Executive Session
Floor Speech
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Mr. WICKER. Mr. President, I don't think the answer to the question is going to be a surprise to my friend from Massachusetts. I will only say this, and I will try to do it briefly. I have been amazed, over the last 1\1/2\ years and even longer, at the intense, overblown rhetoric about this issue of net neutrality and the hyperbole we have heard on the floor of the Senate and elsewhere.
About 1\1/2\ years ago, the FCC voted on the Restoring Internet Freedom Order. It went into effect. It repealed what most of us considered a heavyhanded approach based on a law that took effect back in 1934.
When the FCC implemented this new restoring internet freedom order back a year and a half ago, I was just astounded by what was being said by my friends on the left. One Senator warned that this was practically the end of Netflix, YouTube, and Amazon. Another cautioned:
They want to get rid of the Federal Communications Commission's net neutrality rules so that . . . Internet Service Providers can indiscriminately charge more for internet fast lanes, slow down websites, block websites, make it harder and maybe even impossible for inventors, entrepreneurs.
One tweet from my friends on the Democratic side said: ``If we don't save net neutrality, you'll get the internet one word at a time.'' That quote got three Pinocchios from even the Washington Post.
These things never happened. As a matter of fact, people on the other side of the issue who actually have taken the position of the Senator from Massachusetts have admitted that ISPs are delivering on consumers' expectations. They are not throttling websites.
As a matter of fact, here is what has happened since the FCC order went into effect a year and a half ago: Broadband providers large and small have deployed fiber networks to 5.9 million new homes--the largest number ever recorded. More Americans are connected at higher speeds than ever before. Capital expenditures have rebounded from the slump they suffered when the internet was subjected to title II.
This should surprise no one because the internet has thrived during Democratic and Republican administrations and during Democratic majorities on the FCC and Republican majorities on the FCC when we have taken the light-touch regulatory approach.
The issue seems to be title II regulation of rates. I would simply say to my brothers and sisters on the other side of the aisle that we can pass a law tomorrow afternoon providing Americans with all the protection they want from blocking, throttling, and preventing paid prioritization. What we will not do and what this President will not sign is legislation authorizing the Federal Government to set internet rates in the old 1934 Bell System of title II regulations. For that reason, I do object.
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