3 billion worth of investment going into 275 companies in the second quarter, and all of them were this Internet type. That is the most investment in Internet companies in a decade.

Plus, shortly after the framework was adopted, America's leading wireless providers announced they were accelerating their deployment of their advanced fourth generation, or 4G networks. It seems the open Internet rules are giving broadband providers and entrepreneurs and investors the certainty they need to invest and to create jobs.

Certainty is the key. They are not going to invest in what they do not know. We see that in so many other areas. They do not know what is going to happen, so they do not invest. People have all this cash, but they do not have certainty. Here they have certainty, they understand that certainty, they understand what is coming, they like it, and they are investing like never before.

The FCC's open Internet rules also protect small businesses. An estimated 20,000 small businesses operate on the Internet. More than 600,000 Americans have part- or full-time businesses on eBay alone. I was not aware of that. The FCC's open Internet rules mean small entrepreneurs will not have to seek permission from broadband providers to reach new markets and consumers with innovative products and services.

This is a very important point. It means small businesses can be located anywhere in this country, including rural America, and through open broadband have the opportunity for their ideas and products and services to have a global reach. That is the point of all of this.

As we all know, small businesses were responsible for nearly 65 percent of new jobs over the past 15 years. Far from preventing investment, the FCC's open Internet rules will foster small businesses because they trust it. They see it, they see what Moody's is saying about it, they see what the Wall Street investment bankers are saying about it, they see it is encouraging investment, and they like and trust that. So they take risks they might not otherwise take because they trust.

It is not the faceless Federal bureaucrat. It is something that is down on paper and they understand it. They have probably seen it and probably commented on it. Maybe some of them didn't like it as much as they should have; maybe some thought it should have been stronger or some thought it should have been weaker, but such is life in America. So, anyway, I think what they conclude is that what is going on is supporting what they are doing.

Finally, I want to note when it comes to education and privacy and intellectual property, global Internet governance, or network security, the government has long provided--and necessarily so--reasonable rules of the road to make possible consumer protection, fair trade, and open markets. The FCC's open Internet rules are no different. They take, as has been quoted by many, a light-touch approach--I like that phrase-- and keep the playing field fair. They keep the Internet open and free for consumers, for businesses, and for everyone in this country who wants access to broadband Internet.

So that is why I support the FCC open Internet rules, and I encourage my colleagues to vote against the joint resolution.

Mr. President, I would like to respond to some things, but I understand we only have 42 minutes remaining.

And both Senator Cantwell and Senator Mark Udall want to speak. I don't want to take their time, so at this point I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, how much time remains on this side?

I would yield it to the distinguished Senator from Washington.

Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator for her remarks and actually fully agree with them in that mobile is kind of left alone, and it should not be because it is everything that is happening in the future. But it is a step, and it was a wonderful speech.

It occurs to me that I do not think we have anybody left to speak on this side. I am not sure about Senator Hutchison, but it may be a good time to yield back our time.

Mr. President, before I yield all time back on our side, I have listened to the entirety of this debate. It seems to me it has been fairly clear that on one side the government regulates and messes things up, and on the other side things are going swimmingly.

I can't help but pay attention to all those people out at TechNet, the AT&T people, Moody's, Hamilton's, and all these people who take a very dour view of government intervention and a very sensitive view as to whether that intervention is in any way going to stop investment. The answer is usually it does. That is why I feel very happy that this was referred to by a number of major players in this field as a very ``light touch'' of regulation, which gave them a sense of where they were going to be, how far down they could look toward their future and therefore allow them to invest the money they wanted to invest.

That is not to say they would not have done it anyway. But there is nothing like encouraging capital investment in something as important as the Internet. I think the net neutrality legislation does that very well. I hope when we vote on it tomorrow, it will not pass.

Having said that, I yield back all time.

Mr. President, what would be the order after that?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized for the time I have--I think it is about 15 minutes--after that.

