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by ceejayoz 694 days ago
> The price-cap order was fully supported by the FCC's three Democrats and Republican Nathan Simington. Republican Brendan Carr approved in part and concurred in part, saying he had concerns about the rate structure.

Seems bipartisan? All five approved of part, four of all.

2 comments

Isn't the issue that the goal on one side of the aisle seems to be to revoke all authority agencies like the FCC currently have? It doesn't matter if the agency itself agreed in a bipartisan matter when the courts and the executive both decide that the agency is illegitimate.
Congress passed a bill specifically to require the FCC to do this.

It passed the Senate by unanimous consent. The next morning at 9:48 am it was received in the House.

At noon there was a motion in the House to suspend the rules and pass the bills. That's done for non-controversial bills with broad bipartisan support. The motion passed within a minute.

After such a motion passes there is up to 40 minutes of debate on the bill. For this bill that lasted 10 minutes and then at 12:10 pm it passed by voice vote.

From conversations with folks who work in DC as senate & house aides - a phenomenon of the modern Republican party is that many GOP members of the house & senate have reasonable opinions on things and can agree on a reasonable policy right up until Fox News has an opinion about it, and then their opinion is Fox's opinion.

If Trump gets elected and decides the FCC's regulatory powers are bad, I promise you it will not matter how many republican senators or house reps voted for this before. I cannot think of a single incident in the last 8 years where a member of that party showed the slightest bit of ideological consistency, save McCain, who's dead, and maybe Romney, who's no longer a senator.

Being charitable, the question I would have is whether the FCC has the same regulatory power over private prisons as they do over state and federally run prisons.
But it's not a matter of power over prisons, it's the Federal Communications Commision exercising their power over communications.