House Energy & Commerce Committee chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) reacted strongly Thursday (Feb. 5) to a report in The Wall Street Journal about the degree to which the White House had pushed for Title II regulation.
Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler announced Wednesday (Feb. 4) that new network-neutrality rules to be voted on Feb. 26 would be based in Title II common-carrier regulations, though only a few of them in a "tailored" attempt to restore regs thrown out by a federal court.
President Obama last fall came close to directing a federal agency to take action in an online video outlining why he thought Title II reclassification was necessary; he even sent an aide to the FCC in advance of that video to let the chairman know it was coming.
The Wall Street Journal pointed to what it called an "unusual, secretive campaign" by a couple of White House staffers to get strong network-neutrality rules.
Upton responded: "Tom Wheeler infamously declared to reporters, ‘I am an independent agency,’ after the president publicly pushed for heavy regulation of the Internet," the congressman said in a statement. "Turns out that wasn’t the case then, it’s not the case now, and the White House needs to get its hands off the FCC. The White House’s efforts to drag the Internet into 1930s regulations is a move that puts the FCC on the fast-lane to the federal courthouse. We have a solution that achieves bipartisan goals to protect an open Internet, satisfying both the president’s and chairman Wheeler's previously stated requirements.”
