GOP lawmakers tell Obama they don't like broadband reclassification

House Republican leader John Boehner (Ohio) and Rep Eric Cantor (R-VA) have written a letter to President Barack Obama to say that a proposal by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski to reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service "could hardly come at a worse time for our nation's economy, which is already struggling against a steady flow of increased government spending and taxation from Washington."

The members of Congress said the FCC should seek additional authority from Congress after a federal court last month put the agency's ability to regulate broadband services in doubt. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said the FCC in 2008 overstepped its authority when it sanctioned Comcast for blocking a peer-to-peer application. That decision threw into question whether the FCC could continue with its net neutrality proposal and portions of its national broadband plan. But the lawmakers said the proposal to reclassify broadband under the FCC risked putting more rules on broadband providers. "To help expedite our recovery and create jobs, we urged you to refocus the Commission on promoting broadband investment and deployment," they wrote.