Democratic Senators will force the Senate to debate net neutrality — but they don’t have the votes to restore the rules

Democratic senators rejoiced on Jan 9 that they had secured enough votes to force the Senate to debate whether to restore the US government’s recently repealed network neutrality rules. But their celebrations could prove short-lived on Capitol Hill, where Republicans control both chambers of Congress — and can easily scuttle any attempt to revive regulations that required internet providers to treat all web traffic equally.  In speech after speech, though, Democratic Sens mostly sidestepped those issues. Instead, they essentially dared their GOP colleagues to vote against net neutrality — and risk enraging younger voters.

“Net neutrality will be a major issue in the 2018 campaigns,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), “and we are going to let everybody know where we stand — and they stand.” “Millennials were born into a world with a free and open internet,” Minority Leader Schumer continued. “It’s as integral to their daily lives as a morning cup of coffee. So when the administration rips it from their hands and hands it over to the big ISPs on a silver platter, millennials will know that Republicans were responsible — you can bet Democrats are going to make sure of that.” To Sen Brian Schatz (D-HI), meanwhile, the issue had riled young voters in a way that he hadn’t seen since “the Iraq war.” “This is the time we have to fix the FCC’s mistake and restore net neutrality,” the Sen Schatz said, adding that Republicans are going to “regret it on policy and they’re going to regret it on politics.” “Congress has the power through the Congressional Review Act to overturn the FCC’s actions,” said Sen Ed Markey (D-MA). “We will spend the coming months building our grass-roots support for the CRA.”