National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. MARKEY. Madam President, I wish to follow up on what the Democratic leader was making reference to with regard to net neutrality. Today is the day when net neutrality rules are gone, even though there is a way in which we, the Congress, can put them right back on the books. That is what happened in the Senate 3 weeks ago, when we voted 52 to 47 to put the net neutrality protections back on the books to ensure that they would be there for every American. As Senator Schumer was just pointing out, the ball is in the court of the House of Representatives--the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. We passed net neutrality in the Senate on a bipartisan basis.

Senator Murkowski, Senator Collins, and Senator Kennedy of Louisiana voted for net neutrality. We know, as Senator Schumer just said, that if the vote was taken right now on net neutrality in the House of Representatives, it would win. We would be able to put those protections back on the books. Millions of people rose up throughout the last 6 months of last year, with 22 million of them contacting the FCC. Ajit Pai, the Chairman of the FCC, ignored those 22 million people, and by a 3-to-2 vote on the Federal Communications Commission, they took net neutrality off of the books. In other words, they officially stripped consumers of the protections that have allowed our economy and our democracy to flourish. Now Americans will have to blindly trust their cable companies, their broadband companies, and their internet providers to protect them against discrimination. It is Big Cable's dream come true. They have already won at the FCC, but now the counterrevolution is underway. In the Senate, it has already happened.

What we need to do now is to have the same level of energy with those millions of Americans who are targeting the House of Representatives and telling them that they want net neutrality, that they want nondiscrimination principles, that they want equal protection for the smallest voices, the smallest companies to be the law of the land--net neutrality. We need entrepreneurs; we need job creators, we need small businesses, which are the lifeblood of the American economy, to be protected against the natural tendency of the biggest corporations to pump up profits at the expense of the little guy. Yet you don't have to take my word for it.

In looking back over recent history, before net neutrality protections were codified, in 2007, an Associated Press investigation found that Comcast was blocking or severely slowing down BitTorrent--a website that allowed consumers to share video, music, and video game files. From 2007 to 2009, AT&T forced Apple to block Skype and other competing services from using AT&T's wireless network in order to encourage users to purchase more voice minutes. In 2011, Verizon blocked Google Wallet to protect a competing service that it had a financial stake in developing and promoting.

We all know it is just a matter of time before these big companies will start to exercise their unfettered right to begin discriminating. Historically, these powerful corporations protect themselves, and they neglect consumer issues; they prioritize profits; they disregard service; they pocket their profits, and everyday Americans lose.

There will be no eulogy for net neutrality here on the floor of the Senate today. The FCC will not have the last word when it comes to net neutrality, but the American people will. We are going to have a tsunami of Americans who will contact their Members of the House of Representatives to demand that it have a vote on net neutrality in the same way we had that vote here on the Senate floor. We know that when that vote takes place that the American people are going to win, that net neutrality is going to win, that the principles of nondiscrimination are going to win.

Too many people today think that this whole idea of discrimination is back in vogue--that you can start talking about it in a way that has not been a part of our culture for a generation. Yet it is back. In a lot of ways, net neutrality is part of that whole discussion of whether or not the American people get protected against discrimination.

We have an enhanced urgency because the FCC's rules are now final, and net neutrality is no longer the law of the land. That is what happened today. The Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, is taking his victory lap today. He is so proud of what has happened--that net neutrality has been taken off the books--despite 22 million Americans saying they wanted it to stay on the books.

Here is what we know. Consumers don't trust their cable and internet companies to do the right thing unless strict rules are in place to protect everyone in our country. We know that when you take a democratized platform with endless opportunity for communication and you add American ingenuity, you get economic growth; you get innovation; you get democracy online. That is what this fight is all about, and this fight is far from over. We are going to intensify our efforts to ensure that there is going to be a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives.

Conventional wisdom thought that it was all over last December, that once the FCC voted 3 to 2, it was over. The FCC didn't in any way anticipate the 52-to-47 vote here on the Senate floor to reinstitute net neutrality just 3 weeks ago, and it is dramatically underestimating the response of Americans all across our country who are descending electronically on the House of Representatives--on the part of Congress that has yet to vote on these issues. We are going to see millions of teachers, students, entrepreneurs, small business owners, and activists mobilize to protect the internet. They have demonstrated on the streets. They have written letters. They have made calls. They have signed petitions. They have posted on social media. That is what we are going to continue to see.

Already, 170 Members of the House of Representatives have signed the discharge petition, which is a technical term for saying: Call for a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives to vote on net neutrality. The momentum is building. They need 218. They have 170 right now. They are 48 Members of the House of Representatives short of winning over there. The pressure is going to intensify every single day, especially since net neutrality has now been, as of this moment, taken off the books.

By the way, this fight is being waged at the State level as well. In California, just 2 weeks ago, the State senate voted 25 to 12 to reinstitute net neutrality, and in New York, in Massachusetts, in Oregon, and in Washington--in State after State--they are rising. They are saying: If the Federal Government will not protect us, then we will protect ourselves.

We know that influential lobbyists aren't going to go away, but the American people aren't going to go away either. This is their government. This is the place at which they expect their will to be respected. When net neutrality is taken off the books--an issue that polls at 86 percent of all Americans--the will of the American people is not being respected. There is nothing more powerful than the collective voices of millions of Americans who are working together with a common mission, and that is to restore net neutrality to the books. The campaign to restore the internet, to save the internet, enters a new phase today. The urgency has never been higher, but the intensity level across this country has never been higher. Today is not the day for a eulogy for net neutrality. The fight has just begun.

We thank every Senator who has already voted for net neutrality, and we thank every American who has worked toward that goal. Now let us redouble our efforts, because we have to turn this into a campaign issue in 2018 that matches all of the other issues that are driving the agenda of our country.

I thank the Presiding Officer.

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