(Alexandria, VA) – Today, the 362,000-member National Taxpayers Union (NTU) applauded House passage of legislation that would protect Americans from the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC’s) recent attempt to impose a burdensome “net neutrality” scheme on the Internet through back-door regulation. House Joint Resolution 37 overturns the FCC’s new Internet rules, which is a classic “solution in search of a problem”.
Representative Fred Upton (R-MI) sponsored the bill and led the charge for its passage in the House. Now, NTU is urging the Senate to pass the legislation and prevent the imposition of damaging regulations that courts have said the FCC has no authority to enact.
NTU Vice President of Government Affairs Andrew Moylan offered the following statement:
“Rather than go through the peoples’ representatives in Congress, the FCC executed an excessive power grab by giving itself massive new regulatory authority over the Internet -- a power that is clearly outside its legal authority, as affirmed by the courts.
Taxpayers are grateful to Representative Upton and his colleagues for acting to prevent this FCC overreach. The last thing the struggling American economy needs is for an unelected bureaucracy to burden its most vibrant facilitator with net neutrality rules that are not justified.
A dynamic Internet is clearly necessary in the President’s quest to ‘win the future.’ The Senate should now swiftly pass Representative Upton’s bill and give President Obama the chance to live up to his lofty rhetoric instead of defending this regulatory rampage."
NTU is a nonpartisan, nonprofit citizen group founded in 1969 to work for lower taxes, smaller government, and economic freedom at all levels. Note: For more information on NTU’s telecom policy work, including comments on the FCC’s rulemaking, visit www.ntu.org.