For those who ask what difference it makes who runs the Congress, the week's developments concerning net neutrality are a vivid reminder of the iron grip the GOP maintains on the procedures that govern the House floor -- and more often than not, procedural decisions dictate substantive outcomes.
Znet has a good article, but the events call out for greater explanation
About 6 weeks ago the Energy and Commerce reported out an ominbus telecommunications bill. During the markup the Democrats offered a "net neutrality" amendment that failed along largely pary lines. The Judiciary Committee, of which I serve as Ranking Member, became quickly engaged and asked for a referral of the bill to consider the antitrust implications. Ever since Ma Bell was broken up in 1982 the Judiicary Committee has always had equal footing on these matters. But this year, the Republican Leadership just said no. As I understand it, they told us we had one week to markup our own bill, and we did just that -- the Sensenbrenner/Conyers net neutrality bill, which passed two weeks ago on a bipartisan basis. With our bill in hand, we expected the Rules Committee -- which is controlled by the Republican Leadership -- would at the very least make that amendment in order when the Energy and Commerce Bill came up -- how could they ignore at least giving our committee a vote on our bipartisan bill? But late Wednesday night they did just that, effectively killling net neutrality in the House. The GOP leadership realized it would be somewhat easy to defeat the Markey Amendment, because it was seen as "partisan" while the Judiciary Bill was "bipartisan."
To make matters worse, the GOP leadership threw in a figleaf amedment by Lamar Smith (R-TX), which in essence said "the antitrust laws apply to the extent they apply" (i.e., it said nothing). So to take a step back, the GOP leadership wouldn't make a bill reported by our committee on a bipartisan basis in order, but they insisted on the House voting on a figleaf amendment which had never been considered or approved by our committee. Why the shenanigans? The idea behind this was to allow those Republican Members who were planning to vote against the Markey amendment to say they supported strong antitrust enforcement, even though the amendment did nothing. That is why I went to the floor last night and opposed the Smith amendment. This was all part of an effort to roll the vote up against Markey and pass the Commerce bill, which they did yesterday.
Bottom line, the GOP leadership again rigged the rules to ram through their desired result, even if they had do abandon the usual customs and procedures. Over the last 12 years, I have grown accustomed to such unfair untreatment from the Rules Committee, but I was somewhat surprised they would treat one of their own Chairman -- Jim Sensenbrenner -- this way. The problem for the GOP is its so late, and net neutrality has even greater strength in the Senate. Its also much harder to keep amendments off the Senate floor, where the rules are more favorable. So the battle is far from over, and the issue is becoming more and more salient every day. Much more to come on this issue, which is critical to the future of democracy and freedom on the Internet
http://www.conyersblog.us/default.htmHouse rejects Net neutrality rules
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6081882.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdnn
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