There is a great deal of excitement, but also a great deal of misunderstanding, about the effort to “repeal the repeal” of net neutrality using the Congressional Review Act (CRA). On the one hand, we have folks who are confused by the enormous progress made so far and think that we are just one vote shy of repealing the repeal. On the other extreme, we have the folks declaring the effort totally doomed and impossible from the start.
You can read the relevant statutory provisions here at 5 U.S.C. 801-08. Briefly, a “Resolution of Disapproval” (which we refer to as a “CRA” rather than a “CRD” just to confuse people) must pass both the Senate and the House (in either order) and then be signed by the President like any other piece of legislation. If the President vetoes Congress may override the veto with a 2/3 vote as it can with any other vetoed legislation. You might think that this makes it impossible for the minority party to get legislation passed. But the CRA was designed to allow a majority of members to pass a Resolution of Disapproval over the objections of the leadership and on a bare majority (so it circumvents the filibuster). And while yes, it must still get past the President, there are reasons to think that is not as impossible as some folks think.
Right now, the action has been in the Senate, where Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has announced that all 47 Democrats (and the 2 independents who caucus with them) will vote for the CRA. With Republican Susan Collins (R-ME) joining her fellow Senator from Maine Angus King (I-ME), that makes the total number of yes votes 50. So if Dems find one more “yes” vote in the Senate, they can clear that hurdle. But while this is extraordinary news in a very short period of time (technically, it is still too early to even introduce a CRA on the FCC’s net neutrality vote, since the item has not been published in the federal register) — we still have a long way to go to get this over the finish line.
But, just to provide some historic perspective. Back in 2003, the nascent (and totally unanticipated by anybody — especially anybody with any experience in media policy) media reform movement rose up against the roll back of all media ownership rules by then-FCC chair Michael Powell. Republican FCC, Republican Congress, Republican President — all supportive of the roll back and big deregulators. Nevertheless, against all odds, we managed to push through a partial roll back by freezing the national ownership limit at 39% (which, not by coincidence, was the ownership level of the largest holding companies — News Corp. and Viacom — as seen in this West Wing episode). So yeah, sometimes the universe give us some long-shot unexpected surprises.
I discuss the details of a CRA, and why I think we can win this (and even if we don’t, why it still works in our favor overall), below. In the meantime, you can go to this Public Knowledge resource page to contact your Senators and Representative directly and push them to vote for the Net Neutrality CRA.
UPDATE: Matt Schettenhelm pointed out to me that while 30 Senators bypases the Committee and gets on the calendar, you still need to win a motion to proceed before debate and final up down vote. See this article here. I’ve corrected this below.