Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Brendan Carr warned that President Joe Biden’s plan for internet services is just another attempt to give the administrative state more control over the lives of everyday Americans.
In a Monday press release, Carr said Biden’s “Internet for all” plan will waste additional taxpayer dollars and give the government even more control over the internet as a whole.
“President Biden’s plan hands the Administrative State effective control of all Internet services and infrastructure in the country,” Carr claimed. The rebuke was in response to Biden’s demand that the FCC adopt new, overbroad rules in the name of “digital equity.”
“Democrats have been in charge of the FCC and administrative agencies in DC for approaching 12 out of the last 16 years,” Carr began.. “They have had the opportunity, over that stretch of time, to put in place nearly any federal telecom policy of their choosing. In fact, the federal government has allocated hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars for the purpose of ending the digital divide while Democrats have run the administrative state. After all of that time and after all of that spending, the Biden Administration has concluded that the Democrats’ policies are not working.”
Carr declared that since Biden’s internet policies have all failed at this point, it is time to let capitalism and the free market create a better solution to improve broadband infrastructure and provide more internet access to Americans.
“The Administration’s broadband policies are failing,” Carr continued, before noting that “[t]he FCC is just sitting on spectrum that could connect millions of Americans to new, 5G services.”
Instead of trying to find a solution that meets everyone’s needs, however, Carr alleged that the Biden administration has only worked to block these efforts.
“Fiber and cell site components are laying fallow in warehouses and laydown yards across the country due to the government’s failure to remove regulatory red tape. Permitting reform has gone nowhere,” he added. “And the Biden Administration is preparing to waste additional taxpayer dollars through its multi-billion dollar ‘Internet for all’ initiative by pursuing extraneous political goals at the expense of connecting Americans.”
Carr said Biden’s plan of “digital equity” would allow the government to control everything from the availability of service to discounts and promotions.
“Congress never contemplated the sweeping regulatory regime that President Biden asked the FCC to adopt—let alone authorized the agency to implement it,” he concluded.
He also compared the plan to something out of Soviet Russia.
“The FCC reserves the right under this plan to regulate both ‘actions and omissions, whether recurring or a single instance,’” he said. “In other words, if you take any action, you may be liable, and if you do nothing, you may be liable. There is no path to complying with this standardless regime. It reads like a planning document drawn up in the faculty lounge of a university’s Soviet Studies Department.”
The Commission will vote on Biden’s plan on Nov. 15.
A draft of the FCC order implementing the big government plan can be found here.
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