Mr. President, this is one of those times when, on the floor of the Senate, we hear a proposal that people characterize as one thing, but it is, in fact, anything but what they are characterizing it as.

What I just heard the good Senator from Mississippi talking about: We don't want to slam the brakes on development, he said. We don't want to have the SEC intrusion.

So they are trying to say to the American people that they want to liberate the Internet, when, in fact, what they want to do is imprison the Internet within the hands of the most powerful communications entities today to act as the gatekeepers who will control the ability of the Internet to do the very kind of development that brought us here. What they are talking about, their concept, this CRA challenge is that wolf in sheep's clothing. It is that simple. So I think colleagues need to step back and think about how the Internet got to be what it is today when it was developed.

I know the Senator from West Virginia, the chairman of the committee, and I were members of the Commerce Committee back in the 1990s when we wrote the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and we thought we were pretty clever and we wrote a good act. Within 6 months of writing that act, it was obsolete because all our conversation was about telephony at a moment where, because of the Internet, the entire discussion was about to become about data transmission and the movement of information over the Internet. That has never been fully revisited. But the reason we have a Google today, the reason we have had this incredible development of Internet retail business, of all these Web sites, of Facebook, and so many more is because of the open architecture of access to that Internet--which, I would remind everybody in America, was created by government money in government research. It came out of an effort to develop a communications system for our country in the case of nuclear war. So we created, through DARPA, ARPA, research that produced this communications network. Then the private sector saw the opportunity, and a whole bunch of very creative people rushed in and made the Internet what it is today.

Overturning the rules, as the CRA proposes to do, would put the very open architecture that has created this extraordinary agent of communication, of commerce, and family communication, and all these things it has done for business, it would put it at risk and discourage investment in companies at the edge of the Internet that could be the next Google or the next Amazon. Overturning these rules would actually hurt our competitiveness and economic growth and they would diffuse the creative energy that has driven the Internet to be what it is today. Because if we overturn what they are doing today, we take the reality of the Internet and we put it in the hands of the gatekeepers.

Everything that goes over the Internet today goes either through our telephone at home or television or whatever, through cable, out of our house or the airwaves. But if we are not having an open architecture on the Internet, then the people who control those access points can start discriminating about who gets access at what speed; and if they control who gets access at what speed and begin to charge more for that, you begin to have a profound impact on the ability of any business to develop and a profound impact on the access that consumers have come to anticipate with respect to the Internet.

Think about this. We are talking about neutrality. We are standing here trying to defend neutrality. The other side is coming in here trying to create a new structure where the process will be gamed once again in favor of the most powerful. This is part of the whole debate that is going on in America today, about the 99 percent who feel like everything is gamed against them and the system is geared by the people who have the money and the people who have the power who get what they want. That is what this debate is about.

The network neutrality rules the FCC has promulgated are based on the principles that everybody should support of promoting transparency of broadband service operations, preventing the blocking of legal content and Web sites, and prohibiting discrimination of individuals, applications, and other Web sites. That is what we are for. This CRA is an effort to undo the FCC's ability to protect those principles.

Establishing those principles has actually brought about certainty and predictability to the broadband economy. It ensures that anyone can create a Web site, anyone can deliver an Internet-enabled service with the certainty that is going to be made available to everybody else on the Internet. Innovators now know they are not going to have to go ask a big telephone company: Hey, Verizon, hey AT&T, will you guys please let us have access so we can go do this thing? Oh, well, maybe we will do that, but we are going to charge you in order to do that. They completely destroy the openness that is provided, this ability for anybody in America to sit in their home or school or somewhere and come up with an idea and innovate. That freedom to innovate, the freedom to innovate is what has made the Internet the platform for economic and social development it is today, and a vote for the CRA is a vote to stifle that.

On the side of those favoring the FCC's action are venture capitalists and the companies that have made the Internet what it is today, civil rights groups, civil liberties advocates, academics, scholars who have studied and testified to the virtues of open networks. Let me quote a few of them.

