Susan Collins Putting Political Expediency Over Proven Policy

FreedomWorks Vice President of Legislative Affairs Jason Pye offered the following comments in response to Senator Susan Collin’s announcement of support for the Democrats’ plan to reverse the FCC’s Title II/Net Neutrality rollback:

"Senator Collins claims to support a ‘careful, deliberative process involving experts’ in regards to the issue of so-called ‘Net Neutrality.’ With all due respect, Senator, how does this knee-jerk support of a far-left bill the day it reaches enough votes to secure a vote meet any of that criteria?

"The Internet grew and flourished into what we know today without any evidence of a systemic market failure under 20 years of light-touch Title I regulation created by the bipartisan Telecommunications Act of 1996. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, his fellow GOP FCC Commissioners, and FTC Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen, all of whom received Senator Collin’s confirmation vote, all supported the rule change she now seeks to undo. How much more deliberative or expert-driven must this process be for Senator Collins not to abandon free market principles she claims to champion?

"The fact remains that, regardless of Net Neutrality principles, Title II public utility-style regulation of the Internet is an exceptionally onerous regulatory regime that has chilled investment in delivering high-speed broadband to rural communities, like much of Maine. It further threatens to relegate the Internet to the very same status-quo of stagnation that protected the Ma Bell telephone monopoly and kept telephone technology almost entirely unchanged for half a century.

"None of this would surprise Senator Collins if she was actually interested in a deliberative and expert-driven process, but yet again she has put political expediency over proven policy."