Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Letter From Birmingham Jail
Floor Speech
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Mrs. BLACKBURN. Madam President, last week, the Democrat majority on the Federal Communications Commission voted to classify broadband internet service as a ``telecommunications service'' under title II of the Communications Act. This is an effort that is known as net neutrality.
Now, the internet has been under title I, an information service, but our Democratic colleagues at the FCC and the Democrat administrations have sought to put this under title II and regulate it like they do the telephone line.
This action is nothing less than a Big Government takeover of the internet, which will decrease investment in broadband and hurt the American people's access to high-speed internet.
Now, how do we know this? Here is how: Under President Obama, the FCC enforced the failed regulation on the American people between 2015 and 2017, with harmful consequences. So we have done this before.
Now, back then, Democrats claimed that net neutrality was desperately needed to prevent internet service providers from blocking content, throttling speeds, and creating fast lanes that favored users who can pay for access. One Democrat Senator argued during this debate back in 2015 that without the heavy-handed regulation, the internet would ``cease to exist.'' And another from their official Senate Democrat Twitter account claimed that without net neutrality, internet users would only ``get the internet one word at a time.''
Now, of course, we all know this never happened. Internet service providers never lived up to the Democrats' doomsday predictions, even after the FCC, under President Trump, repealed the net neutrality regulation.
In fact, the internet has seen more development, faster speeds, and lower prices since President Trump's administration repealed that Obama-era net neutrality order. While the order was in effect, from 2015 to 2017, investment in broadband fell. It actually fell. It decreased for the first time in a nonrecession period. For the first time ever, it decreased. Why was that? Government regulation. By comparison, the industry spent $102 billion on capital expenditures in 2022, up from $76 billion in 2016.
At the same time, without so-called net neutrality, Americans have enjoyed faster broadband speeds with a freer internet--free of net neutrality regulations. By the end of 2019, 94 percent of Americans had access to high-speed broadband. In 2015, just three-fourths of Americans had that access. Between 2016 and 2019, the share of rural Americans without high-speed internet was actually cut in half. With greater investment and competition, the repeal of net neutrality also made internet access more affordable.
Between 2016 and 2021--this is a period of time without net neutrality rules--during that period of time, broadband prices decreased in the range of 14 to 42 percent. Think about that. The price of access went down. It shows you that free markets work.
Tennesseans and Americans are probably wondering why is the FCC trying to go back and put a policy in place that limited access, that gave you government control, that increased prices, that slowed investment? Why would the Democrats want to do that?
Today, Democrats have abandoned all the arguments they had during the Obama years about internet service providers blocking content and throttling speeds. Instead, the Biden-appointed FCC chairwoman claims that net neutrality is needed to address loopholes in the Agency's oversight of national security threats. I thought: How novel. So now it is all about loopholes and about national security.
Well, when you look at the 1996 Telecommunications Act, it does not grant broad national security authority to the FCC. It does not give them the responsibility to do that, and it doesn't say that they have to have net neutrality in order to grab that. The Biden administration even admitted that U.S. security and law enforcement Agencies already-- and I am quoting the Biden administration here--``exercise substantial authorities with respect to the information and communication sectors.''
They made up a story now that they need to do this because of national security. They do not have the authority; it does not fit their mission; and the authority actually belongs to other Agencies. So what you have is today's justification is different from the Obama era.
The real motivation for net neutrality remains the same. It is simply this: Democrats want the Federal Government to completely control the internet. It should come as no surprise that Big Tech companies who block and censor conservative speech every day are the biggest supporters of net neutrality. They would enjoy the opportunity to work right alongside the Federal Government and control your access, your speed, your content that you are choosing on the internet.
So Senate Republicans are going to fight against this Big Government takeover, and we are going to ensure that the internet does remain free and accessible and open to all Americans. Iran
Madam President, America can only achieve peace through strength. We know that. Yet since his first day in office, President Biden has ignored this time-tested truth and our servicemembers and allies are suffering the consequences.