John Doerr is somebody whom many of us have come to know by virtue of his business acumen and the legendary venture capitalist efforts he was engaged in. He was an early backer of Amazon, an early backer of Google, Electronic Arts, Netscape, and a number of other innovators whose creations have driven the growth of the Internet. Here is what he says:

Maintaining an open Internet is critical to our economy's

growth . . . and this effort is a pragmatic balance of

innovation, economic growth, and crucial investment in the

Internet.

Ray Ramsey, the president and CEO of TechNet, a national bipartisan network of more than 400 technology sector CEOs, said of the vote at the Commission in favor of the network neutrality rules:

The vote by the FCC is a pragmatic recognition of the need

for codifying principles for protecting nondiscrimination and

openness for the Internet.

Charlie Ergen, the president and CEO of Dish Network, said:

The Commission's order is a solid framework for protecting

the open Internet. The new rules give companies, including

Dish Network, the framework to invest capital and manpower in

Internet-related technologies without fear that our

investment will be undermined by carriers' discriminatory

practices.

Others supporting the order include the Communications Workers of America, civil rights organizations, consumer advocates. In sum, those who support the rules include those who fund the development of Internet companies, those who use the Internet, and advocates who favor open discourse and debate. I think we in the Senate ought to listen to the people who created it, the people who developed it, the people who are taking it to the next generation, and the people who use it.

The Los Angeles Times editorialized on Sunday in favor of the rules of the FCC, saying:

The agency's net neutrality rules are a reasonable attempt

to protect the innovative nature of the Internet and should

not be overturned.

Despite all of what I just said, some have made what I have called the ``wolf in sheep's clothing'' argument, the false argument that network neutrality rules regulate the Internet--that they actually regulate it--and this is an opportunity to keep it open and impose a condition on innovators.

I don't know how asking innovators to get permission from somebody else to be able to go do what they have already done since the 1990s is going to improve things. The truth is, network neutrality rules govern not the Internet but they govern the behavior of the firms that own and operate the gateways to the Internet. That is what is at stake. When the airwaves that carry

the information that connects us to everyone else in the Internet is in the hands of a few and subject to their control, we are in trouble.

The rules we are debating today state that those gateways should not be used to favor some voices over others or some firms over others on the Internet. That is what is at stake. That is what this fight is about. The truth is, if the rules are overturned, every innovator on the Internet will be exposed to the risk that, before they innovate, before they create a new product, they are going to have to go to somebody and say: Mother, may I do this? Then there will be a price attached to it.

Beyond the false argument that network neutrality constitutes regulation of the Internet rather than anticompetitive behavior, opponents to the rule predicted the FCC action was going to have negative economic repercussions. Yet even in an economy that has struggled, that prediction has proven to be wrong.

In the time since the FCC voted on the rule to preserve the open Internet, investment in networks that support wired and wireless broadbrand grew by more than 10 percent compared to the same period the year before. Venture capital investments in Internet-specific companies surged, with $2.3 billion going into 275 companies in the second quarter of 2011. It may well be that 2011 is going to be the biggest year for tech IPOs in more than 10 years. That seems to indicate strong investor confidence in the companies that rely on the open Internet already exists, and we should not disrupt that.

Having lost the argument that network neutrality hurts innovation or the economy, they therefore want to create a new argument; that is, the FCC acted outside its legal authority in protecting the free flow of communication on the Internet.

A court, the right place for that decision to be made, is going to make that decision. But, again, the argument actually challenges common sense. It challenges the basic understanding of reasonableness. To argue that the FCC, the agency that Congress created in order to regulate communications by wire and radio, somehow has no jurisdiction in this very space is to argue that communications over the Internet are not, in fact, conducted over a wire or over the airwaves. It is completely lacking in any foundation in common sense and certainly in the law.

The law we created grants the FCC the authority in the Telecommunications Act to ``make such rules and regulations, and issue such orders, not inconsistent with this Act, as may be necessary for its functions.''

