Senate Hearing Aims Spotlight on FCC Process

The Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee took aim April 20 at the Federal Communications Commission's network neutrality Open Internet order and ex parte contacts in a hearing on "The Administrative State: An Examination of Federal Rulemaking." Chairman Ron Johnson (R-WI) called it an incredibly important hearing and said that while some regulation was needed, there was a point of "overregulation." The hearing dealt with the broader issue of regulating through administrative action—which is the charge Republicans have leveled at the Obama Administration for pushing Title II reclassification of Internet service providers and more recently calling for new set-top box rules. But it used the FCC as an example of the federal regulatory overreach the committee's Republican leadership asserts.

Four of the five witnesses were of like mind that there was currently federal regulatory overreach, with the scope of agency regulations far broader than Congress had intended. Witness Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University, said he did not want to weigh in on merits of net neutrality, but what he saw as an opaque process. He said that he agreed with many things President Obama was trying to do but not the way he was doing it. Randolph May, president of the Free State Foundation and former associate general counsel at the FCC, said the rulemaking process is faulty and has given rise to the administrative state. He focused on the FCC's net neutrality rulemaking as a solution in search of a problem.