Find A Solution So All Americans Can Have Continued Access to An Open and Free Internet

Floor Speech

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Mr. YOUNG of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, America is a compassionate country. We are a very giving country. America gives a lot. But I am not sure we need to be giving away a free and open Internet.

If Congress does not act soon, our free and open Internet is going to be handed over by our President to a global bureaucratic body, a body that may not respect the freedom of information and speech that we experience today, a body that may sensor what Americans have to say or how journalists can receive information and cover certain stories on governments, on current events.

What does handing the Internet over to a global bureaucracy mean for privacy? for freedom of information? commerce? national security? The question is really: What is the need to do this, to hand over the administration of a working, free, and open Internet to a global bureaucracy? And why the rush?

Now, my colleagues, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Duffy) and we just heard from the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner), are supporters of a great bill Mr. Duffy introduced called the Protecting Internet Freedom Act, H.R. 5418. It has many sponsors on it. There are efforts in the Senate as well to do the same thing to protect the Internet.

In 2014, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the NTIA, announced its intention to relinquish, to give away, its procedural authority over Internet domain and functions to the global Internet stakeholder community. Many of the Iowans I represent, and I know many others around the country, are incredibly concerned about this--and rightly so--about shifting U.S. oversight and giving authority to regimes that have repeatedly censored the Internet.

As a member of the Appropriations Committee, I have worked with my colleagues to try to block funding for the administration's appeal to do this, this bogus plan, and I am hopeful U.S. Internet protections will remain in any final spending bill coming up. Mr. Speaker, the proper place for debate over important issues like this, like the integrity of the Internet, is here in Congress, not behind closed doors at the NTIA, a Federal agency, with these unilateral actions.

I urge my colleagues and I urge my fellow Americans to reach out to the Members of Congress and tell them and ask them and plead with them to protect the Internet, to make sure it is free and it is open, and to find a solution so that Iowans and all Americans have continued access to an open and free Internet, uncensored, where information can flourish and speech can flourish.

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