That is the power we gave to them. Under title II, title III, title VI of that act, it encourages the FCC to protect the public interest and encourage just and reasonable rates through competition. That is precisely what net neutrality achieves. It is precisely what we achieve under the rules of the FCC.

Under title VII, the FCC is mandated to take immediate action to remove barriers to infrastructure investment and promote competition in the telecommunications market if advanced telecommunications is not being deployed in a reasonable and timely fashion. That can be determined on a case-by-case basis, and we obviously can continue as we have since the early 1990s to do this. So there is no good reason for this debate to fall along party lines.

I hope it will not be just Democrats who vote to preserve this rule. I hope we will maintain an open Internet technology and support the open Internet order.

Mr. President, soon the Senate will vote on the Hutchison resolution that, as the Presiding Officer said very eloquently, would overturn the decision of the Federal Communications Commission on what has come to be known as net neutrality. The bottom line for me is straightforward. A vote for the Hutchison resolution will enable a handful of special interests to occupy the Internet. These elites will then have the power to crowd out the voices for change and the ideas of the future. The Internet

would become a glidepath for a relatively small number of people to gain enormously rather than an opportunity for all Americans to prosper.

I think some of the ideas that have been offered up with respect to the Hutchison resolution just defy the facts. For example, we had some discussion about section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. I wrote that section. It was a key development, in my view, in the growth of the Internet because it gave us a chance to deal with smut and some of the junk families have been so upset with without squelching the potential for the net. It enabled content sharers to grow, ever since we struck that thoughtful approach, rather than just go to a censorship regime. I have heard that somehow net neutrality would undo that particular provision. Nothing could be further from the truth. Net neutrality is exactly about what I sought to do in section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which was to make sure that all voices could flourish--not just the voices of a few but all voices could flourish.

If anybody wants to talk a bit more about section 230 in the Communications Decency Act, I am happy to have that discussion, but as the author of that provision, it is something I and a lot of other people who have worked in this field have felt was essential to the growth of the Internet, and we share that view just as we believe that, as the Presiding Officer does, net neutrality is critical to the growth of the Internet in the years ahead because the fundamental principles that underlie both section 230 and net neutrality are the same.

The debate about the Federal Communication Commission's decision goes right to the heart of what the Internet is all about. It has always been a platform where all the actors are equal, where everybody has that opportunity, as the Presiding Officer suggested, at the American dream. It is a place where, whether it is one dissenting voice screaming out for democratic change or one brilliant idea that forever changes the way that people and society organize, everyone has that opportunity.

I chair the Senate Finance Subcommittee on International Trade. I think just one example of what we have seen is the Internet is going to be the shipping lane of the 21st century. This is the way societies are going to organize. This is the way people are going to come together. This is the way business is going to be conducted. Basically, net neutrality protects everybody's access to that shipping lane. It is not just going to be a place for the old-world business model. You bet the old-world business models are threatened by net neutrality. I understand that. I understand they are threatened by it. They have always been able to count on big, powerful, and well-connected interests and organizations to help them to dominate industry, and the Internet overturned that kind of thinking because it is the equalizer, it is the democratizer.

It just seems to me that when we open our morning newspaper day after day and see that the hope of the country is in innovation, in startups, in new ideas--it is not just in Silicon Valley, it is all over the country and all over the world--the last thing we want to do here in our country is adopt rules that would retard that development. And my view is that the power of the Internet--the network--is best utilized when content can move freely through it, and that is whether it is free from taxes, from liability, and certainly free from the kind of discrimination that would be allowed if the net neutrality rules were overturned.

Again, I touched on section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and why that was so important to the growth of the net and why I think net neutrality is consistent with that. It is the same with respect to some other legislation in which I have been heavily involved.

