Oversight of the Federal Communications Commission - Ranking Member Bill Nelson Opening Statement

Statement

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for calling today's hearing. The FCC majority certainly has been busy over the last eighteen months.

The FCC has been busy:

Abdicating the agency's statutory authority to protect consumers on the internet.
Paving the way for unprecedented broadcast consolidation.
Proposing to eliminate rules that make quality educational content for kids readily-available on free, over-the-air television.
Gutting a program designed to help low-income Americans afford phone and internet services.
The bottom line here is this FCC has been busy removing consumer protections in almost every industry segment you regulate.

What we haven't seen is progress in actually closing the digital divide.

Access to broadband is often the number one issue in rural counties in Florida. From Gilchrist, Dixie and Levy counties to urban Jacksonville, many Floridians still do not have access to affordable, quality high-speed internet service.

In these areas, students lack the ability to complete their homework, small businesses cannot compete and social and political engagement is hampered. These Floridians deserve the same opportunities as everyone else.

On behalf of those Floridians -- who are part of the 24 million Americans on the wrong side of the digital divide -- we need real solutions for getting quality, affordable broadband in those areas.

It's going to take more than cynical lipservice to solve this problem. And it definitely will not be solved -- as some seem to believe -- by repealing essential protections to preserve the free and open internet. And I remind you, those rules were popular with millions of Americans and were upheld in their entirety by the courts. Now a bipartisan majority of the United States Senate has decisively repudiated that action through a Congressional resolution of disapproval.

That formal censure should give the FCC pause. It should spur regulatory humility in all actions taken by the agency.

We -- and the American people -- expect more from our independent regulators.

The FCC's actions directly impact the lives of so many. The FCC can make a difference - when you focus on the greater public interest, not on fulfilling the wish lists of a few large companies.

I am an optimist by nature. The FCC can and should do better -- particularly with robust oversight from this committee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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