Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. President, today we begin debate on a position in our government that impacts the daily lives of every single American. If you use a telephone, connect to the internet, watch television, and pay a big cable company to do all of those things, then you need to know who Ajit Pai is.

President Trump nominated Ajit Pai to be the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. While Ajit Pai has devoted many years to public service, I cannot support his nomination. Under Mr. Pai's short tenure, he has made the FCC stand for ``forgetting consumers and competition.''

Let's take a look at who is getting a piece of the FCC pie under Chairman Pai. It is American consumers on the one hand versus big corporations on the other hand. Let's take a piece of this pie and determine who is getting that first slice of what is going on at the Federal Communications Commission.

Let's look at net neutrality. Net neutrality is the basic principle that says that all internet traffic is treated equal. Net neutrality ensures that internet service providers like AT&T, Charter, Verizon, and Comcast do not block, slow down, censor, or prioritize internet traffic.

If Ajit Pai gets his way, a handful of big broadband companies will serve as gatekeepers to the internet. Fewer voices, less choice, no competition, but more profits for the big broadband companies--that is Pai's formula. Yet it is today's net neutrality rules that ensure that those with the best ideas, not merely the best funded ideas, can thrive in the 21st-century economy. It is net neutrality that has been the internet's chief governing principle since its inception.

Consider that today essentially every company is an internet company. In 2016, almost half of the venture capital funds invested in this country went toward internet-specific and software companies. That is $25 billion of investment. Half of all venture capital in America went toward internet-specific and software companies--half of all venture capital.

To meet America's insatiable demand for broadband internet, the U.S. broadband and telecommunications industry invested more than $87 billion in capital expenditures in 2015. That is the highest rate of annual investment in the last 10 years.

So we have hit a sweet spot. Investment in broadband and wireless technologies is very high. Job creation is very high. Venture capital investment in online startups is very high. That is why more than 22 million Americans wrote to the Federal Communications Commission to make their voices heard about net neutrality. They do not want it repealed. Yet Chairman Pai's proposal would decimate the FCC's open internet order.

Chairman Pai has said: ``We need to fire up the weed whacker'' to net neutrality rules. Do we really want a leader at the Federal Communications Commission who, ultimately, is going to implement the agenda of the big broadband companies, which want to crush competition, reduce choice, and then make consumers pay more?

So the first slice of this pie of killing net neutrality goes to the big corporations, and the losers are the consumers.

Let's go to the next slice of the FCC pie. Let's see where that goes as these decisions are being made. The next issue is, in fact, broadband privacy.

Chairman Pai has actively supported efforts to allow broadband providers to use, share, and sell your sensitive information without consumer consent. In 2016, Chairman Pai voted against commonsense broadband privacy protections that gave consumers meaningful control over their sensitive information. When he assumed the FCC chairmanship, Ajit Pai stopped the implementation of data security protections, which would have ensured that broadband providers better protect the information they collect about their users. Can you imagine that? Chairman Pai stopped protections that would improve data security.

I have 143 million reasons as to why that was a bad idea. Just this month, Equifax was subjected to a cyber attack that compromised the personally identifiable information of 143 million consumers. The American public wants more protection, not less. Yet what does Chairman Pai do? He effectively eliminates the very data security protections that consumers need to protect their sensitive information. That is just plain wrong.

Just a few weeks later, Mr. Pai supported congressional Republicans' efforts to rescind the Federal Communications Commission's broadband privacy protections. Now your broadband provider can relentlessly collect and sell your sensitive web browsing history without your consent.

You may wonder why Chairman Pai would actively support efforts to undermine the privacy of American consumers. The answer is simple. He wants that slice of the pie to go to the biggest corporations. How do they use it? They take that data--your personal data, the information you put online--and just sell it without your permission in order to make money for the big corporations. Once again, rather than consumers, the big corporations get the benefit of that decision at the Federal Communications Commission.

Let's take a look at the next issue. The next issue goes to the question of mergers, the mergers of big telecommunications companies.