Last week, militants in Iraq fired five rockets toward U.S. forces stationed in northeastern Syria. Less than 24 hours later, U.S. forces in western Iraq were targeted by explosive drones. Thankfully, no servicemembers were injured in these attacks. But it marked the first time American troops were targeted in the region since February. In their attacks earlier this year, Iranian militias injured dozens of U.S. troops and killed three brave servicemembers in Jordan. By all appearances, Iran-backed terror groups, including Hezbollah, were behind the latest attacks. Shortly after the attack on U.S. forces in Syria, the group issued a statement claiming that it will resume attacks on American troops, adding that ``What happened a short while ago is the beginning.''
This aggression isn't happening by accident. It is a direct result of President Biden's pro-Iran policy of appeasement. For more than 3 years, the Biden administration has rolled back the Trump administration's successful maximum-pressure campaign against the ayatollahs. Instead, President Biden has emboldened the Iranian regime, the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism, which killed more than 600 American troops during the Iraq war.
Within weeks of taking office, President Biden announced a return to diplomacy with Iran with the goal of restoring President Obama's failed nuclear deal. Then the administration revoked the Foreign Terrorist Organization designation for the Iran-backed Houthis. Those are the rebels in Yemen.
Right before Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the White House approved a $10 billion nuclear deal between Tehran and Moscow. At the same time, the White House allowed Iran to secretly export oil to communist China, filling the regime's coffers with billions to fund their terror proxies, including Hamas and the Houthis and Hezbollah. And in September 2023, the Biden administration engaged in a $6 billion deal with Iran, the largest hostage payment in history.
It is quite a record. It is quite a record of appeasing Iran. It is quite a record of pushing forward, making certain there is money into a regime which is the globe's largest state sponsor of terrorism. Now, you would think that after the October 7 attacks when Iran-funded Hamas terrorists murdered 1,200 Israelis in the deadliest attack on the Jewish people since the holocaust, the Biden administration would abandon its policy of appeasement. But, no, that is not what this administration has done. What they did do is to double down on their policy of appeasement.
So are we to assume that they are OK with all of this? Just 11 days after the attacks, the President let the international embargo on Iran's missile and drone program lapse--11 days; and 11 days after Iran had moved forward--they trained Hamas, they prepped them, they funded them--Hamas carries out the October 7 attack, and 11 days later the Biden administration let the international embargo on Iran's missile and drone program lapse.
In November, the administration reapproved the sanctions waiver that gives Iran access to around $10 billion in frozen assets. Last month, after Iran directly attacked Israel from its territory for the first time ever, launching more than 300 drones and missiles toward the Jewish State, President Biden told Israel that the United States opposed any counteroffensive to restore deterrence, telling Israel to look at Iran's failed attack as a win.
Madam President, can you even imagine what the American people would have thought following 9/11 if countries were telling us: Cool it; back off. They didn't take you totally down. Imagine that.
Just weeks ago, the Biden administration refused to commit to enforcing sanctions on the $10 billion Iran-Russia nuclear deal. And to top it off, President Biden is now reportedly looking to revive the failed Iran nuclear deal in this latest attempt to appease the ayatollahs. You cannot make this stuff up. You absolutely cannot.
When I do visits in each of Tennessee's 95 counties, when I do a telephone townhall like I did last night with thousands of Tennesseans, people say: What are they thinking? And, you know, the sad thing about this is, it makes you wonder what they are thinking. It makes you wonder what they are doing to secure this country, to secure our people, to secure the homeland. It makes you wonder what are they doing intentionally, especially when it comes to that southern border. Thousands of people from countries of interest--about 25,000 Chinese nationals so far this fiscal year--are coming into our country. By the way, they are mainly young single men. What are they doing?
Why does this administration not put our Nation's safety and security first? Why do they not put the safety and security of our troops who are deployed first? Why do they not have the backbone to stand up to thugs and put an end to this appeasement?
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