Lofgren Urges Protection of Net Neutrality on House Floor

Media Contact: Kyra Jennings, 202.225.3072, kyra.jennings@mail.house.gov

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) today spoke on the floor of the House of Representatives during a debate on HR 5252, the COPE Act. Lofgren spoke in favor of Rep. Ed Markey’s (D-MA) amendment protecting net neutrality and in opposition to Rep. Lamar Smith’s (R-TX) amendment that contains no real net neutrality enforcement provisions.

Below are Rep. Lofgren’s remarks for a portion of this debate:

“I rise in opposition to Lamar Smith’s amendment, because it does nothing. The COPE Act only amends the Communications Act, not the Clayton or Sherman Acts. Whether or not we pass Smith’s amendment, the current antitrust laws would continue to operate as before. The amendment neither creates new net neutrality protections, nor takes them away. It is superfluous.

“The 1996 Telecommunications Act contained a similar antitrust savings clause. But nonetheless, in the 2004 Trinko decision the Supreme Court held there were no antitrust remedies for anticompetitive conduct in areas regulated by the Telecommunications Act. The Trinko decision means that the Telecommunications Act’s antitrust savings clause neither added new antitrust protections nor took them away. Given that precedent, Rep. Smith’s amendment changes nothing in the existing law, and does nothing to protect net neutrality.

“The whole issue is how the antitrust act applies. The Judiciary Committee reported out by a vote of 20 to 13 a bill introduced by Reps. Sensenbrenner and Conyers that actually did provide antitrust remedies for these antitrust provisions. Inexplicably, the real amendment that the Chairman of the Committee and the Ranking Member crafted and that won a majority of bipartisan support on the committee to be reported out was not made in order for us to discuss today. Instead this phony amendment was made in order.

“I’d like to say something else about this regulation rhetoric. Antitrust law is not regulation. It sets the standard for what monopolies can’t do. It is not a regulatory approach; it is a set of laws that keeps monopolies from squeezing the little guys. And that is what’s going to happen if we don’t get real net neutrality in this bill.

“Mr. Markey’s amendment was put in order. We can vote for that and I hope it does pass, but if it does not, we will end up with the duopolies or the monopolies turning the internet into a kind of cable television outfit.

“When the public finds out what we are doing to their Internet, this dome is going to collapse with the uproar they create. Members who have been here a long time remember the vote they took that allowed cable TV rates to go through the roof. That uproar is going to be nothing compared to what you will hear if this measure goes forward.”