The Sinclair deal has led to a proposal to merge with Tribune Media, granting one company an unprecedented market power of over 200 broadcast stations around the country. In order to help Sinclair, Ajit Pai reinstated what most consider to be an antiquated rule, the UHF discount, to pave the way for the merger. The UHF discount makes the FCC count only half of the stations on certain frequencies toward companies' ownership percentages. This merger would allow Sinclair to reach into 72 percent of American households, but with the discount, the FCC counts it as only 45 percent. Putting this discount back on the books is Chairman Pai's first step to helping Sinclair stay within the national ownership cap of 39 percent.

What will be the impact of this massive telecommunications mega- merger? Less local news, sports, and weather that millions of Americans count on today. It will lead to the continued squeezing out of independent programmers, and it will mean higher prices for consumers. What signal does approving this merger reveal? It reveals that the FCC and Ajit Pai have put out the welcome mat for the consolidation of other communications companies.

So this third slice, once again, goes to corporations and not to consumers. They are left out in the cold.

Let's look at the fourth slice and see what happens with that at the Federal Communications Commission under the approval of Ajit Pai's nomination on the floor of the Senate. The next slice is one that deals with the education rate, or the E-rate.

The E-rate has proven to be exceptional in linking up schools and libraries to the internet. We went from a country in 1996 in which only 14 percent of K-12 classrooms had internet access to a near ubiquitous deployment today. The E-rate has ensured that students from working- class neighborhoods can connect just like students from more affluent communities. The E-rate democratizes access to the opportunities and technologies that lead to bright futures. Over $44 billion to date has been committed nationwide.

Again, Ajit Pai does not take that perspective. At his confirmation hearing in July, I explicitly asked him whether he would commit to preserving the success of this bipartisan program and protecting the funding level or whether he would make programmatic changes that could undermine or weaken the E-rate. He would not make this commitment to maintain current funding for E-rate.

Students and library users around the country will not be able to afford this slice of the pie. Once again, consumers will lose and corporations will win.

Now we go to the final slice of that communications pie at the FCC.

Telecommunication is the great equalizer, but a household with no access to basic telecommunications services could lose educational and employment opportunities as well as emergency services. That is why the FCC's Lifeline Program is truly a lifeline for millions of Americans who are able to connect to the world. In Massachusetts alone, more than 180,000 low-income Bay Staters rely on the Lifeline Program to access voice and internet service.

The value of this universal service has always been a bedrock of our telecommunications policy. Yet one of Ajit Pai's first actions as FCC Chairman was to undermine Lifeline and make it more difficult for low- income people to access affordable broadband. I was dismayed by his decision to abruptly revoke the recognition of nine additional companies as Lifeline broadband providers just weeks after they were approved. Mr. Pai's action did nothing but unfairly punish low-income consumers by limiting choice.

So the final slice, again, goes to the Federal Communications Commission's supporting corporations and not supporting consumers.

That is the pie--the FCC pie--as it is put together on net neutrality, on privacy, on mergers, on E-rate, and on Lifeline. It is all the same. The FCC winds up standing for forgetting consumers and competition. That is the era that we are now in, and it will only intensify as each day, week, and month goes by. That is why I am recommending a ``no'' vote on Ajit Pai as the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.

Which side are we going to be on--that of the consumers or corporations? Are we going to side with innovators? Are we going to side with those who are trying to continue to take these platforms of dynamic change in our society for consumers, for entrepreneurs or are we going to allow for a closing of this revolution?

This is the era in which we live in the 21st century. This is the choice that people must make. In which direction are we going?

I urge a ``no'' vote by my colleagues on Ajit Pai's nomination. Of all of the things that we are going to do this year, this is very near the top of the list. In many ways, this telecommunications revolution is the organizing principle of our lives here in the United States and around the planet, and we have to make sure that we are heading in the right direction--more openness, more competition, more consumer protection, more privacy protection, and more access in libraries and schools to these technologies, not fewer and fewer and fewer and fewer. It is just the wrong direction to head in. I urge a ``no'' vote.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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