GOP to FCC: We're Watching You

With a Democratic Congress, a Democratic president, and a Democratic chairman, the last two years have meant political cover for the regulatory ambition of the Federal Communications Commission. Chairman Julius Genachowski, appointed by President Obama, may have taken only incremental steps toward fulfilling the FCC's agenda, but he had political support from the highest public offices to go further. All of that's about to change.

Under Republican control of the House, the FCC will now answer to skeptics of government intervention in the market. GOP lawmakers can't tell Genachowski what to do, but they can still bully him to kill initiatives that the Administration hoped to accomplish -- foremost among them, Obama's campaign promise to enforce network neutrality. Republican gains in Congress will mean a "much more intensely focused commitment to the free-market perspective," said former FCC Chairman Michael Powell. "The burden of proof shifts: It's no longer industry having to prove why they shouldn't be regulated." Now it's the government officials who will have to prove why they should regulate.