FCC chief to run gauntlet in defense of online rules

 Tom Wheeler is headed for the hot seat.

On Tuesday, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman will make the first of five trips to Capitol Hill over the next two weeks to defend his decision to issue the toughest net neutrality rules the U.S. has ever seen. 

{mosads}“This is supposed to be an independent body, so I think there will be questions asked about ‘How independent are you?’ ‘Who all are you taking your orders from?’ ” said Rep. Bob Latta (R-Ohio), the vice chairman of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on communications. 

“I think it’s important that folks know where they are on this issue.”

Tuesday morning’s hearing in the House Oversight Committee will be lawmakers’ first chance to grill Wheeler in person since his agency’s 3-2, party-line vote last month to issue aggressive rules that treat broadband Internet service like a public utility.

That hearing will be followed by sessions with his four other commissioners in the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday afternoon and then in the House Energy and Commerce subpanel on Thursday morning. The following week, Wheeler will be back for a session before the House Judiciary Committee and another hearing convened by the House Appropriations panel, where he will testify alongside Republican FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai.

Many congressional Republicans have long opposed the notion that tough federal regulations are needed to dictate what Internet service companies like Comcast and Verizon can and cannot do to control people’s access to the Internet.

Their opposition has only increased in light of suggestions that the White House exerted undue influence over Wheeler while the regulations were drafted. The GOP has accused the FCC chief of being a political pawn for the Obama administration and, in the process, making a power grab to control the Internet.

Over the least two months, three different congressional committees have launched probes into the matter and so far have been unconvinced by the FCC’s assurances.

“Throughout this process, the FCC has failed to establish the appearance this rulemaking is independent, fair and transparent,” Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) wrote to Wheeler days before the FCC’s February vote.

“Although arguably one of the most sweeping new rules in the commission’s history, the process was conducted without using many of the tools at the chairman’s disposal to ensure transparency and public review.”

Chaffetz has asked the agency to turn over unredacted copies of emails that might shed light on whether or not the White House swayed the FCC chief’s decision.

For his part, Wheeler has repeatedly defended the regulations and said that agency officials began to develop them last summer, months before the White House weighed in. Major telecom companies are expected to sue in coming weeks, which will give the courts a chance to weigh in.

But aside from questioning the agency’s independence, it’s unclear how much power Congress will have to stop the FCC’s rules.

Republicans have been split on how to respond.

On the one hand, some conservatives have already urged leaders to take up a formal resolution to disapprove of the regulations. Forty-four GOP lawmakers have introduced a separate bill to declare that the net neutrality rules have “no force of effect.” Others still have raised the specter of threatening the agency’s funding over the regulations.

Obama would surely veto any such measure, if either ever reached his desk.

A separate group of lawmakers — led by Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) and Reps. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Greg Walden (R-Ore.) — has tried to write a compromise bill that would ban Internet providers from blocking or slowing people’s access or establishing online “fast lanes.” That bill would undercut the agency’s authority in other ways and expressly forbid it from treating the Internet like a utility. 

“The FCC’s partisan approach to net neutrality has failed to settle the issue,” Thune said in a statement to The Hill. “As a result, the Internet faces a future of litigation and uncertainty which hurts consumers.”

So far, however, no Democrats have hopped on board — and a public flogging over the next two weeks isn’t likely to make them change their minds.

“Wheeler showing up is really a Kabuki theater more than anything else,” said Ev Ehrlich, the head of economic consulting firm ESC Co. and a former undersecretary in the Commerce Department, who supports a compromise bill. “It’s hard to imagine that something very productive comes out of it.”

Wheeler isn’t shying away from the new rules, even while not discouraging congressional action.

“It is always within Congress’s purview to say ‘Hey, time out. I want to zig left instead of zag right,’” he said during the Center for Democracy and Technology’s annual dinner at the Washington Convention Center last week. “I’m anxious to [hear] what are they interested in, where do they want to go.”

“But at the base of things, I think that we have, in a 3-2 vote two weeks ago, established the gold standard for what open Internet protections are all about.”