I had the privilege of being one of the coauthors of the Internet Tax Freedom bill. What that was all about was trying to protect the Internet from discrimination--not all taxes altogether but discrimination. That, too, is a fundamental principle of the net neutrality rules, is trying to make sure the net is not going to be singled out by a handful of special interests who could, in effect, devise what amounts to their own lanes on the Internet and force everybody else to pay for it.

So despite what may even be the interests of some of these powerful interest groups--and I know they are all saying now that they have no intent to discriminate against content over their networks. History shows that they cave every time when shareholders come and say: Look, you have to take this step to generate a profit. I think the Internet is too important to leave those kinds of decisions vulnerable to what is inevitably going to be the cry from shareholders and others to maximize profits.

One last point, if I might. I see other colleagues waiting to speak. I think the Internet and the economy in this country that is driven by the Internet represent perhaps our greatest comparative advantage. I touched on the Internet being the shipping lane of the 21st century. You know, what I want us to do is enhance the American way, enhance American values, and use the Internet to promote those values, facilitate speech, and expand the marketplace.

The reality is that the American brand is something very special, very special all over the world. The fact is, we have small businesses, and we heard from them in hearings. I know the distinguished chairman of the Commerce Committee is here, Senator Rockefeller, and others. Hardly a day goes by that I don't wish I was back being a member of the Senate Commerce Committee because it is such an important committee, it does such important work. We saw in some of those first hearings on the Internet--we started looking at taxes and regulation and liability and the Communications Decency Act--we saw how small businesses that really could operate only in a relatively small area for years and years suddenly, after they paid their Internet access charges, could go wherever they want, when they want, how they want, and they were equal to the most powerful groups and voices in the country. That is their opportunity. That is their chance to get their brand all over the world.

We ought to make sure we take no action that is going to make it harder for small entrepreneurs to exchange their goods and services far beyond their communities. We ought to be making judgments that allow them to get into every nook and cranny of the world with the American brand.

I hope my colleagues will reject this resolution. I believe the Internet has thrived precisely because of the principles of net neutrality. It has contributed to the American economy and to job creation because consumers ultimately get to see and get what they want as quickly as they want it.

It is going to be an important vote. I heard the Presiding Officer say that this was something of an issue for geeks, and from time to time, people have said I am one of those. But I will tell the Presiding Officer, I think ultimately the net is not about geeks, it is about democracy. This is the great democratizer. This is the trampoline that provides opportunities to people without power and clout.

I want to say to colleagues, particularly those who have mentioned section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, as the author of that particular provision--and Senator Rockefeller remembers this huge outcry about smut. We were all concerned about smut at that time. And we said: There is a choice. We can either do, with respect to this debate, what makes sense for the future, and that is empower families and parents to get these filters so the Internet can grow and we can fight smut in a practical way, or we can do a lot of damage and come up with some sort of censorship regime.

As colleagues remember, essentially both approaches were included in the bill, and the approach that mandated censorship was struck down. Freedom won. The principles of net neutrality won in that first big battle fighting smut 15 years ago. If we were to undo the decisions of the Federal Communications Commission and move back to the days when you could talk about discriminating, you know, against the Internet, I think it would be a step against all the progress we have made in the last 15 years with respect to oversight and regulation and taxes.

This is an important vote, colleagues. When you read the morning newspaper and you see that it is the

entrepreneurs and the startups and the innovators who are providing the path forward in a very difficult economy, I think you will see that the policies we have laid out for the last 15 years, whether it is the Communications Decency Act, whether it is other legislation--Chairman Rockefeller remembers when we wrote the digital signatures law in the Commerce Committee--these votes, these laws have all become law because they essentially were built on the very same principles of net neutrality, and that is freedom for all and a democratic Internet to provide opportunity to all Americans and not just the elites, not just a handful of special interests.

I commend Chairman Rockefeller and Senator Franken for their good work.

I often agree with Senator Hutchison. This is not one of those opportunities.

I hope my colleagues, when we have this vote on the extraordinarily important resolution involving net neutrality, will vote against the Hutchison resolution.

I yield the floor.