Democrats leading the Save the Internet Act are pushing for a vote in April, with or without Republicans

A Q&A with House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Mike Doyle (D-PA).

Chairman Doyle says he's not waiting for Republican support before bringing the Save the Internet Act to a vote. He criticized his colleagues on the other side of the aisle for not making a good faith effort to work across party lines to put network neutrality protections in place. He said he'd like to get bipartisan support for the Save the Internet Act, but that even without it his bill, supported by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), will get a vote in April. When asked about the chances of passing the bill in the Senate, Chairman Doyle said, "I look at it this way: There were 52 votes for this in the Senate when the [Net Neutrality Congressional Review Act] passed (in that chamber). There were some Republicans who voted for the CRA. So we know there is Republican support there. Secondly, I think our job is that we are going to send the strongest bill we can over to the Senate. The Senate doesn't have a long history of just taking House bills and passing them. I'm sure they are going to put it through their process. But our job is to pass the strongest bill we can that protects consumers. We want to start at our goal line and not the 50 yard line."

Discussing Title II in the Save the Internet Act, Chairman Doyle said, "This is a compromise bill. We are taking very little of Title II. This is a bill that puts into statute all the forbearance that [former FCC Chairman] Tom Wheeler did in the 2015 FCC order. The concern always was that a future FCC chairman could reinstate the 27 sections and over 700 regulations that the previous FCC forebore. That included the two big ones that the telcos were concerned about: rate regulation and unbundling. But this legislation puts all the sections and regulations that were forborne into statute so that no new FCC chairman can undo it. It would take an act of Congress for someone to do rate regulation or network unbundling. This was a major step toward the Republicans and the ISPs, which the Republicans chose not to recognize."